(Translated from Korean)
Dear Professor Gus,
I am a 25 year-old Korean girl, and I have recently started dating a foreign guy. My English is pretty good, so we don’t have communication problems, but there seems to be some cultural problems. I send him nice text messages, and he usually doesn’t text me back until much later, if at all. It seems he always wants to be with his foreign friends. When we go out, we always have to go to a foreigner bar. My last boyfriend was Korean and he always texted me back immediately. He always told me where he was and where he was going. Is my boyfriend just a jerk, or do all foreign guys act this way?
Frustrated Korean Girl |
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Dear Frustrated,
Your boyfriend may very well be a jerk. But using only the information you’ve given me, it’s impossible to tell. I know for sure that you are correct about one thing – there is a cultural/gender misunderstanding. Maybe these transcripts of some voicemail messages I received in high school can illuminate the problem:
(beep) Hello Gus? This is your Mother. I called you several times and you have yet to acknowledge me. Your father and I are worried sick. You were supposed be home over an hour ago. We tried to wait, but we ate dinner without you. What kind of son goes out and doesn’t tell his mother where he’s going? (beep)
(beep) John Gustave Swanda! It is 25 minutes past your curfew and you have not come home yet. I knew it was a bad idea to let you buy that car. I told your father but he wouldn’t listen. ‘It will teach him responsibility’, yeah right! You’re acting real responsible now! You’d better be home in the next ten minutes or so help me God! (beep)
(beep) I don’t know where you are right now, but you better not be hanging out with that kid with the parachute pants and the Mohawk. You know, the world does not revolve around you and your friends. You better not be doing that TCX stuff I heard about on Dateline NBC that all the kids are doing these days. If your friends all jumped off a bridge would you? (beep)
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In general, foreigners are taught by their parents to be independent. Most of us move out of the house around the age of 18, spread our wings and fly off to some college town or city campus. Whereupon graduating, we tuck those wings neatly back in and move back home to save money or pay off student loans. A select few of us never move back home. And an even smaller percentage of us move halfway around the world to get away from our parents. Being that your boyfriend is a foreigner in Korea, I suspect he is in the last group. It might even be that his independence is what you find attractive about him.
Also, he may perceive your neediness and nagging as an attempt to be his mother, from which the only escape is his friends – who care very little about him and will let him drink himself blind.
Your ex-boyfriend was Korean. He knew that he will most likely live with his parents until marriage, and has become used to living at home and may even be comforted by his dependence on his mother. Adding a needy girlfriend to the mix is like me throwing a pop tart on my Big Mac – it’s just not that big of a difference in the daily scale of things. Answering your text messages right away and always letting you know where he is, to him is as comforting as having Mom doing his laundry or cooking his meals.
Relationships are often about compromise. Might I make some suggestions?
- Limit your text messaging to one a day until you see each other.
- For every night he spends out with his friends, have a date night.
- Try double or triple dating with his friends and their girlfriends.
If he is willing to put forth the effort, then take that as a sign that he cares about you, and he wants to be in the relationship. If he isn’t, then maybe he really is a jerk.
