Reply to Regrets about marrying interracially?

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Regrets about marrying interracially?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Dear OP-

From someone who has been in long term interracial and interfaith relationships:

interracial: 
I do not think race in general is enough to fear issues unless YOU have a problem with it. This may not be fully apparent on its face. Example: I dated a Chinese-american woman for a year who was wonderful as a person and did not appear to have an issue with my race (AA). Her family obviously did not like us together and her friends were borderline tolerant.  Turns out, she would let her family and friends say terrible things about me in my presence, in Mandarin. I did not realize this until someone from her circle emailed me in confidence out of pity (she later acknowledged it but said she did not address it b/c it was ignorant). Also, as we learned about each others views of politics and policy, I learned that she essentially felt blacks in general are lazy and need programs like affirmative action to succeed whereas people from her community come here and do not need such support. She is ivy-league educated and quite liberal, so I was shocked to see she held these views. She later changed her views after actually learning some AA history and government policy, but this made me very unsettled. Long story short, if interracial, really get to know their views and reactions to being around other cultures. When challenged, you may learn a lot about that person.

interfaith:
I would strongly advise against marrying someone from a different faith. I am Christian but did not seriously follow my faith at the time.  My ex-wife came from a Jewish family, but did not seriously follow her faith. Her family, while very cordial to me personally, was deeply religious and did not approve of our relationship b/c of our faith differences. When we started talking about marriage and growing a family, we initially negotiated "rules" to account for our religious differences.

These rules worked for the first year or so after marriage. Child planning is our faith difference became a problem. Our initial rules stated that we would expose our children to our separate faiths and let them decide for themselves later on. Well turns out, she really wanted them to follow Jewish tradition. That and her family would essentially disown her and our future children for allowing anything otherwise.  I underestimated how this would affect me.

It also didn't help that I became a saved Christian towards the end of our marriage and really started to learn more about my faith. Surprisingly, towards the end of our marriage my ex identified more with the my faith than her family's, but at the end we ultimately ended up divorcing b/c of our faith differences (amicably, I might say. We are still good friends and she remarriaged to a Jewish man).  All this does not touch on the racial aspect of our marriage (I am AA). There were issues from her family's side (mostly those who lived in Israel) regarding this as well, but they were manageable as they did not reflect my ex's beliefs and they treated me fairly, all things considered.  The combination of the two might have ended up being too much though.

No regrets, but I would never advise anyone to do it. Even if you think you have all the details ironed out. Its like building a home with straws at the bottom of the foundation. A small shift can bring the whole thing down.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics