Long Relationships

I have invited Mr. Steven Verrier here today as part of his virtual book tour with Tough Love, Tender Heart to talk about his book as well as about life in an international marriage. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming him to Long Relationships.

My Japanese wife and I live in a two-story house in a typical, often dull, subdivision on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas. When we met twenty-two years ago I was living in a tiny apartment without central heating in her northern Japanese hometown of Niigata. Winters there were deathly, and I could often see my breath hanging in the air as I got dressed in the morning. And I wasn’t much of a housekeeper. Dishes were normally piled high in the sink, and trash was usually waiting to be carried outside.

That’s where my future wife stepped in. Few North Americans were living in her part of Japan in the mid-eighties, and I was one of the first she had occasion to meet. Things went smoothly when we started dating, but you can imagine what went through her mind the first time she stepped into my apartment. She must have thought Americans were the slovenliest people walking the earth. She kept on dating me, but I’m not certain she didn’t do so out of mercy. In any case she and her mother helped with my laundry, and Motoko, my future wife, tried to make sure I was dressed and fed properly. She seemed determined to do her best to whip me into husband material.

We married in 1987, and for the most part Motoko has remained patient with me despite discovering over the years that Americans aren’t quite the slobs she might have thought after first visiting that apartment of mine. Cultural matters have never played negatively into our relationship, as she’s always been as comfortable surrounded by Americans as I was while living among Japanese. We’ve raised our children to be fluently bilingual and bicultural, and you can read about our experiences in RAISING A CHILD TO BE BILINGUAL AND BICULTURAL (see http://hiraganatimes.youbuy.jp).

Like my wife and me, the main characters in my novel, TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART, face challenges other than cultural ones in trying to establish a viable, enduring international relationship. My next post will address a specific challenge imposed on American Don Fisher and Colombian Ana Velasquez in TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART.

TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and other sources. For more information about TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART or about Steven Verrier, visit stevenverrier.com, and drop the author a line telling him what you think about the book!