Hi Maja:
First of all, welcome to PC, and I am *very* sorry that you're this frustrated. My heart goes out to you.
I was married to someone from another culture, and on top of that, my dad is from a much different culture and generation.
I'm trying to think how our communication issues (my ex-h's and mine) were related to culture and how much was attributed to family style, age difference and personality. He also considered himself a good communicator, but needless to say, it didn't work out. I'm going to have to think about this part a little more -- again, I'm not sure it was so much of a communication issue as personality/family style thing, because I know others in his culture who seem to communicate just fine with American spouses (I'm American).
My dad, however, is a much different issue, and one that clearly doesn't get solved by divorce
I can say without doubt that many of our issues are attributed to cultural communication styles. I took a cultural communication class last year, in fact, and my case study was about Hungarian vs American communication styles. It was really good for helping me understand issues that had plagued me about my dad during my 36 years. He has been living in the US for more than 50 years, but he still runs into the same problems over and over again with me and with my stepmom (also American) which seemed to be textbook examples.
Doing the research didn't really help me communicate better with him, but that might be due to laziness on my part. But, it did help me not take his style so personally.
Would you both be interested in doing some research and a case study together? Do you think you both could be objective enough not to look just for aspects that confirm your assumptions, but to keep an open enough mind to cultural concepts that might be due to personalities or the way each of you were raised within your families?
Hang in there Maja. You at least have the benefit that you're both *trying* to talk, so it seems to me that if you're not stonewalling the other, then there is a good chance that you can work it out.
What do you think about the research idea? Have you tried something like that already?