by T.Yeap

Created on: August 25, 2009

Although we are living in such an open minded world, interracial dating still stirred up a lot of controversial topics everywhere I go. I'm an independent women living abroad, away from my family and trying to find my own purpose in life. I was once into a very dark period after I broke up with my ex, who is the same race (Chinese) and we have been dating for more than 5 years. It broke my heart and I've stayed single for about two years until I met Jonathan, my current boyfriend, who is an American. I still remember vividly what my grandmother told me before I came to America for college, she told me: "Don't bring back a Caucasian". All my family and relatives were just laughing as I myself didn't even think it is possible for me to fall in love outside of my own race.

I've known Jonathan through work for a bout a year before we started dating, all my colleagues were saying he had a crush on me and ask me to give him a chance. I was like " Why not? It's been two years and it's time to move on!" We had fun for fhe first couple of months and then I slowly realized the differences between the two culture especially when I'm not born and raise here in America. We have different believes, living lifestyle, foods, culture background. Lucky thing was that I do speak good English that he can understand but he still makes fun of my English from time to time. However, I do feel like sometimes it will be easier if he knows how to speak mandarin because there's certain things I get to express it better when I speak in mandarin.

One thing that I do notice with interracial dating is that you've become more self-conscious about the two of you when you are going out in public. People started to stare. Although I've been used to getting stared at by children because of my race but getting starred at by adults is a little bit hurtful and uncomfortable I must say. Fortunately, Jonathan's parent and grandparents all accepted me for who I am and are really interested in my culture and I did enjoy myself explaining and teaching them about my background. Although, some of his cousins does break out the racial jokes about Chinese people once in awhile, I've accustomed to it and didn't take it personally since I've been in the States for a long period of time and I know they didn't mean what they said.

About a year after we started dating I told my dad myself I'm dating an American. I wanted to thank my siblings and mom to keep that secret for as long as they did.

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