This is a great web site...so far! Personally, I am learning a great deal here about what normal IR (relationships are/can be like). My experience; however, has been very difficult and traumatic. I was bred like a cow, and then, after the hard work of raising my children was completed (or almost) ALONE,they were 'snatched' by the other side of the (bloodties) I will not call the paternal side 'family'. We are still in one HELL of a tug of WAR. (Not a legal custody battle, but it is more like a ......) I am not giving up my kids. I will come back to haunt anyone who could or would hurt us in this way. Yep! I am in therapy and trying desperately to get my children the counseling they need too. This whole notion of RACE RAGE is and can be very diabolical. I hope things get better for my family soon. It has been too long a siege....all these long decades.
I would like to hear from people who have succeeded in holding their family together. Was the family bond strong even after the children grew up?
No matter what races we are, the attack on the family these days and the disenfranchisement of parents is a problem for the whole country. But, when RACE issues are included...need I say more?

By Roberto (64.12.104.162) on Saturday, March 24, 2001 - 06:47 am:

Anon2000:

I think you hit on to something when you said, "The attitudes of the time and lack of proximity to black people probably had something to do with it". Many times I have seen this to be true. A white woman who is involved in a marriage with a white man "who goes black" as the saying goes in most cases come from isolated communities from black men. In fact, when I read the sites that promote extramarital affairs outside of marriage of white women from their white husbands, I'm astonished to learn that many white females crave black men even into their marriages with white men and after long years of marriage to white men. Once they (white women) feel secured enough in themselves to take on a black lover they will secretly engage in a relationship with a black male (not just any black male either). Once they find the black male of their choosing they will pursue him. If he pleases her (and treat her right) this sets into motion the interracial dynamics that challenges her social and cultural beliefs of what a black man is or suppose to be.

There is an the old saying "Once she goes black she does not go back" or "white women will look down on you until they know you". For a black man and, this is my own belief, a black man who is older appreciates a white woman more if she is older as well. The two not only share a common life experienced based on the times and eras they both grew up in, but they share a deeper understanding of what love is, and how to please each other, know what its like to have children (and grand children in some cases), know the pains of life. What I'm trying to say Anon, they both are experienced and were tested by life. If both reached a point in life where money is no longer an issue, then they have a freedom to enjoy living a life by exploring their inner selves and essences of what it means to have for once or "the first time" in their lives "true love". ~ Roberto

By Anon2000 (207.218.73.40) on Friday, March 23, 2001 - 10:25 pm:

there's probably a lot of us ww in our 40's who secretly admired bm from a distance in hs, "traditionally" married a wm, divorced and then married a bm. the attitudes of the times and lack of proximity to black people probably had something to do with it.

By Roberto (205.188.197.184) on Friday, March 23, 2001 - 09:11 pm:

I've notice that a number of interracial marriages involving black men and white women are when both have either divorced from a previous same race relationship or are both older. This is interesting to me. Does this mean that BM/WW usually enter a interracial union after they marry within their own race. Which sets in the person the willingness to take a partner outside of their race, sort of like, "I've had my own so now its time to try someone different.

On the age factor, does it makes the heart more fondly for a person of another race? Does maturity comes into play to accept someone of another race? Over the years I personally have known 14 IR couples (BM/WW) who were in these above mentioned situations. Three examples:

(1) Couple was a black male (43 years old) who was married twice to black women and in a third marriage to a white woman (36 years old). The white woman was married once to a white man.

(2) Couple was a white woman (38 years old) who was married once to a white man with two children, her second husband was a black man who was once married to a black woman. He was 40 years old.

(3) Couple was a white woman (46 years old) who married a black man (41 years old). The woman was married three times to white men and the black man was married twice to black women previously.

I guess the old saying "time allows the heart grow fondly", rings true. ~ Roberto