Care More About Lao Culture Than Your Lao Partner?

In a previous post entitled Lao Dating 101, I wrote about how to woo your Lao partner and what you needed to understand in dating someone who's Lao.  It was more about educating a non-Lao person in our ways.  But what if you have a situation where your Lao partner doesn't care about their heritage and has very little knowledge of their cultural background?  What do you do when you're more into Lao culture, customs and food, than even your Lao partner?

These questions were raised when it was brought to my attention in a subsequent conversation and the statement "I care more about Lao culture than my partner and I'm not even Lao!" was exclaimed by a caucasian Canadian guy.

My answer to that is if you have a genuine interest in it, then continue learning.  Don't stop just because your partner is not as knowledgeable about it.  In fact secretly they probably appreciate that you're so open to learning about their culture.  And if anything, as you learn more stuff and share it with them, they too will learn along with you.

As your relationship continues, the stuff you learn about Lao culture will become more and more useful mostly because you'll be coming into more contact with their family, relatives and participate in more Lao celebrations and gatherings.  Therefore, even if you're partner is not that into it, it really benefits you to continue to learn.

Something else worth mentioning about this, is that your Lao partner may be unknowingly knowledgeable about Lao culture - in other others they may know more than they realize.  For example, they've likely grown up around it their whole lives and may take for granted what they do know.  If you've grown up with something always around you, you don't realize how much you know about it until someone questions you on it.

In short, keep learning!

-  Submitted by:  VM.