I. Benefits: Most people have a variety of intercultural relationships that may feature differences in age, physical ability, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, race, or nationality.
- Rewards of intercultural relationships are great, and the key to these relationships is an interesting balance of differences and similarities.
- Benefits include:
a.       Acquiring knowledge about the world
b.      Breaking stereotypes
c.       Acquiring new skills
- In intercultural relationships we often learn about the partner's language, cultural patterns, and history. This relational learning comes from a particular relationship, but generalizes to other contexts.
- Building intercultural relationships provides information and experiences that may challenge previously held stereotypes.
- We may learn how to do new things (new games, new recipes, new sports).
- These benefits lead to a sense of interconnectedness to others and establish a lifelong pattern of communication across differences.
II. Challenges: There are several ways in which intercultural relationships are unique, and these present particular challenges.
- Dissimilarities may be more obvious during early stages of the relationship and then have less impact as commonalities are established and the relationship develops.
- There seems to be an interplay between differences and similarities in intercultural relationships.
- Because differences are a given, the challenge is to discover and build on similarities.
- Negative stereotypes often affect intercultural relationships.
- People often experience anxiety initially in intercultural relationships.
a. It is greater in intercultural relationships than intracultural relationships.
b. It comes from being worried about possible negative consequences.
c. Once someone has developed a close intercultural relationship, that person is more inclined to have others.
d. The level of anxiety will be higher if: one or both parties has negative expectations because of negative stereotypes or negative previous experiences.
- Intercultural relationships often present us with the challenge to explain to ourselves, to each other, and to our communities.
- The biggest obstacles come from majority communities because they have less to gain from boundary-crossing friendships.

- In intercultural relationships, individuals recognize and respect differences.