What It's Like to be Married to a Naga and an American | A Cross-Cultural Marriage Conversation

welcome back to our channel today we're coming at you from the pool at our condos it's a bit windy but it's actually a really beautiful day here in bangkok and today we're going to talk about what it's like to be married to each other so for me what it's like to be married to a naga and for you what it's like to be married to an american and this is something that we've always thought about but never actually made a video yeah or written down or talked about formally yeah so it's something that's really interesting for us and we also just want to say we're not talking about all nagas here we're not talking about all americans here obviously there's great variety we're just talking from our personal experience i hope you guys enjoyed this video give a thumbs up if you liked it hey so let's go okay so we made a list the first thing i wrote down for what it's like to be married to a naga is how the nagas that i've met including you can do everything you can cook you can clean you can carry water you can make a fire all the domestic things you can you know how to wash shoes you guys really know how to do everything well the first thing for me being american-american is like how you guys are very straightforward that was like something a culture shock shock you can say shock yeah because you know for us uh for the nakas or for the asians we're more of indirect yeah like but then for you guys it's more like straightforward yeah it is yes yes no no yeah there is no third party involved or there's no going round about right we just say what we want to say but do you like it or do you not like it or is it something that you have that you've gotten used to well i struggle sometimes well the first part if you say do i like it i don't like it yes depends on the situations there are times that i like it and there are times that i don't like it but you're would you say you're liking it more than you're not liking it now no yeah i think most of the time no okay most of the time no because i think it's the way how we you're not used to it yeah yeah it's a hard it's hard and and it's hard for me the indirect thing is hard for me so it could always be something that we'll have to deal with but hopefully it'll continue to get easier hopefully i appreciate what i've noticed is i appreciate how you guys care for your family that you're very involved in your family that you talk to them a lot that you take care of them however you can and you're the second oldest so you have a bigger responsibility than the younger ones but still you guys you will have like family meetings where you'll talk about your siblings and talk about the future of your family and talk about your parents and your very family focus and not just your immediate family but also your cousins your aunts uncles your grandparents that's a very high priority for the nagas i would say yeah i think i think that's very true it's not only the families but i think we're very strong with the community thing so it's like it's like this uh it's my family right my siblings my family and then all the zinc highs yeah your clan my clan in the village yeah then if i go out to another town it's my village definitely and then once i move out of the village another state of village it's the tankul people yeah same with their people yeah yeah i think we're very much into communities like i don't know if you know this in almost all the cities in india we have called naka christian fellowship dangcool christian fellowship our christian fellowship yeah all the communities have our own sub community in different states or in different cities i think that's really really good yeah definitely you stay together you value you you value the group that you belong to when you look after one another well my second my second one is like almost kind of opposite to what you just said you guys are very self-centered independent or okay yeah very independent you like to be being by yourself or you you like to be cool self call oriented like what it's like a lot of times it's kind of more personal achievement for us it's more like of yes it's personal a different but then it's also celebrated by the communities you know yeah so yeah i see you guys a lot with being very self-serving well and we value individuals you know let the individual choose don't let the family choose for the individual the individual each individual has his or her own strengths and also we we are raised to be independent it's our parents job to give us the skills that we need so that when we're 18 or when we're in college we can take care of ourselves which as i've just said i can't cook which is not my mom's fault it's my fault so my next one is nagas are generous you are generous towards your family towards your community and i remember your mom when we got married she gave me her huge necklace that normally she would give to her daughter when her daughter gets married but she gave it to me and also your aunt your mom's oldest sister she gave me a smaller necklace but also a dunkle necklace that i treasure and i just thought why are you giving it to me this is your culture and your tradition but that really affected me and really struck me by your willingness to give and and whenever we come home from india from the village we come home with so much food just bags of food i always i always think when we go we take a lot of stuff and our suitcases are full and i'm always excited when we come back our suitcases are going to be empty it's going to be so easy to come home but no your mom and other villagers give us so much that our suitcase is just as full when we go home i wouldn't say the word chinese but it's more like sharing we like to share like if you give i also give back okay but it's not just that's that just saying because it's not a transaction yeah it's like you give me so i'm giving no right but when you give me or i also feel like oh you want to get i also want to express my thanks yeah yeah yeah that's true i think it's part of our relationship with building relationships yeah and most of the time it's very effective right and you're a good sharer you somebody will bring you beef from home and you'll share it if somebody gives me something from home that we cannot buy here i'm not sharing it with anyone so i think that's related to my first uh points right being sales but i think it's also my personality partly but yeah i i'm not gonna share my food from home okay so now uh the third point yeah is i think you or most of the americans that i know like you like to plan ahead yeah and in fact you guys are like very good with planning yes schedule yes but for us uh time is like very flexible yeah and we don't plan much so you'll see right so we have known each other for more than six years now and since the time that i've known you i've already like i always see you having a diary a planner a planner yeah and you write it down