Get me to the (Korean) church on time!

Confession #489 on this blog: I’m not great at romantic relationships.  With the exception of a few relationships and a handful of casual dates, I tend to be that perpetually single person.  As I progress through my twenties, more and more of my peers are jumping into the engaged/married pool.  I would be lying if I said I’m not getting a little worried about when I’ll reach this next milestone..if ever.  Next year I will be in two weddings.  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride?  I’ve been proudly touting the title of Miss Independent for a while now and I’m finally getting to the point where I want that to change.

I know myself well enough to know that I definitely have my hang-ups regarding relationships.  Among them, I’ve realized that not being colorblind is creating this inner conflict.  For a while now, I’ve been tossing around the idea of attending a nearby Korean church.  A few of my relatives have encouraged this with the hope that I might actually meet my future husband there.  I guess I’m a little touched that they’ve thought of this.  I have voiced my sense of isolation growing up without an Asian community to be a part of, so it’s nice to see that someone is listening.  My mom has already said she would not mind at all if I married a Korean guy, adopted or not.  I’m pretty sure she just wants adorable Asian grandbabies (which is completely understandable because Asian babies are astoundingly cute).

The thing that really has me confused, though, is how much of that sense of Asian community do I need to feel fulfilled and accepted in life?  Is it enough to have Korean friends?  Do I need to have relationships with other Asians as family members?  I think I mull this over even more now, knowing my omoni’s response to my birth search.  Maybe that door has closed for good and I will never truly be a part of my biological family.  Marriage may be my only chance to experience anything even remotely close to that.  I have wondered over the months if I should only focus on trying to find a Korean or Asian boyfriend, which seems ridiculous.  A person’s ethnicity should not be my deciding factor in whether or not I should date them.  I’m just scared that I might be missing out on something if I am never to be part of a Korean family.  I don’t even know what that ‘something’ is! 

I look at other Korean adoptees I know and most of them have ended up with non-Asian significant others.  And they seem happy with their lives.  In the scheme of things, I’m sure that ultimately marrying a non-Asian guy would not be a negative thing.  I don’t want to focus so much on what I’ve missed that I actually miss out on someone standing right in front of me.  I don’t want to make the mistake of committing to a Korean guy just because he is Korean.  Relationships are built on many, many things.  It’s not necessarily one isolated piece of a person’s identity that makes it all click.  It comes down to more than common interests or common ethnicity.  I don’t want someone else to date me just because I’m Asian or just because we like the same music.  Maybe those are good starting points for sparking a connection, but those factors alone don’t build a foundation for a lasting relationship.  People are wonderfully complex and need to honored as such.  I just need to keep my heart and eyes open enough to see the big picture.      

Blurred lines

When you’re a single twentysomething and most of your friends start slowly but surely moving towards long-term relationships/marriage/babies, it’s all but impossible to not think about your own relationship status and what your future holds. A lot of people get married in their twenties and just make it look so darn natural. And it really is quite natural for a lot of people, but I think I might be an exception. Now more than ever I am considering this reality. I think about this stage of life which Erikson refers to as Intimacy vs. Isolation. Share your life with someone else or do your own thing flying solo. Which side of that vs. do I want to be on? And how do I negotiate that with my identity formation that continues to happen as a transracial adoptee?

I was in Barnes & Noble the other day and got caught up in this book by American actress Diane Farr called Kissing Outside the Lines which is all about interracial relationships. Farr, a white woman, married Chung Seung Yong, a Korean man. She talks about the struggles they have experienced and also interviews other interracial couples. I was skeptical when I realized an actress was the author, but it’s actually a fascinating read. Maybe what was most refreshing about it was someone tackling the issue of race head-on and making it clear how much race truly still matters, despite the colorblind perspective trying to take over. Isn’t it ironic how some people can preach equal treatment for everyone, but then flip out when one of their own crosses those color lines to find love?

