At 6:00 p.m. I had resolved to upgrade my CLM membership.  I attempted to pay for the upgrade but I immediately ran into a problem.  The only card I had available to make the payment was the ATM card associated with my primary checking account.  Unfortunately, the card was a Mastercard and, for reasons involving international banking, PayPal would not accept it.  After three hours of fruitless attempts to use my bank card to pay for my upgrade, I sent an e-mail to CLM's customer support to ask them why I couldn't pay for my upgrade with a Mastercard.

I started this series by describing an incident that occurred while Yong and I were travelling in which she uttered a statement about the superiority of Chinese culture that seemed dubious to say the least in light of the historical record. Rather than confront the situation with reason and logic (which in my experience are of limited value in any relationship), I suggested that the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) is a more useful tool to bring to an intercultural relationship.  According to the DMIS, there are six levels at which we can relate to a culture other than our own:  Denial, Defense, Minimization, Acceptance, Adaptation, and Integration. As we progress through the various levels, we come to realize the filter through which we inevitably view other cultures, abandon the ethnocentric belief in the superiority of our own culture and ultimately adopt an ethnorelative stance that grounds itself not in critical judgment but in clear-eyed understanding.

Before I start on this blog, I want to share with you a rather funny story.......

            I vividly remember a case on another dating website where I encountered a woman with three or four pictures in her profile.  Her primary picture showed her wearing a business suit.  I did not find that picture particularly attractive but there was another picture showing her riding a lawn tractor.  She was dressed casually and she was not wearing any make-up or jewelry and that was the picture that made me interested in her.  That was the picture where I felt she looked the most beautiful and that was the picture that attracted me to her.  If her primary picture had been the only picture on her profile, I would not have given her a second glance.  I certainly would not have tried to contact her.  Naturally, she was an Asian woman living in Virginia and at the time she was a couple of years older than me.

In the previous entry, I distinguished three initial stages of intercultural understanding: Denial, Defense, and Minimization. All of these stages can be roughly characterized as “ethnocentric” insofar as they assume one culture (usually my own) has the correct stance/attitude on cultural matters. This is a natural enough state for people to exist in and if I had to guess I would say that most of humanity ends up spending their lives in this state—convinced of the rightness and rationality of whatever system of beliefs they happened to have been born into. However, we can only move forward to a level necessary for a healthy cross-cultural dating by abandoning this naïve belief that our culture alone has attained the true way and adopting instead an “ethnorelative” perspective that refuses to pass judgment but instead contents itself with understanding the endless variety of cultural expression.

When I was writing about my ideal match it never occurred to me that anyone would seriously object when I said that she would be both beautiful and sexy.  But then again, I had forgotten what I had learned in speech communication class:  that we interpret all forms of communication, even written communication, through the prism of our beliefs, experiences, emotions, and prejudices.  Thus, the reader will never perceive the message in the same way that it was originally conceived by the writer.  Words such as 'beauty' and 'sexy' are far more open to interpretation than others.

The Honda dealer threw in a carrier basket. That was handy for Noi to transport the vegetables from market to the restaurant. Noi told me she was a good cook and she was right. Her food was delicious and enjoyed by all. The only drawback? It was a long day. She would set off for market about 5.30 every morning then cook the first rice and breakfasts of the day. It would be busy until about ten and slack off for a while. The rest of the day had spurts of activity. One minute, no customers then five or six would show out of nowhere.

"On These Pages Awaits Your Perfect Match".  Those words appeared at the top of every page whenever you use the browse feature on CLM.  I have to admit that the first time I encountered them I was more than just a little skeptical.  I simply dismissed them as little more than advertising copy.  But within perhaps ten to fifteen minutes I found those words rather unexpectedly validated.  My first action upon joining CLM was to perform a search for women between the ages of 21 and 45.  Within the very first page of search results, I found her, the woman who has ever come closest to matching the profile of my ideal match.

Now, one objection that might be raised with respect to the rule with which I ended my previous entry—that one should not say anything negative about China to your Chinese partner—is: Don’t couples need to be truthful with each other? And if the negative statement about China is true, shouldn’t I inform my partner about this fact?

I moved forwards in trust but never in blind faith. I did not have a fortune at my disposal so I had to trust but also be wary at the same time. The serious commitments to the restaurant venture and a new house could not be taken lightly. I was aware of some of the horror stories involved in dating Asian women, and Thai women in particular. I had read the blog articles and the best-selling book on the subject. I hoped and prayed I wasn’t about to sleepwalk into a nightmare. I have a trusting nature. I tend to trust people until I find out otherwise. That’s the way I am. I knew that so why worry about the future?