and then like you she will do all the appointment and she'll do all the recordings yeah whatever and for me she would always say hey write it down and i'm like no yes everything is here but then you forget most of the time i forget yeah so i think there's something very good with you guys so you plan a lot and my dad her dad is next level yeah he can plan for like one year or two or three years ahead and then their trips they plan like every day what they're gonna do it's very detailed another one for me is how happy nagas are obviously that has something to do with personality too but in your village the villagers don't have the easiest life right they you have to you have to carry water from the spring you have to plant all your vegetables you have to harvest the rice and plant the rice with no machines it's quite a difficult life but what i notice whenever i'm there is how much laughter there is um how much smiling that's remarkable and not that not that we don't laugh and we don't smile but you guys do your work happily and you know you like to work with your friends if you can and i just see that a lot of people are happy and they like to be together and they laugh a lot especially your mom your mom laughs all the time i think i think back home yeah we naga people like to be together yeah friends families and then yeah we you're also a happy person which is helpful for me i'm not i'm a more serious work oriented task driven kind of person and it's sometimes i don't laugh and i don't try to have fun but you're you're a happy person and i it's also again personality but that's one thing i really appreciate about you so another one for the americans is what i said with the planning thing yeah so you guys are very good with time management yeah or i'll say most of the people are most of you are good with time management yeah um i i see that you guys take time very seriously and if it's like five means five six means six yeah or five minutes later means five minutes later yeah um for us it's like five minutes it can be like 20 minutes or 30 minutes we've had this issue where you'll say okay in five minutes and then it turns out to be like 30 minutes or 40 minutes and it makes me a little bit upset because of how seriously i take time because you you don't take time that seriously you don't actually mean five minutes the last one for me what it's like to be married to a naga is how people-oriented you are you care more about people than time you care more about people than work you care more about people than money where in the u.s my culture it's not quite so you know if it's work time generally we're working we're not you know relationships are not the highest priority for us sometimes money is sometimes work is but for you for you and for your family and for your culture can see that people are and relationships are number one and the fifth one is i think your food are not so good you know i mean honestly american food yeah western food western food like um because for example let's say so when i think of american food or western food the first thing that comes to my mind would be like pizza yeah or kfc yeah but you know those things like you cannot eat morning and evening yeah that's true you just eat once and then you're like especially fried chicken you feel a bit gross after you eat fried chicken and then along with that like your foods are so plant like very tasteless yeah no chili and insane gets a little bit chilly and then they will say like the hottest things this and paper like this there's button it's not spicy for you yeah and and then you put you use a lot of you use more of butter and yeah salt and pepper salt and pepper are our spices but for you i mean you definitely use a lot of salt nagas cook with a lot of salt but you also need chili if it doesn't have chili he's not interested no so even when i make chicken and dumplings which is one of my favorite southern dishes american dishes you're just you don't even want to bite because it's so weird to you and because i flavor it only with salt and pepper you you're not you're 100 not going to eat it right but that's good because more for me but yeah food is a big struggle so actually i also struggle remember last time we went to the uk i struggled because of food so yeah i would always want indian food but then that's expensive you did have the chilies in your backpack didn't you yeah king chilis yeah this was fun to talk about because i i also just want to say i'm i love being married to warchie and i love being married to a naga uh the the nagas that i know are wonderful people so now do we still have cultural issues absolutely but we have we have a way to move beyond those because of our shared faith yeah i think if people ask is your marriage happy always no it's not perfect we have struggles a lot of struggles yeah but then we i think we also really have to compromise a lot in many ways yeah and it's a privilege to be married from someone from another culture and we get to learn a lot more than we would have and another thing is you know we of course we both speak english so where she sometimes people will say well does your husband speak english and yeah my husband speaks english how else would i speak to him i only speak english so there's a way to to to marry someone else obviously this is not an arranged marriage this is a love marriage and we found each other but i i'm really i'm really impressed by nagas i know that not all nagas are great but i'm proud to be married to a naga 100 right so can you say that about can you proud to be married to an american well yeah it's kind of different though it's american is a much more broad term whereas in naga is a more fixed term i think for us like there's a saying you know when you are married to one of us you become one of us definitely uh so when you are married to a naka you become a yeah i think it's the other way around like for you guys if i'm married to an american but you're still like you're married an individual yeah yeah but but that doesn't mean i think it really depends on the persons and individuals and the family i'm really happy i'm married to you are you sure yes even though i don't cook and i forget to or i don't think about making rights thanks for watching please like and subscribe if you haven't already and let us know what you think of our video in the comments [Music] bye you

Channel: Worchihan Zingkhai

Views: 22,482

Keywords: worchihan and susan, cross-cultural marriage, cross-cultural relationship, Asian and American couple, Tangkhul Naga, being married to an american, american crosscultural marriage, crosscultural marriage, susan zingkhai, worchihan zingkhai, couples in thailand, international couples, being married to another culture, thoughts on cross-cultural marriage, what we learn from cross-cultural marriage, i love the Nagas, I like americans, Naga and American couple, Nagaland, Manipur

Id: t3IiCYxNnSw

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021