What Dating a Closet Racist Taught Me About Love

If you want to see a person’s crazy side, observe them when they’re deeply in the throes of love.

Casual encounters, committed relationships, marriage, puppy dog love, or something in between — it doesn’t matter what your relationship looks like. Love makes us crazy.

Once upon a time, I was madly in love with a girl I thought would become my future spouse. She checked all the boxes on paper, convincing me I’d found “the one.”

Fourteen months later, I was suicidal, wondering how anyone could approach the concept of love the way she did.

This is the story of how dating a “closet racist” almost obliterated my propensity to give and receive love.

The Illusion

We’ll call this mystery female Salena. Prior to our initial encounter, I was still ailing from a failed 18-month relationship. At its peak, I thought I’d found my fiancé. In reality, that girl struggled to comprehend what true faithfulness requires.

When Salena and I first met, I couldn’t get over how perfect I thought she was. She wore a white crop top, black volleyball shorts, a pair of White Chuck Taylors, and toted around a Michael Kors bag.

She was tall with an athletic build. And my oh my was she beautiful. My introduction didn’t go as planned. I tried making a joke she did not find funny.

Still, over time, she warmed up to my personality, eventually sending me a friend request on Facebook the day I told her older sister I found her attractive.

One night, while out with the young adult ministry we attended, I approached her to affirm the positive attributes — physical and otherwise — I genuinely believed she possessed. She had no response in the moment. I thought I flustered her.

Then, around 11pm that night, she sent me a message on Facebook, conveying a belief that she wasn’t good enough for me due to her “basic general nature.”

I immediately refuted that, going into detail about why she shouldn’t label herself that way. Little did I know, all of that laid the foundation for the beginning of a budding intimacy.

The Honeymoon Phase

Every day with Salena felt like a day in our own rendition of Heaven. I counted my stars habitually, thanking God for sending me a beautiful, athletic, family-oriented, spiritually grounded woman, the epitome of a Southern belle.

Our relationship was full of several highs, especially at the beginning. Interactions were chock-full of feel-good emotions and endorphins, contributing to a prolonged “honeymoon phase.”

The height of those highs was when no one knew about our relationship — not our family, friends, or fellow ministry attendees. Maybe that’s because we were regularly subjected to injunctions masquerading as opinions once the spotlight found our entanglement.

Shattered Glass: The Beginning of the End

As naive as it sounds, before our relationship, I’d never encountered a truly malevolent, manipulative women. I know they existed in theory, but that’s nothing compared to coming across one in actuality.

Salena showed me levels of disdain and hostility that honestly made me wonder if she suffered from multiple personality disorder; the version of her that existed once she got comfortable made me anxious, timid, and uneasy. For example:

After investing in an upgraded version of Apple TV (the streaming box) for my first solo apartment, I programmed it to feature various city skylines as screensavers. One night, while looking at the various photos, she let out a long, exasperated sigh, saying “WE built this!” When I pressed her about what she meant by that, all she said was her mother’s idol was none other than Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Connect the dots.
She was in a suspended state of incredulity because my character and intelligence drastically contradicted long-held assumptions, beliefs, and preconceived notions she had about Black people, most of which were negative and stemmed from media — music, movies, & TV.
Salena was the paragon of “embracing Black culture without being about the culture.” She loved learning firsthand what certain words and phrases meant without having to go to Urban Dictionary, enjoyed wearing Jordans and other forms of streetwear, and reveled in the opportunity to have her hair turned into cornrows. But when push came to shove, she wasn’t interested in the harder parts — like acknowledging police brutality toward minorities, White privilege, or the struggles that came with being in an interracial relationship in Arkansas, the last U.S. state to legalize interracial marriage.
During a sit-down with one of my bosses at the time, a fellow African American, I got a text message from Salena that said, “NOW I’m officially anti-Trump,” including a link to an article expressing disdain over the fact that he allowed trophy hunting in Africa. This was in 2016/2017, when Trump publicly mocked and ridiculed the disabled, minorities, and women on TV heartlessly. NONE of that was worthy of her becoming anti-Trump. Apparently, animals matter more than people…

It took going through a shattered glass moment, or the destruction of the illusion that represented how I saw Salena, to realize I was in a relationship with a closet racist, the type of person that subtly expresses disdain for minorities or resorts to passive-aggressive tactics to communicate their usually useless messages.

A Heartbreaking Revelation

In the aftermath of our tumultuous breakup, I spent A LOT of time in solitude, feeling, processing, and reflecting. All of that led to a heartbreaking revelation.

Salena exemplified what happens to a person when they’re legitimately love-starved. How willing are you to shoplift from your favorite grocery store right now? Most likely, not at all.

That changes if you lose your job, become homeless, and go several days without a meal. All of a sudden, the pros from pilfering food drastically outweigh the cons because, well, nourishment is a necessity.

Love is no different.

In the case of this particular ex, she’d rather pretend to be someone she wasn’t — an emotionally intelligent, stable, spiritually grounded, mature woman— than own up to who she actually was — a severely misguided female. And it wasn’t entirely her fault.

Her father lacked the emotional intelligence to connect with her on a deep level, her MOTHER was the deadbeat parent, her siblings consistently disregarded her, and the guys she dated before me emotionally abused, manipulated, and otherwise used her.

She taught me that some people willingly blur ethical lines and compromise their morals just to feel loved or, at the very least, like they matter.

For whatever reason, this harrowing reality is especially prevalent among women, bringing to mind the song Memories Back Then by T.I. featuring B.o.B., Kendrick Lamar, & Kris Stephens.

All You Need is Love…

I haven’t heard from Salena directly since I relocated to the Midwest, but I think about her from time to time. With the recent radical changes in my life, I count myself lucky to do what I love for a living AND have multiple income streams.

In other words, I’m happy. Scratch that, I’m more than happy.

I’m in a suspended state of euphoria and bliss because I control when I wake up, how much I make, and how many hours I work — among other things.

I have no idea if that’s where she is, but I sincerely wish her well. Love and happiness are two things every human being deserves.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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