The best thing about an inter-cultural relationship

Fei wrote a blog post to report a recent episode betwen her and her German husband (in Chinese). Basically he was grumpy for unknown reason, which made her feel very uncomfortable. She then accused him for being "self-centered/selfish" because if it were her being unhappy, she would try to control temper (he didn't) or at least explain to him her bad mood wasn't because of him (he didn't bother to explain anything to her obviously).

Here is my comment on her post.

"I was there before but now I know their being "self-centered/selfish” could also be explained by their culture. They grew up in an environment where they could express their feelings freely and on the other hand, other people would not easily be hurt or even bother to soothe them. In other words their culture has relatively higher tolerance to Mr or Ms Grumpy. It seems your husband didn't know he didn't know before--he was completely ignorant towards the fact that his behaviour could be explained by being selfish. So perhaps he should be forgiven/rewarded for being himself)?

For me the best thing about such an inter-cultural relationship is to learn things we probably would not have learned about ourselves and our culture. In a lot of cases (at least for us) there is no right or wrong really but only difference (personal difference, cultural gap and the interaction between the two as they told us in a STAT class). How to solve these differences? I don't have an answer myself. Each couple has their own path to find a balanced point they both feel comfortable I suppose. We are still working on ours and I wish you good luck!"

P.S. Of course there are a lot of other good things as well, e.g. you don't need to worry about singing off-pitch, and you can learn each other's language. If your partner is a trader, more good things are coming!