Say where each of you lives: the tool gives the distance as the crow flies, the length of a direct flight, today’s time difference — and, if you do not live in the same country, the markers that matter for a couple (languages, majority religions, currency, dialling code) with both countries’ pages and the topic-by-topic comparator. Everything is calculated in your browser; nothing is sent.
Loading…
Thirty verified customs, with photos: what other cultures find beautiful, how people court there, and what these practices share with ours.
Long-distance couples are not less satisfied than others. What weakens them is the absence of a horizon, not the miles.
Couples living in different countries run into the same seven questions, in the same order, whatever the country. The answers change; the questions do not.
| 1. The distance | It is managed by a rhythm, not by goodwill: regular calls, an accepted time difference, and above all a date for the next meeting in person always fixed. See long-distance relationships. |
|---|---|
| 2. The asymmetry | Where it exists — income, passport, freedom to travel — it bears on everything, from the first message to what the family expects. That is not a judgement: it is a fact better named early. |
| 3. The family | In much of the world a union binds two families, not two individuals. Being introduced to the parents is not a formality there; it is the decisive step. |
| 4. The visitor visa | Going to see the other person is nearly always easy. Bringing them to you is far less so, and a tourist visa is often refused when the officer suspects an intention to stay. |
| 5. The marriage | Marrying is straightforward almost everywhere. Having that marriage recognised at home is not, if the preliminary step was skipped — see below. |
| 6. Settling | Marriage never confers a right of entry. A separate application follows, with conditions on income, housing and sometimes language. |
| 7. Trust | Romance scams are run from every country, including your own. The warning signs are everywhere the same: see spotting and reporting a scam. |
Nearly every country requires, before the ceremony, a document certifying that nothing under its law stands in the way of the marriage: a certificate of no impediment, of marital capacity, of capacity to marry, depending on the name. Ask for it before you marry. With it, registering the marriage at home takes weeks to months; without it, you open a verification that runs into years — during which your spouse will generally not get a visa. The marriage stays valid; it is the recognition that stalls.
Leaving the country protects no one. For sexual offences against a child, almost every state sets aside dual criminality and dispenses with any complaint from the victim: you can be prosecuted and tried at home whatever the local law says and whatever the local authorities do. There is no destination where this is tolerated — see sexual offences committed abroad.
A marriage celebrated abroad or with a foreigner, the law that governs the couple's property, children of two nationalities, an estate spread over two countries: the page on international couples gathers the common rules and explains the Hague Conventions.
Where people actually meet in Britain, Ireland, North America and Oceania, through which channels — and what happens when the person you love needs a visa.
The English-speaking world is where the shift happened first and hardest. The Stanford long series shows meeting online overtaking friends around 2013 and reaching close to four heterosexual couples in ten by 2017 — with friends falling from roughly a third of couples to a fifth over the same period. No other region has moved that far. The full picture, and the caution to apply to any such figure, is on how people meet, and how that changed.
| Online | The leading channel, and by some distance among people under 40 and among same-sex couples. See the platforms. |
|---|---|
| Friends | Still large, but in continuous decline since the mid-1990s. The internet did not add to this channel, it took from it. |
| Work and study | Steady, and the setting with the most rules of its own — see meeting in real life. |
| Bars, church, family, neighbourhood | All falling, and falling since long before the internet existed. |
Alongside the apps sit personal matchmakers, charging anything from a few hundred to tens of thousands. What you are buying is filtering and time, not a higher probability that any given person suits you. Two checks before signing: whether the contract names the service rather than a number of "introductions", and what happens to your money if nobody suitable exists on their books. Consumer rules on cancellation apply to contracts signed at a distance in most of these countries.
In the English-speaking world the obstacle to a binational couple is rarely the wedding: it is the sponsor’s income threshold or the genuine-relationship assessment that comes afterwards, and both change more often than plans do. Keep the evidence from the beginning — tickets, messages, dated photographs, joint bills — and check the current rules in the country page below before setting a date.
Each page below sets out what a relationship with someone living there actually involves: entering the country, marrying and having it recognised, getting there and what it costs, customs and family, and the points specific to that country — with every link on this site to that country gathered in one place.
Marrying is straightforward. The spouse visa, and its income requirement, is where the real difficulty sits.
Three months' notice is a legal minimum, not a guideline — and it catches most couples out.
Two routes, one choice made early: the fiancé(e) visa or the spouse visa. Picking wrong costs a year.
No capacity certificate to produce, but a sponsorship undertaking that binds you for years — and a second layer if the sponsor lives in Quebec.
A one-month notice period, no certificate of no impediment, and partner visa processing measured in years.
The system asks one question above all others: have you actually been living together?
Two parallel marriage systems, a thirty-day public notice for the civil route, and an apostille that makes recognition abroad simpler than elsewhere.
The nikah is the marriage; the NADRA registration is what the rest of the world will ask you for.
Efficient, predictable, and built on one condition people forget: someone has to be physically present beforehand.
Two legal systems side by side — and for a Muslim partner, only one of them applies.
The one country in the world with no divorce for most citizens. Everything else follows from that.
One of the fastest marriage procedures anywhere, and a dependant visa that follows the sponsor's own status.
Lobola, two weddings, and a Department of Home Affairs whose processing times are the real constraint.
Statutory marriage is monogamous, customary marriage may not be — and only one of the two travels abroad easily.
One statute now covers five kinds of marriage — which makes the paperwork clearer than almost anywhere in the region.
The knocking comes first, the registry last — and a bill on same-sex relationships has changed the legal picture.
The kwanjula is conducted by spokespersons, not by the couple — and recent legislation makes one point unavoidable.
Two marriage systems, a kitchen party you will hear about long before the wedding, and a registration step that decides everything abroad.
One of the simplest places in the world to marry — and one where the law on same-sex relationships has not moved.
A twin-island state with layered wedding traditions — and a legal position on same-sex relationships that changed again in 2025.
Links to official or reference sources. They open in a new tab.
Page checked in September 2026. The instruments cited can change: if in doubt, confirm with the official source given.
Locate this page in the site map
A question, a correction, a suggestion? Write to us.
