Mating & Ethnicity; Where do your preferences lie?
 

I was going to put this in the Rate & Date thread, but that was a little more light-hearted than this topic would allow for.

I'm wondering how people feel about dating people close/distant from their own heritage or ethnicity. Not for other people, i mean for you? Does upbringing, cultural or otherwise, matter to you? Do you have a preference beyond looks?

I was going to call it Dating & Ethnicity but Dating seemed too inconsequential. So feel free to go off on whatever tanget you want. I'm constantly looked at as alien in my girlfriends families house and I only grew up an hour away from them. Culture can matter to some folks.

Gotta say i'd rather date a girl from another country than a Scottish girl. It's just something new and different to what you're used to, like an adventure.

Well sure, but lets say you're planning to have kids. Does that change anything?

(I realize posing that to a teenager isn't without irony)

For me, them being from any other culture is attractive to me. My family would support me for whoever I end up with. I surprised myself a year ago when I dated an Arab guy. Now I'm currently getting to know a Brazilian.

I'm not too sure. I guess it kind of does, if I married a Jewish girl and she expected our children to have Jewish beliefs I think I'd disagree, because I don't share the viewpoint and I don't think a child should be forced into a religion that they could possibly later resent.

James your comment makes me ask the question: is finding the person to be with too complicated these days? I mean a few decades ago, you would just go by who you were attracted too because of the gender roles there was no problem with who was working where and religious people kept to each other mainly. Or am just talking a load of codfish?

Seems like a fair point, people are a lot pickier now I guess.

Though my wife and I are from the same country, we have very different ethnic backgrounds. My dad was raised in the US but my mom was raised in a handful of Latin American countries, while both of my wife's parents were both born and raised in Jamaica. I'd be lying if I said this doesn't lead to quite a few differences in how we each view the world and interact with each other, but she's still the love of my life. :)

I'm irish, dating an english girl :P

As for my preference, the main thing for me is someone who thinks the same way as me. Now, I don't know that many foreign people in person, so whether the way I think is quite specific to my culture or one similar to mine, I'm not sure. Having to have things in common is important to me to a certain extent, but only in that I'd want to be able to enjoy the same things as her. Differences in opinion I'd relish so long as I was able to debate issues without either of us getting aggressive.

Regarding my gf, as it stands I'm pretty sure she's the love of my life :P We've had relatively different upbringings, but regardless of any perceived animosity between the two countries, our cultures are very similar, so we agree on pretty much everything.

All that said, apparently people in sheffield find the Irish quite exotic and attractive, go figure!

really, my only reserve is that I don't think I could (seriously) date someone religious