Revealing Truth Why I choose To Date Foreign
It may be a lot of times easier to date and even build a family with someone who was born in the same time zone as you, under the same angle of the moon, ate the same foods, watched the same cartoons and yet...to me this isn't better.
Because...
With all due respect to my upbringing, I am bold enough to say that I prefer to eat, date and love foreign.
See, we all are curious to a certain extent. Some more. Some less.
Choosing people you call your friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends are conscious choices in life. They must deserve the title. You may share similar values, interests, and future goals.
But what if, we would choose friends and our dates by slightly different criteria.
1. Dating a foreigner takes us out of established and limiting roles in our culture.
You can start dating someone fresh without stale cultural expectations, behaviors, or norms. You can experience all of the shades of intense and amazing.
You get to select what works and what doesn't. Which rules to implement and which to discard. It gives an opportunity to shape the relationship that fits your needs.
You don't have to pop up babies at the age of 25 just because it's a cultural expectation. Or you don't have to delay the babies because it's a norm in your country to build a career that others envy.
If everything goes well, your partner will leave some of their cultural expectations behind while you would be doing the same. Together you'll be able to build a solid ground while creating stimulating traditions that connect both on a much deeper level.
2. Dating a Foreigner showers you with lessons.
Every dating experience is a classroom filled with tests and quizzed you either pass or fail. Every foreign dating relationship is a classroom teaching all the same except the subjects are taught in a language that isn't your own. It sure may be challenging at times, but so much more rewarding as long as you keep your mind open and heart available.
Because dating a foreigner will get your palms a little sweaty.
There will be plenty of awkward moments, misunderstandings, and even arguments.
Same as there will be plenty of funny seasons, unforgettable times and laughs that will seriously flip-flop your stomach upside down.
As it turns out, love can be served in a hundred and one variations. You don't have to stick with steamed broccoli and highly nutritious kale if that's not your jam. You can indeed have roasts with garnish. You're allowed to feel spice in the tongue and chills in the stomach if that lights you up.
It may be a lot of times easier to date and even build a family with someone who was born in the same time zone as you, under the same angle of the moon, ate the same foods, watched the same cartoons and yet...to me this isn't better.
Because...
When two people come together from different backgrounds, they may develop something unique, one of a kind.
What's even better - you get to pick and choose what you want your relationship to become.
3. Your identity will change when dating a foreigner.
In the beginning, you may feel like a cat in a jacuzzi, but that's Okay, because dating foreign means stepping out of your comfort zone.
Anything that involves leaving comfort behind equals to the growth. It trains you to expand your mind. When you expand your mind, it stretches, and it can never go back to where it was.
When this happens, you become an entirely different person that is free to live whichever way works best.
There will be most powerful breakthroughs and realizations. You'll get to know you and find out parts of your self you didn't know you ever had. You'll face unexpected situations, and they all- will make you mature in unexpected ways.
4. You will have a growing appreciation for foreign culture.
You'll acquire contrasting mannerism, behaviors, and expressions.
At times you'll want to open your eyes wide open, at others, you will want to laugh or cry. You'll hear phrases that don't make sense. Then one day, you'll find out that these exact differences are the real reasons why you were attracted to them in the first place!
They may teach you warmth. You may teach stability. They may encourage you and introduce you to things you didn't know existed.
5. There's no going back.
Actually, you'll try to go back. I couldn't though.
People that are led by their curiosity on average live more adventurous and colorful life because they accustomed discovering what makes their hearts race faster.
Every new day is an opportunity to discover something tasty, something special, something that will stir your heart.
People don't date a foreigner because their own kind isn't satisfying; they date a person holding a foreign passport because curiosity guides them to grass-growing destinations demanding to explore their hearts. They are willing to no matter what the difficulties, the risks, or the costs enter the field of the unknown and sip as much as they can out of it feeding their intrigued souls.
On some other planet, in some other lifetime, perhaps I'll stick to what I know. But in this one, I'm taking wild leaps. I choose to pursue whatever fascinates and brings me to life... and that it is the unknown.
What's more, I have chosen to believe that a desire towards wanderlust was encoded into my DNA for reasons I will never know.
But one thing I know for sure - your heart is sending you messages in every form it can - through a series of thoughts, sensations, dreams, signs, and attractions begging you to listen.
The more tuned you become at listening, the more sensational and liberating becomes your existence.✅
With endless love,
XO
Kristina
8 Key Things No One Tells You About Living Abroad
There isn't a piece of land where you could land your feet, and in an instant feel at home. The truth is, you'll never be the next Columbus, and you'll never find this place- because it doesn't exist.
