Reader’s Question

I have been secretly dating my boyfriend for three years. My boyfriend is black and I am white. My parents told me that I could not date a black guy. They gave me a hateful lecture about it a few years ago, and I cried and have since lost some respect for them. I told my parents the boy was only my friend and my dad said I could see him once a week. When we lived close by, we saw each other more often, secretly. But he moved further away, so now we can only see each other once a week.

I had a dream last night that my parents made me date only white guys, and I was crying, missing my boyfriend. My parents also don’t believe in living together and stopped talking to a cousin for this reason. Yet they were friends of a white couple who used to live next door who lived together.

My boyfriend said he wants to live with me for a year before he marries me. I’m afraid my parents will stop talking to me, and my boyfriend may dump me if he’s not with me 24/7. I’m terrified of telling my parents, because my dad throws fits. I once stood there and watched him hit himself in the head.

I’m 21. I love my family, but I also love my boyfriend. I have only $300 saved up from working at Wal-Mart. I make about $150, bi-weekly. I want to move in with my boyfriend. If I don’t tell my parents, thing are going to get worse. If I do, they may never talk to me again, kick me out, get very mad, etc.

If things stay the way they are, my boyfriend may dump me for being too afraid to do what he wants me to do, and I’ll never be happy. I would like my parents to keep talking to me, if possible. My worst fear is being alone, but better alone than in bad company, although my parents can also be very loving and are paying for me to go to college.

I’ve never even slept over at anyone’s house: they never let me. I need to leave, I feel like I’m in shackles all the time and that my life is controlled by emotions and fear. My uncle is 60 and lives with his mom. The last woman he tried to marry had an argument with his grandma, and he didn’t marry her. She doesn’t like his girlfriends, because they’re not from our village (which hasn’t really thrived for a long time). They’re all related and some go to family reunions, looking for dates. My grandma still tells my uncle to come home at 10:00. He takes care of her, but she still controls him.

I NEVER want to end up like that.

What would you do?

I need any help I can get.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

There are some issues here that need to be kept very distinct. First, you are an adult and as such need to be responsible for your own choices and their consequences. Second, you are right to be offended with anyone’s bias toward another person merely on the basis of race. Although some prejudices still exist, we are living in a time when many more people make judgments about others as Martin Luther King once urged — namely, the content of their character as opposed to their skin color. Third, your fear of ending up like some family members should not be the driving force for you to enter or maintain a relationship with anyone. Fourth, you indicate you are presently in college and require financial support. Both of these things indicate that you are preparing yourself for a more independent life, but are not yet at the level of self-development to make it on your own. Finally, you say you fear that if you’re not available to your boyfriend, whom you say you might want to marry, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, he’ll simply dump you. If that’s true, you’ve got the wrong guy — and not because of the color he is or what background he’s from.

Do some honest self-reckoning, objectively weight the circumstances, and make your decision. As mentioned before, you’re an adult now, responsible for your own choices, actions, and their consequences.