Let's face it relationships aren't easy, but when you add race, culture and old-school traditions it sometimes makes it even more challenging.

The recent rumors of an alleged split between actors Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling, who fell in love during the shooting of the intense film, "A Place Beyond the Pines," has some critics wondering why there's all of this negative buzz surrounding the status of their two-year courtship.

Should race be taken into account? Maybe yes, maybe no. But it appears in the Mendes-Gosling relationship, it's allegedly a case of moodiness and jealously, US Weekly reports. But according to Mendes' rep "the whole story is, completely false," and that the pair are still very much in love.

Regardless if they are off or on, people seem to be a bit more curious about interracial couples, even if the couple themselves don't make race an issue. They say opposites attract and in many cases it's true. But do they last?

Other Anglo-Latino relationships such as, Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber and Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck didn't work out either, but fame could also be the factor that destroys relationships. Or in the Gomez-Bieber case it could just be the age factor and the need to grow and discover themselves (in Bieber's case he just need to stop going to Brazilian brothels and strip clubs.)

Bottom line, every individual is different and it's hard to tell what makes relationships

"Now-a-days we see more and more people dating outside of their race. But Latin women in particular are experimenting more than ever; because while Asian, white, and black American women have always been known to mix among other races, the Latinas' reasons for dating outside of their race goes a little further than what most may think," Real Atlanta Magazine reports.

"Latinas have always been encouraged by their families to date amongst their race not only because of racial factors but because of cultural and traditional factors as well. Latinos come from a collectivistic culture in which everyone works together for the well-being of the family, while Americans and other Europeans work for the well-being of one's self, and this can bring social problems between the family's acceptance and adaptation process to someone from a different race and culture."

While this could be taken as a generalization, eHarmony points out that when it comes to a relationship dynamic (and this applies to all couples, and not just for interracial couples) "in the end, it's not their different worldviews that drives them apart. It's how they choose to handle those views, and the lack of empathy they feel for their partner's ideas and feelings." To remedy that, a couple can possess the same core values, but at the same time celebrate each other's culture and accept each other's histories.

Despite some cultural divides, marriage across racial and ethnic lines continues to be on the rise in the United States. The share of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, and the share of all current marriages that are either interracial or interethnic has reached an all-time high of 8.4 percent.

The upward trend of intermarriage has been steadily climbing for decades - in 1980, fewer than seven percent of new marriages were intermarriages, less than half the share now. Among all marriages, the share of intermarriages in 1980 was about three percent.

It's also important to note that public attitudes have become more accepting. More than four-in-ten Americans (43 percent) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while only about one-in-ten think it is a change for worse. Being a minority, younger, more educated, liberal and living in the Eastern or Western states are all traits associated with those who think more positively about intermarriage.

On a personal level, Americans' growing acceptance of intermarriage shows that more than a third (35 percent) of adults say they have an immediate family member or close relative who is married to someone of a different race. And nearly two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) say they "would be fine" if a family member were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group.