Well, after 12 years of running commentary in my head, this white girl is pouring it all out. Hopefully my experiences in dating and marriage in the South Asian Indian community will provide some help to some of you interracial daters out there (once people actually find this blog!). I think it took about 9 – 10 of those years to calm down, so I think I can manage this with more humor than angst. I’m not sure where to start, so I’ll pick the beginning…

I met my husband in college. Growing up in a small Midwest town, there were no Indian families, and college was really my first exposure to many new cultures. I never envisioned I’d end up marrying someone who spent their first 9 years in a country I can barely conceptualize (even now). For a while, my future husband was more like every other guy I’d dated – just darker – his Indian culture absent as far as I could tell. Things went wonderfully, and he met my parents, who loved him. I waited for the traditional reciprocating parental visit, but it never came. I finally just had to ask when I would be meeting them, which was met with a combination look of horror and denial and consternation. Despite my boyfriend’s great love for me, I would not be meeting his parents for quite some time.

Being white and the object of discrimination was a new feeling for me. I don’t think I’d ever felt entitled before, but when you’re suddenly thrown off the mighty white thrown for the first time, you realize just how entitled you are in this country. I felt angry, but insulted and hurt more than anything else. I wanted to say, “but I’m the white one!” Given the racist and political uncorrectness of that statement, I kept it to myself and pouted instead. Very mature.

Unfortunately, it took years of immersion in the Indian culture before I came to understand everything behind my initial non-acceptance (not that I agree with it, I just understand now). This left me with a lot of simmering anger for over 4 and a half years while we dated.

Next up – how my husband handled explaining our relationship to his parents, and how my stubborn determination to make them meet me led to ill-planned party crashing.