i’m often amazed by how different alan and my familial backgrounds are and how much we still manage to understand about each other, coming from such divergent pasts. at times, i’m aggravated by how little he stands up for himself in his family and i don’t comprehend his reluctance to speak candidly about personal problems. this is probably because i am quite the opposite in my own parental setting.

while my biological parents have been together for over twenty years but manage to hate each other with a passion, his are bitterly divorced from one another but are married to people who complement them nicely.

while his mother and stepfather have raised him to be religious, my parents never really introduced religion to me as an important part of my life.

while he treats his parents with the upmost filial piety, i treat my parents like i would any other individual who gets on my nerves at times and who receives my irritable demeanour in return.

while he would never talk back to his parents when they do something unfair, i will willingly defend myself, even if that means saying something i will later regret.

i suppose one upbringing is not really better than the other and, ultimately, we still turned out to be pretty similar in the important ways: we respect our parents, we love our siblings, we believe in a higher power… and the list goes on. i used to think that pairing up with someone whose views on family are different than my own would be problematic; now i’m realizing that the informal debates and discussions such differences spark consequently allow me to understand the other person better. and i’m always surprised at how alike we are when it comes to the things that really matter.