I am Igbo. My partner is Yoruba. We have been together for three years and are talking seriously about the future. And my family's position, delivered politely but clearly by my father, is that it will not work.
Not because of who she is as a person. They have barely met her. It is purely about where she comes from. And I am caught in something I did not expect to feel this deeply: genuine grief.
I grieve that the people I love cannot see what I see. I grieve that she is being judged by something she cannot change. I grieve the version of the future I imagined where my family welcomed her and things were simple.
At the same time I know what I want. I know who I want. And I am not willing to walk away from something real to preserve a peace built on prejudice.
But navigating this without tearing my family apart — without losing my relationship in the exhaustion of fighting for it — I genuinely don't know how to do that. Has anyone been through this? What helped you hold both your love and your family without one destroying the other?