Here's what I did for my twenties, rather than following a traditional path, I've done things that don't fit in the "conventional" sense. I spent more than a decade in five vibrantly contrasting countries on two opposite continents that taught me a little bit of something.
1. Searching For A Place You Belong Is A Delusional Activity.
Like many others, I was in a desperate need to find a place I belonged. Sadly or luckily, it wasn't at home.
It's like I was poking a soapy bubble suspiciously wanting to find out what's on the other side. None of us can know such thing. But I knew for sure; I wasn't afraid to face it. For all I cared, I could have been slapped in the face with a dead fish, got sold into slavery, or lived alone on an inhabited island making necklaces out of the seashells.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one poking. There were the others. They also were in search of something. Home– was a futuristic place they were yet to find. I don't know who on Earth would promise that they'll ever will?
2. You Don’t Go Abroad To Find Home.
There isn't a piece of land where you could land your feet, and in an instant feel at home. The truth is, you'll never be the next Columbus, and you'll never find this place- because it doesn't exist.
You go abroad to open your eyes wide open and learn the things that not in a million years you would have learned back home. There you test your abilities, expand your capacities, quadruple your experiences, and slowly but steadily change your identity.
By doing so, you start building a firmer ground underneath. Without ever having a solid ground, the world will always seem a shaky, scary and fearful place to live. Once that's in place, you build your residence or at least a wobbly nest to start with.
3. You Don't Stop Being A Tourist Overnight Living Abroad.
Keyword there: forever tourist.
You don't just wake up from a bad dream, roll your bed and feel at home in the new country.
It takes time, patience and a willing heart.
You must stop searching, obsessing and looking for evidence that you somehow don't fit in, that you're too foreign, and that others have no clue what price you've paid to get here. Because you will always find that evidence. And strangers don't care what you had to give up to be here.
4. Living Anywhere But Home Isn’t Walking On Marshmallows.
On bad days, you may bruise your delicate ego. It may take some leaps and gambles. You'll question your decisions. You'll feel lonely. You may even want to drop a tear or two. But the world won't end because of that.
Eventually, you wrap your mind around this reality: Your life is much more elastic than you thought it is. You learn who you are and who you aren't. You find out who you want to be and who you no longer need to be.
Every day presents an opportunity to expand your Universe. Every minute spent outside of everything familiar - gives you a fresh perspective, unshakable confidence, and wisdom that you would never acquire if you've chosen the safe, predictable path back home.
5. The World Becomes The Best Tutor That You'll Ever Hire when You Living Abroad.
You can go to the best schools, you can have the most excellent teachers, but no one will ever teach you more than a foreign country will ever do. (Please note that I am not against higher education by any means; I've got one too.)
All I'm saying is that whatever you experience becomes a part of who you are. Whatever you see, do or hear leaves footprints in your life. You become the total sum of your experiences that are beyond the academic education.
6. You No Longer Remain The Same.
And then, a year, two, five go by, and you wake up on a regular day finding yourself a different self. You board the plane and go home 12+ hours away. You land your feet on the ground you once knew so well. The air seems familiar. You could still walk through streets hands and eyes tied up if you had to.
You spend a day there. Then another day. You meet everyone you haven't seen in a while. You pour your heart out and share everything you learned away from home. Feels nice.
Except...something no longer feels right.
For them, life hasn't changed much. Maybe they got a pair of babies you've already seen on Facebook. Perhaps they moved to a bigger home. Maybe a friend of a friend is getting a divorce.
You understand where they're coming from and what they're saying, but you no longer feel like there's anything but past bounding you. But for the most part, you realize that time has a funny quality; it can draw people closer the same way it drives them apart.
7. You'll Have A Chance To Change Your Life For Good.
Like a sponge, you'll suck up vast amounts of cultural information wherever you'll go. Your ways will change. You'll have the power to choose how to live, act, love, talk, eat or spend your money just the way you want to. It doesn't have to be black or white. It doesn't need to be the way you were always taught.
With all due respect and affection to my upbringing, seeing how others live has forever changed my life. And being fortunate enough to experience such things allowed me to designed my life better than I would have ever imagined.
8. You'll Place Your Highest Bet, Your Life On The Table.
Most of all, though, I've seen what's possible when you step out of the bubble. When there are no guarantees, promises or certainty about anything. When the only thing you strongly rely on is your curious heart.
As it turned out, while I was busy doing me, I somehow managed to build a nest I was talking about earlier.
True story.
And at the end of my days, I know I will thank my curiosity, wild heart, and taste for wanderlust for having blessed me with a captivating, stimulating and passionate existence.