Cultural Differences I Experience As an American Married to French Man

I moved from New York to Berlin as a single woman in 2017.

Finding love wasn’t at the top of my to-do list, but I was open to the possibility — and aware that the odds of making a dating-app match with someone of another nationality were much higher than if I had stayed stateside.

So I wasn’t exactly surprised when a dashing Frenchman, who’d eventually become my husband, whisked me off my feet.

We managed to ignore the cultural divide during those first six months of honeymoon-phase bliss. It was easy since he was fluent in English and I had a basic knowledge of French, but the longer we went on, the harder it became to pretend we hadn’t had upbringings in countries thousands of miles apart.

We’re lucky to have a lot of common interests and have agreed on our major values since day one — but we’ve come to accept that there are some ways I’ll always be a little too American for him and he a little too French for me.

We have opposite approaches to self-medication

Reliable health insurance was never a sure thing for my family when I was growing up.

That meant that we’d often treat illnesses on our own when possible, keeping the medicine cabinet stocked at all times with Costco-sized bottles of every over-the-counter painkiller you can imagine.

I didn’t think twice when I packed my suitcase with several bottles of ibuprofen, but they were a shock to my husband the first time I took one out in front of him.

In France, painkillers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen aren’t easy to buy in bulk or get at the grocery store — and even at pharmacies, you can’t grab them off the shelf yourself.

Instead, you have to get them straight from the pharmacist, who will then typically debrief you on proper usage and dosage.

From his point of view, I take way too much ibuprofen … but on the other hand, the natural remedies he has always used often don’t cut it for me.

Just this week, I came down with a cold, and he brought me a homeopathic essential-oil treatment when I asked him to pick up medicine. I’ve been using it to appease him, but you better believe I also sent him back to get the ibuprofen I really needed.

My husband’s French dining habits are different from my laid-back, American approach

My husband and I often have trouble aligning when and what we eat because of our different appetites and cultural approaches to dining.

In France, eating routines tend to be pretty rigid. Lunch happens at noon sharp, breakfast is always sweet, and the only time of day most people snack is at 4 p.m. for their “goûter” — the childhood habit of taking a sugary, late-afternoon treat that many French folks, including my husband, carry with them long after they’ve left the schoolyard.

My approach, meanwhile, mirrors the free-form way I ate in the US. Snacks are always on hand, breakfast is often skipped, and dinnertime could easily take place early one night and late the next.

Neither of us has been able to fully adapt to the other’s eating style, but we try to make time to enjoy at least one meal together a day — usually dinner. That way, we can find something we agree on, and a time to eat it, and get what we both want the rest of the time.

We often don’t agree on how or when to share our personal space

I’ve always had an open-door policy for friends and family, and welcomed the opportunity to hire a housesitter or leave my apartment to a friend to watch my cats when I’m out of town.

I don’t mind if they make themselves at home while they’re at it — whether that means sleeping in my bed or using my shampoo and conditioner — possibly because I grew up watching my own parents always offer the same.

This, however, is out of the realm of possibility for my husband. The first time I proposed such an idea before a long vacation, he shut it down.

“In France, people don’t do that,” he said. “We want to sleep in our own beds at the end of the day.” Friends will swing by to feed the cats and change the litter, but that’s it.

There’s also a limit to how long he feels comfortable hosting guests when we are on the premises — but he’s learned to adapt to longer stays in order to accommodate my loved ones who have to travel from afar.

When we first met, the longest stretch he could tolerate was a long weekend, but we’ve since hosted my California-based siblings for several weeks with no complaints on his end (OK, maybe just a few).

So, although we may both never be totally on board with each other’s cultural quirks, at least we know that we’ll always try to meet in the middle.