They say that fate has a hand in every connection. But the night my husband and I met, fate seemed to be cutting things awfully close. Richard lived in England, and was in New York City for a week’s vacation.

I was in graduate school at Columbia University. It was the ultimate coincidence that we happened to be in the same bar, a little dive called the Subway Inn on Lexington Avenue and 60th Street. We fell easily into conversation, and by last call I was pretty sure that this was the guy I was going to marry. Fortunately, he felt the same way.

As anyone in a cross-cultural relationship can attest, falling for each other is easy. But dating is much harder.

Seeing each other casually isn’t really an option if you’re not living in the same time zone when you first meet. You have to make a commitment, early on, to nurture a relationship that may require securing a visa before going out to dinner. Add in the complications of diff erent cultural approaches to love and marriage, conflicting ways of communicating, and language challenges, and it’s enough to give even the most ardent romantic a headache.

So, after a year of impassioned emails, gigantic phone bills, and whirlwind romantic visits, I found myself adjusting to life in Richard’s small Lancashire village. My journalism career was put on hold: I had been rustling copy at a prominent international newswire, now I was churning out cappuccinos in a Manchester café.

After the social buzz of New York, my life seemed bewilderingly dull. Apart from Richard, I didn’t know a soul in England, and I missed my friends and family desperately. My unhappiness took the shape of an endless litany of small complaints—the showers were lousy, the television was a joke, the clothes all looked the same, the trains didn’t run late enough, you couldn’t get a good cup of coffee (or burger, or burrito, or spicy tuna handroll) anywhere.

But couples that can weather so many practical obstacles together often emerge with unshakeable lifelong bonds.

Take Laura Yasso, 32, and her husband, Fernando Ballester, 34. The couple met during Yasso’s college year abroad in Valencia, Spain; when she couldn’t find work there after graduation, he joined her in New York City. She supported both of them while he job-hunted … for six years.

“It put a strain on our relationship,” Yasso says. “We had to live with my family at first, because we couldn’t aff ord our own place on one income. I couldn’t switch jobs or pursue a lot of my own personal goals because I always had to make sure I had steady employment. I was the sole breadwinner, and then I would come home and have to do all the housework. I was living with someone who didn’t know how to do the laundry or make the bed.”

Ballester—now gainfully employed—wasn’t fazed by having to depend on his wife and her family.