How couples manage interracial and intercultural differences: What works

This study focused on how couples managed their interracial and intercultural differences. To understand their experiences, a qualitative grounded theory analysis was used with semi-structured interviews of seventeen couples with a wide variety of racial and cultural backgrounds. Couples were interviewed together regarding how they organize their relationships, make decisions, and deal with each other and the larger community. Brief interviews with each partner followed. Analysis revealed that couples experienced most issues as cultural issues; race was only present to them during their interactions with "others" (i.e., family members, community, and/or members of society). Couples also appeared to conflate distinctions between personality, culture, and race in their relationships.;Couples in this study appeared to organize their response to racial and cultural differences according to four relationship structures: Integrated, Singularly Assimilated, Coexisting, and Unresolved. Couples in each of these structures managed daily process through four sets of relationship strategies: (1) creating a "we," (2) framing differences, (3) emotional maintenance, and (4) positioning in relationship to family, community, and societal context. These relational processes appeared to work for each of the relationship structures except the unresolved group, who struggled to make their marriages work. Thus, these four relational strategies provide a basis for interventions that may help interracialintercultural couples identify what works for them and strengthen their relationships. Discussion of these interventions is organized according to Ecological Systems Theory. Practitioners are encouraged to begin by identifying the couple's structure for organizing around differences, assessing current relationship strategies to manage these differences, and by helping the couple explore which structure would fit best for them. Then the practitioner may help the couple better apply the four relational strategies identified in the analysis. Specific questions for assessing current relationship strategies are included. Implications for future research are also addressed.