Intercultural, Multicultural, Cross-cultural, and Interracial Relationships Explained

Dear lovely and confused couples,

Do tags matter? Not that much to me, but when my husband and I started the Masala of Cultures podcast, we were very confused about some of the terms associated with couples from different backgrounds. 

We asked ourselves, “You’re from India, and I’m from Colombia. We have different religions, races, and languages (basically). What’s the term for our relationship? Are we multi, inter, cross, or bi-cultural? Interracial, interreligious?” ARGHHH! 🤯

After that, we read a lot of articles and social media posts online and decided to go with the term “intercultural,” but if you ever wonder–like we did–here’s what we came up with to break down these terms:

Type of Couple	Different cultures?	Definition
Multicultural	✅	In a multicultural couple, both partners come from different cultural backgrounds. They can encompass aspects such as ethnicity, nationality, religion, language, and traditions.  Multicultural couples celebrate and integrate elements from both cultures into their relationship in a passive way.
Intercultural	✅	Intercultural relationships focus more on the interaction and exchange between cultures within the relationship.  Actively, the couple navigates cultural differences, understands perspectives, and embraces cultural diversity within the partnership.
Cross-cultural	✅	The term "cross-cultural" emphasizes the crossing or intersection of cultures within the relationship.  Like intercultural couples, cross-cultural couples navigate cultural differences, but the emphasis may be more on the comparison and contrast of cultures rather than their integration.
Interracial	❌	An interracial couple consists of partners from different racial backgrounds. Unlike multicultural, intercultural, or cross-cultural couples, which focus on broader cultural differences, interracial couples specifically involve individuals from different racial or ethnic groups.  These relationships can face unique societal challenges related to race and ethnicity. They can come from a similar or different background.

We could also talk about interreligious, bicultural, intercaste, and so on, but I think the names are pretty self-explanatory. All these terms share similarities as they emphasize the diversity within relationships.

Our friends from My Foreign Half explain these differences perfectly: “Promoting a multicultural society does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of cultural differences. Instead, you should play an active role in learning more about your foreign neighbors.”

For us, Luisa and Aswin, the term intercultural couple describes what we are doing in our lives: actively creating a better community that respects and grows through the multitude of cultural differences.

Let us know your insights; we'd love to connect with you.

Sincerely,

Luisa Dahianna

About the Author

Luisa Trujillo is one half of Masala. She's a dreamer, believer, and achiever from a cozy coffee farm in Risaralda, Colombia. Being in an intercultural and interreligious relationship with an Indian 16,000 km away since 2019, she has gained a fair bit of insight into love, travel, and culture.

In her other life, Luisa has been a Coffee Grower, Digital Marketer, English as a Foreign Language Teacher, and Translator with a bachelor's degree in Modern Languages. Thanks to the latter, she is now fluent in Spanish, English, and French and has basic knowledge of Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian.

Relationships, coffee, languages, and a thousand miles later, she decided to start a community online to share her experience through Masala of Cultures along with her other half, Aswin.

Luisa's insights can also be found on other parts of the internet, including NVCC.