LOVEFUL IN MEXICO: How Loving A Mexican Changed My Mind About Marriage

The new year brings with it a new chapter of love for sex and relationships writer Lucía López, who shares how her move to Mexico changed her perspective on finding love, and marriage…

If we think about the universality of love, I would argue that it is not about languages, cultures or mindsets but about building a home together, and this home can be built from pieces of many places, experiences and backgrounds as long as you don’t feel foreign within your own love story.

Early this year, I was living in between London and Barcelona. I had just graduated from my MA and had plenty of new questions on the horizon, but the one I felt most afraid to ask myself was: Where am I going to find love?

I felt I was on a mission and it was becoming absurd. My dating history from the past year could have been a sitcom and a horror film at the same time: I dated a Mediterranean addict who didn’t know how to pronounce my surname, an emotionally unavailable WASP psychiatrist, a Swiss father of two who would tell me what to wear, a French guy who was good on paper but bad in bed, an English-Jewish scientist who wasn’t ready for a relationship until he turned 35 and so on.

None of those experiences were ‘it’, but I felt pulled towards that direction, because of my inertia. I was set on living a nomad life and that transpired in my relationships. I had to transit through those experiences as if they were adventures, small discoveries, but I still felt foreign to love within my own culture.

I got a job offer in Monterrey, Mexico. The first two weeks in Mexico I was in an absolute shock. I loathed my job, I had no social life and I was exploited by an Executive who didn’t respect his employees. I was in an industrial city where I needed to drive everywhere and I didn’t even drive. I was stuck 5,605 miles away from ‘home’.

My flatmate suggested I download Bumble. I met up with the first guy who I accepted on a date, who happened to be the frustrated son of a retired famous athlete, living in a property that looked like a Narco’s home from the 80s. I started noticing great cultural differences: I would always get picked up and dropped off, either by him or his chauffeur. I would always get treated, this was without question. He would get the door for me, ask me what I wanted to order first. He would send me a food delivery on a random Tuesday because I was stuck at work.

I was re-learning how to be treated and discovering a new culture through dating. I started appreciating the power of courtship, it felt ‘extra’ in Mexico. Then, I realised how courtship is not only a form of arousal but a cultural phenomenon, it is the base in which you cement a relationship. The beginnings are crucial to know whether or not there will be compatibility, at least in terms of manners and expectations on how to be treated.

After four weeks of burning in hell in Monterrey, (it’s the hottest city in South America) I left my job and moved to Mexico City. I met up with a handsome actor I had danced with at the Guadalajara Film Festival. He took me out bowling. He was so charming, a true gentleman like the ones we see in old Hollywood films. He then took me out for coffee, dinner and a long walk. It must have been the longest date in history because I never left. He offered me his spare room to rent and I took him up on the offer. There was only one bed in the flat. It didn’t seem to be a problem for either of us, until we went out dancing again. That night taught us that we really liked each other and there was nothing to hide.

For the first time in a long time I wanted to stay where I was welcomed, where I was wanted. I felt a new world was opening up for me. We never really questioned our situation much. It felt as if we both were surrendering to the bigger forces that had united us.

He kept taking me out on dates, he introduced me to his friends, his business partners and family. He asked me to be his plus one to his latest premiere and officially introduced me as his girlfriend, all of this happened within the first two months of knowing each other.

I was in a mixture of being in shock and being on cloud nine. This was new for me. This type of acceptance felt like a miracle unfolding slowly. I’d never been with a man who was brave enough to open up his heart, so romantically and attentively. I started living the love story I always wanted to write, I knew I had found a home, far away from ‘home’. Ironically, one of our many uniting forces were our cultural differences. He’d never dated a European before and I had dated other Mexicans but nothing that was serious enough. He said to me he felt free, calm and cared for in a healthy way. In his previous relationships he had been controlled and pulled towards a life that monopolised his time with his partner. He had engrained the ‘provider’ mindset, as in his previous relationships with Mexican women, they expected him to provide for them fully.

We both speak Spanish but the dialects local to Mexico and Spain are quite different from each other. There are words we use differently and we have a huge variation in our conversation styles. In his language he is softer, decorative and loves to say ‘I love you’ all the time. I remember being in shock when I first heard him talking to his parents as he always tells them ‘I love you’. I might be able to count with one hand the amount of times I have said it to my family.

Commitment might be a subject that transcends cultures, but compared to the much more emotionally repressed English men I used to date, Mexicans are confident enough to express their feelings from the beginning. This might have to do with the hispanic characteristics of being warmer and much more open.

In my story, the marriage conversation was there from the beginning. I didn’t want to believe him at first because I found it overwhelming, but then I understood that this was his way of telling me how sure he was about his feelings, how serious he was about me, for him it was a gesture to show me how much room I deserved in his life, to tell me I was his home now.

Slowly, I started rewiring my system, my heart and mind only to realise that I didn’t know my worth until I met him. I didn’t know how much I deserved until he showed me the world, this time with his Spanish, through his culture and warm words, he taught me that I belong somewhere beyond a nation or frontier, I belong where my heart is, and it is with him now.

Written by Lucía López | @lucia.lobaz

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Lucía López is a filmmaker and Visual Anthropology MA graduate with extensive research on sexuality, cultural sex practices and women studies. She has recently started a YouTube channel LibidoTube in which she opens up a space for talking about how to have healthier sexual relationships and be more intimate, as well as offering tips and tricks for how to have more enjoyable experiences.