About Melissa Burton (a.k.a Bee) Expertise I can help you with anything you need to know about interracial dating. I myself have been in many relationship with different races. I have also experienced when your parents are not accepting of who you want to date. So if you ever need advice feel free to ask me.
Experience I have dated many guys of various races,cultures and religions.I have also helped many of my friends who had dated different races. Also I've been in different high school and college related organizations.
Question how do I handle my parents' complete non acceptance and rejection of my interracial relationship? We've been fighting about this for years and I've been in two long term interracial relationships (the first I lied a lot about because I was still living at home)But I thought being honest about my current relationship would be a help. It hasn't. Now my parents just act like the relationship doesn't exist. I am so lost. I don't know what to do.. plz help. Thank u.
Answer Hello Jennifer
Well first of all you need to understand that there is not much you can do about it. Your parents opinion is not easily changed. It's like having someone else trying to convince you to become racist. It's not easy and practically impossible since you will have a hard time changing their beliefs about the subject. You do have a couple of options though. You may not be able to do much about their opinion of interracial dating but you can certainly do something about their feelings with this particular guy. What happens with some relationships is that the parents learn to tolerate the guy. They may not love him, and they might still feel you would be better off with someone else, but they will learn to tolerate him and he'll be somewhat welcome in the household. That's probably the best you can do, and keep in mind this can take years to happen.
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the longer you are with this guy, the better. Your parents will take this more seriously if you've been dating this guy for quite some time. For example if you've been dating him for about a year they may just think of this as a phase and that hopefully he'll mistreat you and this will be over. But the longer he stays in the picture, the more they will see you are very serious about this guy, that he does treat you very well, and that this isn't going to end very soon. Another thing that might help is to have them meet this guy. If they haven't met him yet, they may be forming these false opinions of him. If it's possible try to arrange a nice quiet meeting between them and allow him to introduce himself and let them get a good idea of how he is. I'm not sure if your parents would be up for it but it would help. Also do you have any close relatives that are supportive of your relationship? For example, if you have an aunt who feels it's fine, perhaps you could convince her to talk to one of your parents about it. It's different for your parents to hear it from someone they know and who isn't directly involved, than the daughter who is. Those are really your only options so try them out if you haven't already! Good luck with this and hopefully your parents will be more accepting of this in the future! Keep giving it time...
Melissa
