the scripts we follow

everyone is following their own relational script, and each script has its own set of rules.

where do these scripts with their rules come from?

family culture

• what kind of relationship your parents have with each other – their roles, the way they treat each other
• what your parents tell you/show you about how to treat others
• how you & your siblings relate

community culture

• the difference between the east coast & the west coast
• the difference between a rural and city community

greater culture

• Western thinking
• Eastern thinking
• American
• Australian
• Chinese

values & beliefs about right & wrong

• religious beliefs/faith
• cultural mores about right & wrong/relationships

so when two people meet and a relationship begins to form, they are each interpreting the other’s actions through their own script. what you say and do, i interpret according to my own script (what your actions would mean if I did them) and vice versa.

very early on i realized that people have different scripts. i moved overseas when i was 13, right at the age you would normally be learning how to form lasting relationships. being dropped into another culture during that point of life basically amplifies all of these factors. not only are you trying to figure out how a normal person makes friends and keeps them, you’re also trying to figure out what script everyone is living by in the broader cultural sense. unfortunately, these scripts aren’t written down anywhere, so you kind of have to learn as you go.

along the way, i adopted some of the values and cultural tendencies from Asia. i also realized, after trying to have cross-cultural friendships, that it’s a lot easier to identify the scripts and their rules outright and in conversation with the other person than to try to figure them out on your own. even if you can’t totally figure out what’s going on, if two people talk about it and agree, you can make up your own rules for the relationship that will fit with the script that each of you is following.

i’m pretty sure that this is an issue in all relationships, because everyone is from a different family. no one is going to be following the exact same script as someone else. not being aware of that fact often causes conflict, but people will attribute these differences to personality, or maybe even make them a character issue. unspoken expectations are really hard to deal with.

however, for cross-cultural kids, i think these issues are always going to be big issues, at least at the outset of a relationship. by virtue of living in another culture, we no longer really fit in any one culture – our script has foreign words thrown in here and there. the whole thing makes sense to us, but the people from neither culture will be able to totally relate to everything that we do or say.

my response to this issue has been to become very direct in relationship formation. while i have adopted much of Asia’s indirect communication style, in this one area i am often shockingly direct. i like to simply lay it all on the table, explaining the script that i follow and the rules that make sense to me, so that we can start out on the same page. it saves me a lot of agony trying to figure things out by trying to interpret what’s going on, and saves the other person the trauma of trying to figure out where the heck i’m coming from all the time.

it’s been interesting this week as i’ve made 2 new friends. one is another cross-cultural kid. his response to my direct communication seemed positive. we’re conversing now quite freely about a lot of things. each of our scripts still exists, but at least we recognize that they’re there.

the other reaction was very different – the person was not quite sure what to do with my comments, and how to respond. i think it sets normal people off balance a little to be told they even have to think about such things. to be honest, i receive the second reaction much more often than the first.

i have to tell you though, it feels good to occasionally make a friend where the script is similar for both of us. it’s a lot easier to make small changes to the script to adapt to the relationship than to make big ones. after moving so many times, and trying to learn lots of scripts, one of the things that makes me feel most at home is knowing that another person either shares a similar script or at least realizes that the script is there. with my family recently gone again, it’s been comforting to remember that there are others who see the scripts and are willing to deal with them.