CROSS-CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS.
The Gold Rushes of 1851 saw the first large scale Chinese arrivals in Australia. Amongst people who believed that European Christianity should prevail, the fact that far more men than women arrived was cause for consternation. Never mind the fact that there were nearly twice as many males who arrived in chains and in cramped conditions than there were females (the British sent a ship containing exclusively females in 1790, to attempt to redress this) in 1788. Of the Chinese men who arrived from 1851 until around 1860, some of them were viewed as sojourners, who came to Australia to seek their fortunes for a few years for family or wealthy people back in China, and some stayed. Of those who stayed, some returned to China and returned to Australia with wives (some came with more than one wife) and some inter-married with the European (especially Irish) and Aboriginal women in Australia and had children. The Irish were the downtrodden in both their homelands and in Australia. What the European Australians did not understand is that the Chinese had (and still have) somewhat different ideas of familial obligations. Some of these gold miners were in search of fortunes to help family back in China. Sadly, some who remained lived relatively lonely lives being shunned by some Australians. Oh, and they treated the Aboriginals better than the Europeans did.
Those who intermarried with the Irish women (some intermarried with the English, too) were engaged in cross-cultural unions. Some Irish may have only spoken Gaelic when they arrived, particularly the less educated, and the Chinese may have learnt some English.
The same principle applies if an autistic person marries a neurotypical. An autistic and a neurotypical may have been born in the same country and may speak the same language and may be the same ethnicity, but they are not of the same culture. If we give an example, when you go to Japan and give a Japanese person a gift, you may assume that because they don't unwrap it in front of you that they didn't like it, but the reason they haven't unwrapped their present is because in Japanese culture, you wait until after the giver has departed before opening your gift. So, if an autistic person says they don't want to go shopping with you, they don't mean, "You're horrible, I don't want to spend time with you," they mean, "No, I need some time to myself." If an autistic person says to a neurotypical, "I need some time alone," they don't mean, "I'm losing interest in you," they mean, "Look, we've spent the past however long together, now I need some time alone to recover from all this socialising."
An autistic person who enters into a relationship with a neurotypical needs for the neurotypical to understand their ways. For example, an autistic person has a CD collection and the neurotypical dusts and rearranges it and the autistic person is horrified because the autistic person had their CDs organised according to genre or in alphabetical order of artist and the neurotypical didn't understand the reason for it. As a practical example for me, I have said regarding my sister-in-law, that I would rather she left the kitchen looking like a bomb has hit it than packed the dishwasher, because where I put all the knives in one space in the cutlery section, and all the forks in the other, she just throws them in any old how, with the blades of the knives sticking up (the other day she put a plastic mixing bowl in there) and when she unloads the dishwasher, she puts bowls under the sink, when they belong in a crockery drawer, she doesn't put the cutlery where it belongs, so it's a treasure hunt to find it. And to think my sister-in-law is a mental health nurse who knows that I am a classic case of Asperger's autism!
A neurotypical who enters into a relationship with an autistic person can find that they feel lonely at times, but their autistic partner truly loves them, they just might show it differently, For example, you might say to your autistic partner that sweeping the floors is hard on your back, and your autistic partner will buy you a new vacuum cleaner to show they love you, when you really wanted a new piece of jewellery. An autistic person may hate surprises, I know I do, but they'll show you they care by surprising you with something you've always wanted.
Culture can be defined as the socially accepted way to do things, and there are definite markers of autistic culture that you'll see. Just like when you have a group of Chinese people together, they may all speak the same language and interact in the same way, when you get a group of autistic people together, even if one is Chinese and one is English, you'll find that with not wanting to be touched or other factors, autistic people have a common culture. Autistic culture is both a culture in its own right and a culture within a culture, hence, if you see an English autistic and a Chinese autistic they have a common yet cross-cultural experience, and if you see an English autistic and an English neurotypical, you are experiencing a cross-cultural relationship.