This blog is part of a five-part series looking at interfaith and intercultural relationships and the factors behind their success and longevity (or lack of). The series is based on my personal experience as a Muslim woman in her 20s and 30s.
In this blog, I look at marriage and love across cultures and borders, examining the role of shared values and knowing oneself.
In part 2, I share my experience of faith and religious divides in an intercultural/interfaith relationship.
In part 3, I share the impact of trauma on stereotyping others in the context of mixed relationships.
In part 4, I look at emotional factors (in particular attachment styles) and their relation to culture, as opposed to cultural or religious difference as a standalone.
In part 5, I conclude by sharing insight into the factors and dynamics involved in mixed relationships in maintaining a healthy long-lasting interfaith/intercultural relationship.
A few months back, I wrote a blog on four key people who had changed my life, examining four (non-romantic) intercultural and interfaith relationships regarding my family and friends.
Inspired by the book “No Encounter Is by Chance” by Hakan Menguc which talks about how the people we meet change our life, and my friend Matt who was also greatly affected by this book, I’d been thinking about the people in my own life.
I had quite a long list of people who I wanted to write about and how the crossing of our paths has shaped my life journey to date. And when it came to intercultural and interfaith relationships, romantic relationships also came to mind.
Unsure however if I should publish that segment of my life online (and realising now that the timing wasn’t right back then), I put the blog on the backburner.
Fast forward to early April 2025, I was at Matt’s house with a mutual friend. Here, the topic of mixed relationships (both intercultural and interfaith) came up.
Matt had expressed a while back: they can work but generally don’t. I’ve long expressed in conversations on the topic in question that mixed relationships can and do work – whilst not discounting potential challenges.
It’s a big topic with varying views and a lack of data.
Research in the USA claims that intercultural couples are 10% more likely to separate than their culturally matched peers.
Regarding interfaith couples, similar data states that in the USA, interfaith marriages are 50% more likely to fail than a marriage between people of the same faith group.
Yet intercultural relationships are becoming increasingly common and so are couples of different faiths.
Of course, no one could deny the very real challenges involved. However, I don’t think that these challenges are necessarily insurmountable or automatically greater than those of a couple of the same faith and/or cultural background.
And I’m not alone in knowing that interfaith and intercultural relationships can and do work – whilst of course acknowledging that they’re not for everyone and who we marry should remain a personal choice.
Some people for example wish to share their faith with their partner – and this remains a very important part of what they’re looking for in building a family unit.
For others, spiritual compatibility is more important – sharing a connection across faith traditions/none. For some, a spiritual connection isn’t something they’re looking for.
And of course, this is just one aspect of building a romantic partnership. We’re all individuals and how we live our lives and who we’d like to share that life with will vary greatly – for mixed and non-mixed couples.
Ultimately, if a couple of different cultural and/or faith backgrounds do wish to form a relationship I believe that the success of such relationship boils down to experience, knowledge, respect and understanding of each other’s background.
This therefore means examining the differences and commonalities that the couple can/do share – which isn’t necessarily about sharing the same faith/spiritual beliefs and/or culture.
And that’s the crux: sharing. Sharing of values.
A successful mixed relationship requires compatibility of values. And that will vary between the couple. Shared values are not de facto translatable to (no pun intended) sharing the same faith or culture.
What the values of each person and therefore what the shared/compatible values (and any compromise and agreeing to disagree) look like will obviously be incredibly context specific.
Having launched a project on intercultural and interfaith couples a few years ago which features several couples talking about their relationships, and knowing many more mixed couples who are (seemingly) happy together than feature in the project, I’ve seen it work. I’ve documented it.
And having been in many mixed relationships myself, I can see on a personal level how it can work, and likewise what it looks like when it doesn’t work– and the reasons why.
Ultimately, wherever we stand on the fence regarding mixed relationships, the crux is this: compatibility (in any context) is about shared values.
It’s about shared values and both understanding and working out any difference in values. About examining these differences and seeing and if these can be navigated or if they equate “incompatibility”.
In short: there’s no simple answer.
From my own experience, I know as a progressive Muslim woman of British-Italian heritage, when first navigating my departure from religious orthodoxy, I discovered I had far more in common with fellow progressives in faith (e.g. liberal/progressive friends of other faiths) than fellow Muslims purely by name.
And as a woman who’s been dating on and off since my divorce, I’ve also been reminded time and time again to not assume who is happy or unhappy in a relationship.
Just because a couple hasn’t broken up, it doesn’t mean they’re happy.
Any relationship takes dialogue, trust and understanding. It requires give and take, teamwork, balance.
Faith is a way of life for many. And culture shapes our life. But I don’t believe that we should ever outrightly assume compatibility or incompatibility (not least by labels alone).
