My Love Story

February has always been a meaningful month for me and my family not only because it is the “month of love” but also because it is Black History Month. It’s significance for me lies in the fact that the evolution of black history is essentially what has allowed my husband and I to be able to openly share the love that we have for one another. Therefore, to shed a different sort of  light on a month that is often overtaken with roses and chocolates, I wanted to share my own special love story, with you.

If you have been following my blog from the beginning, you know how my husband and I met. But what many of you don’t know is that before my husband and I exchanged numbers and officially “hung out” for the first time,  we crossed paths 3 times within the period of 2 days. With the NYC population being as large as it is, and it’s residents constantly on the go, this is an astonishingly rare occurrence. To me, this repeated crossing of paths has always been a sign that we were meant to meet, and when neither of us exchanged numbers on the first or second  meeting, someone from up above kept pulling strings!

As things progressed in our relationship , we knew that we wanted to get married one day, so it was naturally time for us to meet each others families. To be honest, I didn’t know how my family was going to react to me dating a black man, but I was confident that once they met him they would love him like I did. Chris came home with me to Pittsburgh for Christmas during our first year of dating and of course, my family could not help but to love him.

Shortly after, we learned we were pregnant and essentially, this forced our relationship to move a bit faster than it usually would for people just dating. So, in a flurry and driven by the daze of love, we got married, had Branden, and moved into an apartment off post in Virginia where Chris was stationed in the Army. I was so lucky that Chris was able to be there for me every step of the way. Our sudden transition to being married and becoming parents all at once, took some, well, transitioning! Yet, every bump in the road that we encountered has molded us into the couple that we are today and reminds me that together, we can overcome any challenge that our future may hold.

Whenever Branden got a little bit older and started learning his colors, he started to notice differences in us, labeling me as yellow and Chris as brown. I think  our different skin colors brought up the topic of race earlier in our household than it might have in different households, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Being in an interracial marriage gives us the unique ability to not only explain the concept of different races to our young child, but to show him on a daily basis that race shouldn’t matter.

I hope that by watching my husband and I, Branden is able to live a life of love and caring for everyone in a colorless world, or a world with many beautiful colors. I want him to be able to look beyond the physical and focus on what really matters whenever he is choosing friends or a partner in life.

So, does being in an interracial relationship change things? Yes and no. Realistically speaking, we work at our relationship every day the way that any married couple would, but in some cases, we deal with more issues externally than couples where both partners are of the same race. Living in New York City, people are much more open about this subject, but depending where we are, some people aren’t. In these situations, we deal with “looks” from people or we overhear comments that are not well hidden. We have learned to overlook it and began to not really notice after a while. I personally feel like these people need to get over themselves, its 2012 for crying out loud! 

So, maybe my love story isn’t something that you would read in a fairytale book, but it is perfect for me. Who knows? Maybe someday we will see a white Disney princess live happily ever after with a black prince (or vise versa). My hope is that every child will know that they can grow up and live happily ever after, and not be bound to race, gender, ethnicity, or religion when searching for that special person.

Happy Valentine’s Day and Black History Month!

Fashionably Yours,

Allison