A Relational Culture

Cultures like Bangladesh, where locals prioritize spending time with one another and growing through their relationships and conversations, are often referred to as “relational cultures.”

This relational culture was one of the things I enjoyed most about living in Bangladesh. When two friends met on the street, a conversation was a must. Schedules were cast aside in the name of friendship, and having cha (tea) was likely.  

This was great for me because I am a very sociable individual. As a highly relational person by nature, I enjoyed the opportunity to expand my circle of friends. Whenever someone wanted to spend time with me, I was happy to oblige. It made the city more fun and livable, and it showed me how much God cares for me. He knew I needed this type of interaction, so He blessed me with it. 

I feel like my friendships with people in Bangladesh were stronger than those friendships I formed in India. I often say that if I were to travel back to Lucknow, I would visit some of the restaurants I enjoyed with hopes of meeting my old friends while I was there. But my main focus would be on the food. However, if I were to travel back to Chittagong, I would visit my friends first, and then maybe meet them at a restaurant during my stay.

Because the focus of Bangladeshi culture is relationships, time takes a back seat. In technical terms, the culture is event-oriented rather than time-oriented. This means it is more important to spend time with people than to follow a schedule. As a result, time does not move forward until an event is ready to start. Promptness is not a priority, and people are more available to spend time with one another.

Westerners, by contrast, are very time-oriented. We often keep to a schedule, have a list of things to do, and get upset when others are late. At first, it felt unnatural for me to leave behind the chronological, measured view of time that is so common in the West. But eventually, because relationships are very important to me, I embraced the relational view of time. 

I began to realize that making a daily “to-do” list was helpful, but it had to be held loosely. I accepted that I may not get everything completed as quickly as I hoped. 

Since it would have been a serious cultural mistake in Bangladesh to prioritize a to-do list over local people, I did not shop at my friends’ stores when I was in a hurry. Instead, if I had a lot of tasks to get done that day, I changed my shopping patterns and went to stores where I did not know the owners. That way, if I ran in and out without being social, the owner could chalk up my lack of friendliness to being “just another rushed American.” 

On days when I was not in a hurry, I shopped at places where I knew the owners or workers, which meant spending the extra time chatting with them before I left. 

Learning to live in this type of culture was a challenge at first. For example: How late should I arrive at an event? If I arrived at the scheduled time, would I be the only one there? Of course, I would not be turned away if I was at an event before anyone else, but my own culture told me that arriving too early meant wasting “valuable” time that could have been used to work on my “to-do” list.

As I grew in self-awareness and maturity, I realized that being busy was not the most important thing, and that the Bangladeshi people had a lot to teach me about slowing down and focusing on relationships rather than on to-do lists.

Whenever we returned to the United States to visit, I realized just how much this relational culture had affected me. Once, Debbie and I planned to visit her aunt for a meal, but we ended up being about ten minutes late. Before we pulled into her driveway, she called us to ask where we were. We smiled as we thought about how in Bangladesh—and many Asian countries—if we would have arrived at a wedding ceremony one hour late, we would have probably still needed to wait another hour for it to begin.

Note: It is not easy making life-changing adjustments to how you view time. But it is an essential part of adapting to your country. The more you can adjust, the better off you will be. To learn more, check out the book, Foreign to Familiar, by Sarah Lanier. This book can help foreigners adjust to the mindset of putting relationships first.