Compatibility exists and successful mixed relationships exist – across different faith traditions (religions), personal spiritual practices and cultures.
Faith, religion, culture. These are huge concepts.
What exactly do these mean in each individual’s’ life? What role do they play? What do they look like in day-to-day life?
And therefore, what would that mean for sharing a life together?
These are all things to think about carefully and with an open mind.
It’s not a simple answer. And each person and each relationship will be different – as with any relationship, whatever the backgrounds.
As people, we’re all a mixture of our biology, our upbringing and our lived experiences.
Each community can carry immense diversity. And we usually belong to several communities. We all have multiple elements which make up our identity.
Labels, definitions, stereotypes: they can guide and provide insight on a basic level, but we need to move beyond them as stand-alones. We need to always get to know (and understand) the individual person.
This is definitely something I’ve learnt when it comes to dating across cultures, religions, languages and nationalities during different periods of my life.
Age, life experience, previous emotional baggage (including unhealed trauma). They all played a big part. Not just culture and religion.
And so, with that in mind, I’d like to share four personal stories – each an experience of being in intercultural and/or interfaith relationship.
I believe my experience of emotional and personal growth and navigating difference in these relationships (including gender and how that can and does interact with cultural and religious diversity within relationships) can provide useful insight into being in a mixed relationship.
I also believe these stories show an open honest account of the difficulties involved, including shedding light on how not everything relates to (perceived or actual) cultural and/or religious difference.
Likewise, they show how culture and religion overlap with not just each other, but also many additional factors.
Ultimately, I’m not sharing these stories to show the full ins and outs of the relationships but to show what mixed relationships look like, what they involve and how they can work – and where and why they don’t.
For at the end of the day: any relationship takes the will, investment and understanding of all parties. And as they say, it takes two to tango. There are two sides to each story.
These are accounts from my own personal perspective where I have tried to be as open and honest as possible about myself, to not judge and likewise to not overly dismiss myself or others.
As I share my (our) stories, I’d like to stress that I’m not here to push (or likewise put off) people to date beyond their culture and/or faith. That’s an individual choice to pursue or not pursue – it’s not for everyone and a very contextual and personal decision at that.
They’re not for everyone – and that’s ok and must remain a personal choice.
What I will say is that I believe that mixed relationships can work. And I personally believe that they are beautiful when they do.
So, here are four insider stories from my life. I hope you enjoy reading.
True love never dies – but it’s not enough: embracing forever family across borders
“Love is friendship caught fire; it is quiet, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection, and makes allowances for human weaknesses.
Love is content with the present, hopes for the future, and does not brood over the past. It is the day-in and day-out chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals.”
(Jeremy Taylor)
I couldn’t possibly sum up seven years of marriage, journeys across borders, the merging of families from different cultures, faiths and even continents in this blog. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t do it justice. Justice or respect to Haroun, to myself, to his family and to the sanctity of marriage.
For I shared my life with a man who welcomed me into his home, his family, his life, his world. And I did the same.
We were young, in love and destined by fate to meet and marry. I firmly believe that.
I was a 24-year-old British-Italian who’d been brought up as a semi-practicing Christian and had converted to Islam.
I’d become religiously conservative. And this was the Liz who got married.
My husband? Haroun. He was a year older, had spent his whole life in North Africa: Algeria to be precise and had been raised in a Muslim household (conservative but open minded – and incredibly welcoming and kind).
Raised in a small town in the Chaoui mountains of Eastern Algeria, Haroun was a kind, educated, proud Amazigh (Berber) man.
He was born and bred in the mix of an Amazigh-Arab-Maghrebi country – a culturally rich yet not a multicultural nation (at least in terms of immigration and diaspora communities).
Algeria was a land closed to tourism, frequented by migrant workers (usually Chinese ) who lived in their own silos and was a nation still carving out its future following a particularly long history of colonialism under French and Spanish control.
This was a nation who’d also not long after lived through a brutal civil war between the State and Islamists – with both conflicts emerging in Haroun’s neck of the woods.
The year was 2011. We started out as strangers. We became two best friends. And when I later landed in Algiers for the first time with my father one year later, we were two individuals meeting to potentially unite and become engaged.
We were a simply a young man and a young woman in love. We shared a faith and three cultures between us: Islam, British, Italian, Algerian. I also no doubt brought into the mix elements from my childhood as a Christian (albeit subconsciously).
As two individuals, we’d never even been in the same physical space together before (offline). Yet, the distance, the challenges, the borders, none of that mattered.
We’d become best friends. We’d fallen in love. We met. And we got married.
And so, we started a long journey of navigating culture, faith, communication styles, family lives, communities, moves across countries, languages and personal changes (on both sides).
