When I got divorced 13 years ago, I wanted to distance myself from everything that reminded me of my culture: religion, cultural practices, expectations and norms, and people who were enmeshed in them. I wanted to be a blank canvas. To have no culture at all. Things were not good with my family — immediate and extended. I had solidified my position as the black sheep, and there was no way I was coming back from that.
I was angry, too. A veil had been lifted. So many years wasted, paralysed by deep-rooted Greek Orthodox beliefs about purity, heaven and hell; the notion that I was not complete without a husband — that being alone would be the death of me. At 22, I’d chosen to marry to escape it all, only to realise I had gone from one prison to another.
For many years, I was bitter for the time I’d lost. It was like I was a teenage girl, ecstatic to be free but fearful for my future. I had never lived on my own. I had no idea how to stand on my own two feet. In my upbringing, I was taught only to serve. I blamed my parents and culture for everything.
There were seven years in my single life during which I stayed away from all Mediterranean men. Then I entered into a new relationship with an Anglo-Australian partner. Although we got on well, something fundamental was missing. I am a very vocal, passionate woman. He was quiet, reserved. In order to meet each other halfway, one of us had to repress a part of ourselves. It was frustrating and exhausting.
Around the same time, something unexpected happened. After years of being in a stalemate with my family, things slowly began to shift as all parties made efforts to meet each other halfway. Navigating single parenthood and learning more about the history of Cyprus and the migrant experience, I started to put myself in my parents’ shoes. In time, I came to understand how challenging and traumatising it would have been to escape devastating poverty and war in Cyprus, caused largely by colonial rule, and move to Australia, never knowing when you are going to see your family again, not knowing the language and hardly knowing anyone. They, too, were victims of a larger story outside their control.
I realised I wanted to be with someone who allowed me to be myself in my entirety
Soon, I met a Greek man through my creative work and we got along like a house on fire. He had only been in Australia a few years, but I found it liberating just being able to talk to him. It was only a friendship, but it had me questioning not just what I wanted, but what I needed from a partner. Through this friendship, I realised I was not longer able to compromise myself. I wanted to be with someone who allowed me to be myself in my entirety. The cultural part of my identity was flourishing, and it needed to be acknowledged, to fly.
When I returned to the dating scene, I found myself hungry for the Mediterranean man. I dated an Italian man briefly, then met a Greek man I fell in love with. We laughed our heads off, spoke in Greek, acted silly, and made dark jokes about our culture. We had a shared understanding of what it is to be born to migrants, and the scars such an upbringing could inflict. I felt understood in a way I never had before.
My new date loved my “Mediterranean madness”, even encouraged it
He was creative, like me, and I was excited about where this could lead. The last time I felt so high up in the clouds was with my first love. There was a cultural freedom in our dynamic that I was yet to experience in my life. I didn’t have to repress my “Mediterranean madness”. Unlike my former partner who was turned off by it, my new date loved it, even encouraged it.
There was also something else I found in this dynamic — not just a comfort and an understanding, but a homecoming of some kind. I spoke to others about the change and a few friends responded that the older they get, the more they also long to be with someone who “gets them” in an unspoken, subterranean way. They too have gravitated to partners of the same cultural background. “It gets tiring having to explain a big part of who you are,” one of them said. And can it ever really be explained? I don’t think it can.
As fate will have it, things didn’t work out with the Greek guy. But the experience brought me closer to understanding what my needs are in a long-term relationship. And that clarity — however long it takes to gain — is always a good thing.
Koraly Dimitriadis is a Cypriot-Australian writer, performer and the author of Love and F--k Poems and Just Give Me The Pills. Her poetry film, Mediterranean Madness, is available on in April. See
You might also like
Dating felt like driving on a road I had no map for
