Being in an interracial relationship is tough enough with all of the outside influences and real-world judgement you might have to deal with. Don’t make it harder on yourselves by adding petty problems and picking at them. The best tip I can give to you if you’re in an interracial relationship or are about to be in one, is that you can’t be hypocritical, and that kindness and good ethics are not doing too much. I’m going to offer up some advice that will probably sound a little kindergartner-be-nice-to-each-other-ish, but are definitely need-to-knows if you’ve never been in an interracial relationship and have habits like cracking race jokes and thinking it’s OK. These tips will help you avoid being potentially offensive to a partner of another race.
If you’re in an interracial relationship you’re going to notice that your partner might have a social media following completely different from your own; full of an entire culture that you’re unfamiliar with. Different languages, different memes, different types of jokes. It’s all good. This may be something you’ll just have to get used to, feeling apart from it. Whereas the only other option, is to show your ability to acculturate by learning a new language or learning the cultural habits of your S.O. and their peoples. It won’t help any to argue that you don’t know what they’re talking about, or that you’re stressing over who they could be talking to.
Asking someone to constantly prove things to you is frustrating. You have to have trust, understanding, and transparency; and sometimes the only way to gain these in an interracial relationship is by becoming one with the peoples, putting yourself out there, and engaging. Do this and you’ll be engaging with each other, too, openly, on FB or Twitter or whatever. You might even feel the need to apply some rules as to what’s appropriate and what’s not.
Don’t think of this as a controlling system, so much as one that’ll keep you both comfortable and connected. Talking it over will definitely help you establish a level of respect and expectations for each other in an interracial relationship. Remember, social media is supposed to be a place to collab and communicate, so don’t be afraid to enhance these skills where your relationship is concerned. If you’re not putting forth the effort to know you’re partner and their culture then should you really be in an interracial relationship? These are just some tips to think about.
Disagreements about cultural habits can also transpire between an interracial couple. They start out small and maybe as jokes, but can actually grow to be offensive and hypocritical. You can’t be in a relationship with someone from another culture and throw shade all over their people’s concepts and morals. That’s petty and contradictory to the idea of you loving them or respecting them as a person.
Regardless of how different you might see your partner is from their people, and closer to you, they are who they are and you can’t, and shouldn’t, want to change that. Whether it’s something as simple as the way they eat their food, or as complicated as their work ethics, insulting a group of people that your partner is a part of can be like insulting them directly. The smallest jokes can hurt.
And this is why I say that maybe this sounds a little kindergartner-ish, but it’s true that good morals are good morals, and kindness is required in most moments where we’d rather be proud of our personal opinions. The confines of an interracial relationship can be sensitive and the jokes may seem all good at first, but they can turn ugly later on. There are ways to discuss opinions that aren’t aggressive or hurtful. Everyone’s entitled to their own, yes. But an insult is an insult, and an opinion is an opinion. This is a tip to help you know the difference in an interracial relationship.
My last tip for now, for anyone in an interracial relationship is that sometimes you might have to support your partners group of cultural others. Say there’s a protest or an event going on that you’re S.O. wants to be a part of. I think the only right things to do are to tag along or support but respectfully decline on attending. The opposite of support is not supporting. So even if you disagree with your partner, you kind of have to accept what they want and approve of them following through on their ideals.
Simply saying you’re OK with them doing what they’re doing is respectful enough. Because saying that you don’t want them involved with particular activities is like saying you don’t like their race or culture and you don’t want them to be a part of it. Practicing humane and understanding behavior where you don’t openly disregard someone’s preferences is so necessary. I’m not saying you have to be all like, yeah I think that’s a great thing you’re doing if that’s not how you feel.
What I’m saying is in a world of diversity we have to be OK with the preferences of cultural others because you really can’t control what people want to support in their lives. These should be common habits, but unfortunately sometimes they’re not. I find often that it’s easy for people to shut down others because of their own quarrels with the culture. It’s really not an OK thing and shouldn’t be tolerated. Especially within a relationship where someone is supposed to have the highest amount of respect for you. Besides, with everything that’s going on in the world, I prefer to keep the animosity out of my own personal space.
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