They Keep Asking If I'm Married

Part of The Invisible Rules of Culture Series

What living in Malawi is teaching me about the things nobody tells you.

Written by Joni Roberts

Traveler, storyteller, and public health advocate

"Some questions aren't meant to invade your privacy. They're meant to locate you in the social world."

One question follows me almost everywhere I go in Malawi.

Not, "Where are you from?"

Although that's usually second.

The first question is almost always...

"Are you married?"

Sometimes it comes within minutes of meeting someone.

Sometimes before they've learned my name.

At first, it caught me off guard.

In the United States, that's a fairly personal question.

We tend to ease into conversations.

We ask what someone does.

Where they live.

Maybe what brought them to town.

Marriage usually comes later, if at all.

In Malawi, it often comes first.

When I answer that I'm not married, another question usually follows.

"Do you have children?"

"No."

Then comes a brief pause.

Not awkward.

Just...processing.

Eventually someone smiles and says something kind.

Or asks another question.

The conversation moves on.

Over time I realized they weren't collecting gossip.

They were placing me inside a social map.

Marriage tells people something about your household.

Children tell people something about your responsibilities.

Those questions help explain how you fit into the community.

In other words...

The questions aren't really about marriage.

They're about belonging.

The same thing happens in reverse.

When Americans meet someone, one of our first questions is often,

"So...what do you do?"

Think about that.

We rarely notice how strange that question is.

Imagine meeting someone and immediately asking how they earn money.

Yet that's perfectly normal where I live.

Because work tells us something about identity.

Career becomes our social map.

Neither question is inherently better.

Each culture simply begins the conversation in a different place.

One asks,

"Who depends on you?"

The other asks,

"What do you do?"

Both are trying to answer the same question.

Who are you?

Living abroad has taught me to stop assuming that curiosity is intrusion.

Sometimes it's simply another culture's way of saying,

"I'd like to understand where you fit."

What I'm Learning

This week's invisible rule is that the questions people ask first reveal what a culture values most.

Sometimes the question isn't really the question.