Laughter, tears, worries, celebrations. When you marry, you marry into a family. And I truly did. His family embraced me as his own.
I felt so much love. Love by and for him and a family I still consider my own. A family who still love and embrace me. And a family for whom I’ll be eternally grateful for. Who I will always honour, protect and love.
Fast forward seven years of marriage later and we divorced. And… we’ve remained in each other’s lives since.
It’s hard to even put into words how much I learnt throughout those years – and still do.
And so, my summary is this (ironically this blog in the series is the shortest but relates to the longest relationship of my life to-date): love across cultures is real.
Love across borders is real. Love across beliefs is real. Love is real – very real.
Love is love. Love is beautiful. And, marriage, well that’s something more complex.
It requires love (I believe). So much love. It also requires trust, understanding, communication, compromise, give and take.
And this is the case – in any relationship – whether you’re from the same cultural, faith and/or national background or not.
You commit to that person for the human being they are. As a friend, as a lover, as a confidante, as your life partner.
And a long-lasting relationship requires becoming a team of two fully formed individuals each complete in their own right, yet more “complete” (ideally happily bonded) together.
As a union, you complement each other, you navigate difference and commonality, and you break down any barriers. And of course, no two individuals are the same.
Each person is unique – whilst also being a product of their environment (to varying extents).
Barriers can take many forms. But the way to break them down remain the same: dialogue. Through a dialogue of active compassionate communication – through understanding, compromise (even just agreeing to disagree) and mutual exchange.
And so, for this (and as a result of this): you need to understand who your partner is, what/who you are together and what you want your future to look like together.
To do that, you also need to know who you are. This means knowing who you really are as a person – as both an individual and a product of your environment.
You need to know and understand who you are and how that effects, builds and shapes your life (past, present and future).
This means knowing not just what you want and where you are now but also truly reflecting on what you’d like your future to look as you carry on the journey of life (of course, there will always be unexpected changes too which we cannot predict or fully prepare for).
As a person, you need to truly know your values, your beliefs and your self (recognising and going deep underneath the labels). And you need to know how this translates into practice.
After having gone through what can only be described as the most amicable divorce in history (albeit not painless by any means), I can affirm this.
I can affirm that love alone is not enough. And I can also affirm that love doesn’t die – not true love.
Love does not die. It changes. It can grow, it can evolve, it can diversify.
Today, Haroun may no longer be my husband. But, he’s my brother. My brother with a beautiful wife and a beautiful son.
And today, Aunty Liz isn’t the Liz he married. Nor is she a woman who will fully recognise that young Liz who got married back in her 20s either.
It’s 2025. And as I sit and write, Aunty Liz is in her mid/late 30s. She’s embracing, learning, changing and examining who she was, who she is today and who she’ll be, and what she’ll therefore want and need for the future.
This is the Liz that any future husband will love and marry.
Thank you, Haroun. Thank you for the years, the sharing, the caring, the love and the friendship. And thank you to my Algerian family.
I love you all dearly. More than I could ever express.
May God bless and protect you always.
Looking back: what I learnt
True love never dies
Love evolves, changes and mutates. Love has and takes many forms – friendships, lovers, family and more. It’s a bond of shared experiences and memories, trust care and appreciation.
This is why I believe that the saying that “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference” is so true. For where there is love there is feeling.
Where there is hate, there is pain, anger, hurt. And so, where there is indifference, there isn’t really much of anything!
Love alone is not enough for a relationship to survive and for each person to thrive
A healthy sustainable relationship requires compatibility, communication, give and take, honesty with oneself and each other and trust.
This involves self-awareness, including of the role of religion and culture in one’s value system, upbringing and worldview.
Culture, rather than religion, is often presumed to be easier to navigate but this is not necessarily true. Of course, culture and religion overlap, and we cannot present the two through an oversimplified binary (more on this to follow).
Assessing compatibility means knowing, accepting and understanding who you are first
Knowing yourself is crucial. This also includes how we all change as individuals over time as we learn about ourselves and the world, as we experience new things, as we reflect on our upbringing and navigate through life. This will therefore affect the relationship.
Of course, not all changes will be big. Some may be small and insignificant. Others could be monumental.
Whatever they look like, a couple can face significant changes by either changing and growing together, accepting and navigating difference together or declaring incompatibility and ending the relationship.
The outcome will depend on what these changes (or self/mutual realisations, reflections and awareness) look like, what impact they have/will have and the level of communication, trust, will and determination of both individuals and the couple as a unit as whole.
A couple must work as a team to be happy, long lasting and healthy.
Coming up:
Keep an eye out for part 2 of this series, where I share my experience of faith and religious divides in an intercultural/interfaith relationship.
This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.