In your or your friends experience, how far are Taiwanese men prepared to compromise, culturally?

[bonzifan]

Are Taiwanese men prepared to make a compromise (50/50 like) in a relationship, or do they expect you to fit in with the culture here?

Feel free to share experiences with Taiwanese women, or indeed foreign men/women on this issue too.

[Hartzell]

Although I have only been in Taiwan a short time (36 years and counting), in my view the "demands of the Chinese/Taiwanese culture" on a Taiwanese male are a continually developing matter, from the teens into adulthood. Hence, I don't think that there is a simple answer to your question . . . . . . and I don't think that the average Taiwanese person does any "personal analysis" on this aspect of his behavior.

So . . . . . there are various "events" in his life where the family/clan may demand his behavior in a certain way . . . . . and you will often see that he complies with that, even though perhaps, if he has been associating with westerners, he has frequently espoused various personal views stressing that he "makes his own decisions" and "doesn't follow the crowd."

As a practical matter, I would advise that you pay close attention to what kinds of friends he has, how he associates with them, and how he gets a sense of "personal recognition" from them, and how he reacts to various personal crises in their lives. Obviously, the same attention should be paid to his co-workers, or classmates. Observation of these aspects may give you very many important clues about his true character traits.

[tsukinodeynatsu]

In my experience, the good ones are willing to compromise and the bad ones probably aren't. At the end of the day, they're men - be upfront and reasonable about it from the beginning and if they really like you they'll go for it, and if they don't they'll go 'meh...'

One thing is that it's very ingrained here for men to try and 'protect' women by not telling them anything if the woman's going to be unable to help (there's a whole fucking song about it). This needs to be beaten out of them quickly and ruthlessly, not only because it's patronizing but because it's really bad for a healthy relationship.

[bonzifan]

Really interesting insight both of you, Thanks!

Yeah, the tendancy not to discuss issues which the woman can't practically help with sounds rather irritating - if you are to emotionally support eachother you do kinda need to know what is going on in eachothers lives.

[Belgian Pie]

It probably depends on how and where he was raised (city or farm), if he has studied, worked (no, not in China) abroad ... I have a Taiwanese friend that traveled a lot and has lived and now lives in Belgium with his Belgian wife and two kids, perfectly integrated in Belgium, doesn't want to come back to Taiwan, only returns to spend some time with his family on vacation here.

On the other hand I know of at least 3 others that have or planned to divorce because hubby didn't want and to bend adapt more to 'western' habits.

It all depends ...

[tsukinodeynatsu]

In my experience, men and women are too culturally different from one another and should never marry.

[bismarck]

In my experience, men and women are too culturally different from one another and should never marry.

There's actually a lot of truth in that.