I have now been with my boyfriend over a year. We live together in Japan and are both from Europe. We have managed to get over the interracial issues that we faced when we initially realised that we were attracted to each other and wanted to be together but now its a whole other issue. We are living in a place where neither of us can be comfortable; him because he has a white face and people make messed up colonial assumptions about him which he is not ok with and me because I am sick of being centre of attention simply by getting on the bus and oh if one more person tries to put their hand in my hair please contact me via the Japan prison system site. So we have decided to live apart.
I thought I was ok with the idea but have noticed that I seem to be feeling anger towards him because of this. I just don’t see how he can really want to be with me if he is happy to see this happened yet I know that we need to be apart if this is ever to work in the future.
How do I say goodbye and not pressure this to the point that we can never get back what we had when it started?
NML says: I think your anger stems from the fact that you perceive his behaviour as a rejection of you and your relationship. There is a sense of abandonment in a strange place and you will expect on some levels to be protected.
For a start, you are both in an interracial relationship. It would be lovely to say that these things don’t matter and it doesn’t create problems, but unfortunately they still do. But can you really say that you have both gotten over the fact that you’re in an interracial relationship if you’ve decided to live apart to make it easier for other people to deal with. Or is it about making it easier for him, or you, or you both to deal with?
The fundamental issue here is not about you living apart. You are both still having issues with dealing with your races.
I remember several years ago having my white ex-boyfriend of the time lament “You never told me how to cope with being in an interracial relationship!” I wanted to slap him. You’d swear that he’d been in it on his own and I knew at that moment that some of his past actions were about him struggling with having a black woman on his arm. It takes two to make an interracial relationship and you both have to learn how to make the relationship work.
Interracial relationships that you have to ‘overcome’ are difficult enough without you not presenting a united front. You both need to decide why you are not going to live together and be united about that reason if you choose to go ahead with it. Explain how this decision is making you feel without being accusatory. Get to the root of your anger because if you don’t find peace with it, your relationship has no chance of survival, whatever your racial backgrounds. Simmering anger tends to spill over…
You say goodbye when you are at peace with why you are both apart and secure about your relationship. I sense that this living apart thing was his suggestion and that you agreed without thinking it through, probably in reaction to all of the external pressure. You both need to decide what is best for your relationship. If you both truly want this to work, you both need to agree on a course of action. If the Japanese are that curious about your races, I sense that alone or as a pair, you’ll still get much of the same interest. It sounds like you both need each others support.
If you choose to live apart, be at peace with it and forgive. Don’t move back in together unless you are both willing to stick it out together and not move apart when the heat gets too much. Relationships, with or without the interracial part, have ups and downs, and it’s best that you ride it out together.
Suggested reading: NML’s Roughguide to a New Long Distance Relationship
Vixen’s Guide to: Interracial Relationships
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You know, I am also in an interracial relationship with a guy outside of my race. oh,,,, guys, you can not image what I have met. I am a black cuttie girl and I just met my love half year ago and we will get married next month, and interracial love of course. Am I lucky? So lucky I think, and I wanna share my happiness with all of you here.
By the way, I found my half part baby on a great interracialchats site. He is really gorgeous, even sometimes he is a little shy. -:) If you try InterracialMatch.com, you also can be the next lucky one. LOL. Bye!! and good luck to you all.
Social and personal pressures are both affecting your thoughts and life. For interracial, it is really not easy for others to accept it thoroughly and sometimes they give a curious something like that eye on interracial. So just keep your style and release your emotion properly, you can come back with your lover and interracial love.
Ultimately, a relationship is one person, how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your mate. As long as you feel better being with your mate than you think you would feel without your mate, you have a relationship.
So when he agrees to live separate, he might be respecting what he thinks you want, he might be grateful to have time for himself, he may be relieved to see the separation as the beginning of the end of the relationship, he may just be relieved not to have either you or the interracial issues bothering him. Or something else, or all of the above.
From your comment about not wanting your hair fondled, I assume by ‘apart’ you mean you don’t live in Japan with him, but in another country/continent.
So what to do comes down to what you want. If you want a physical, amatory relationship I feel you have to be sharing small spaces with him, regularly. Shared breaths, shared pheromones, and shared awareness of the other on a physical level – smell, sight, sound, touch – these all are fundamental to bringing people together. That might be your guy, it might mean saying goodbye, and to become once again ‘unattached and available.’
Long distance relationships do work, occasionally. But most flounder due to suspicion, to anger, to the simple distractions of life. Until you understand why you are hurt and angry, you will likely be unhappy with any decision you make now, even if that decision is to wait and see what happens.
As some of you know may know, I’m of Africa heritage. Hubby, on the other hand, is Caucasian. To most people, we’re an interracial couple. It’s nothing I really think about or notice, but other people (occasionally) comment on it.
As a result, I’m fairly sensitive to interracial dating. And I recently discovered InterracialChats.com, an interracial dating website for men and women who are specifically looking for an interracial relationship. The site features people of all ethnicities, ages and socio-economic backgrounds, and it allows you to search by zip code for interracial personals.
The user friendly site allows members to send messages to potential dates, and you can join for free. The profiles include plenty of information, such as age, marital status, children, pets, music and movie preferences, political views and more. With this much information, it’s easy to find someone who could be a great romantic match for you!
in response to sites searching for inter-racial partners; being on that site surely means that you have already decided that you can only be with someone of another race. i am in an mixed relationship but thats not because i specifically looked for a man of another race. surely the whole idea is to love the person before you love their racial background. if i look for someone on the basis of their colour i cannot then expect them to love me for me becuase they too have probably searched specifically for an african woman and so i am more of an idea of love than love itself. i hope to never be loved primarily for the colour of my skin and look forward to a time in which we all fall in love with the spirit and soul of another and not simply because we have ‘decided’ that men of our own colour cannot offer us what another race can.
no disrespect to anyone who chooses to use that site, the whole idea just seems slightly messed up to me but thats just my opinion.
I think each of us makes our own choices. When we find someone we admire, we tend to search for other with similar backgrounds. That might be ‘just like Dad’, might be ‘like Grandma’, might be ‘like my best friend in school’.
Other times we choose to avoid those ‘just like Earl’ or whatever.
Looking for inter-racial dates is about like looking for any date. Start with the physical, and the odds of finding a loyal, disciplined, honest mate of integrity get really bad. Start with someone of good character, though, and your odds of a lifetime relationship get pretty good.
Besides – jessica is obviously pimping her web site on inter-racial dating. She isn’t offering any help to the question posed. Her advertisement just happens to fit this topic, mildly, and doesn’t seem to be too offensive – except that the site is about finding sex partners, not potential life mates. I won’t be taking her message seriously.