No Shame in my Game

Over the last several years I was involved in a very serious relationship in which I was dating a woman of another race. With dating I have never seen color and have dated women from various backgrounds. In my childhood my parents let it be known that “we” as a family have no color barriers and we judge people by their character and not the pigment of their skin. With this being said my family has supported interracial dating.

Although my family was very supportive her family on the other hand was not. To be completely honest they were the exact opposite of supportive, they were blatantly opposed to our relationship. This caused a lot of stress and pressure in our dating process. With the pressure to not displease her family or even let them down our relationship in the early stages was kept secret from her family to protect her from scrutinization. Due to my youth and immaturity I allowed this go on for almost a complete year. I even allowed the first introduction to her family be as a ‘platonic friend” because she felt it was  not quite time to expose them to our interracial relationship. After a year of dating we finally decided it was time to reveal our love to her side of the family hoping they would embrace our relationship and be accepting. But as she predicted her father was angered and distanced himself from her for the next year of our relationship.

We dated for several years and after it finally ended I realized we were doomed from the beginning. Love is blind and I wanted to ignore the signs and the “red flags” that showed me there was something wrong. When someone is ashamed of you or embarrassed to be with you then they don’t deserve you. Love is something worth fighting for. As an older more mature man I can see now looking back that she was not strong enough for me. Now that I have lived through this hurtful experience I’m able to give others advice from my learning curve. My fourteen year old nephew began an interracial relationship with a young girl whose parents opposed the relationship due to his ethnicity and background. My advice to my nephew is there is no need to be in a relationship with someone who has to hide and lie to be with you. He is so young and full of life and I wanted to encourage him to find someone to be with whose family will accept and embrace him. I wanted him to understand to find love with someone who can love him back unconditionally and fight for him. If he doesn’t have to be ashamed of whom he chooses or loves then it should be reciprocated from who he loves. So I reiterated to him there is “no shame in his game”…move on nephew.