To be honest, now I’m just confused. As a transracial adoptee, those color lines get blurred. For all the progress I’ve made trying to learn more about my Korean heritage and connect with other Asians, I still find myself most often drawn to white suburbanite guys. Given my upbringing, those guys are more familiar to me than guys of my own ethnicity. Even though me being with a white guy would represent an interracial relationship, culturally, I might still have more in common with him. We might not necessarily have the same kind of barriers other interracial couples might have because I grew up so whitewashed. I just have to watch out that I don’t pick someone trying to fulfill an Asian fetish. I know who I am (well, for the most part), but you can’t control how everyone sees you and I know there are men out there who see Asian women as exotic little mail-order brides. I think I’ve been fortunate to avoid such men thus far. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a vigilant eye out.

It seems like no matter whom I choose to be with, there may be some kind of cultural misunderstanding, at least initially. It all comes down to people looking at my Asian face and forming expectations based on that. One man might look at me and think subservient China doll. Another might look at me and think we share a cultural upbringing when we don’t. I do think about the possibility of marrying into an Asian family, a Korean family, even. If I never reunite with my birth family, marriage might be my only chance to experience what it’s like being part of a Korean family. My own family has already expressed how happy they’d be if I married an Asian guy which I find..kind of weird. I don’t think they fully realize how significant that union would be. If they’re using me as their standard for what other Asians are like (which I think some of them are), they will be in for a surprise! I am the only Asian in my family. There are no other Asians through adoption, marriage or otherwise. Maybe it would be nice to not be the only one, but there are still other challenges that would come with that. What if I fell in love with a Korean guy and then his family did not accept me as Korean enough? I don’t even need to be put into that situation to know it would be devastating.

At this point in time, I admit I am taking the path of least resistance. For me, to pursue a relationship with a Korean guy raised in a Korean family is maybe the scariest possibility of all. It means risking another rejection. So, I’m not doing that. Not that I’ve had the opportunity to recently anyways. Instead, I’ve started seeing a guy with dirty blonde hair and green eyes. He has rather beautiful eyes. They’re nothing like mine. Will I go my whole life never being with a Korean guy? Does it matter in the end? I really don’t know anymore. At the end of the day, I just want to find someone who sees me as enough. Someone whom I don’t have to worry about being white enough for or Asian enough for. I’m still so young with so much left to learn about relationships. I hope I’m brave enough to fight for love no matter what color it comes in.

My grandma as Yente

Sometimes life just calls for hilarity. I’ve been visiting/volunteering at the nursing home where my grandma resides. She’s in a dementia unit, which is actually not all that sobering. I think I’ve just been there so much that I’m used to the atmosphere and people. With every visit, I manage to take away some funny or touching moment and I have one that seems fitting for this blog.

First let me share a little about my grandma. She is a 94 year old whippersnapper. A very feminine, finishing school-type lady, but a whippersnapper nonetheless and I completely adore her. She’s the only grandparent I’ve ever really known. Interestingly she was also one of few family members who was visibly not thrilled about my parents adopting from Korea. That all changed the moment she laid eyes on me and we’ve had (as far as I can remember) a wonderful, loving relationship ever since. When I visit her at the home, she’ll sometimes introduce (well..re-introduce) me to her friends as her adopted Korean granddaughter. I honestly don’t mind at all. It kind of makes me chuckle a little. Never in my life before had she introduced me with such specifics, but I suppose the residents get confused enough, so a brief explanation such as that might help.

Anyways. There are tons of workers in the unit including one man whom my grandma has been bound and determined to set me up with. Why? Because he’s Asian..duh. His name is Ming and we always say hello to each other to satisfy my grandma, but this to me is just ridiculously funny. It’s like my grandma is playing ‘match the Asians’. Her mind processes us as visually compatible and that seems good enough. I appreciate her matchmaking attempt, but Ming is a decade older than me and married with children, so I don’t really see that one going anywhere. Yesterday she tried to plug him again to me, despite being annoyed with him for trying to get her to sing a solo at church service. She said she wanted to ‘tie him to a pole and throw him in the mud’. Not surprising. I love my grandma and I know that this matchmaking business is only one of her ways to try and ensure my happiness. She was terribly happy with my grandpa and told me that she hopes I have that kind of relationship someday, too. So, her intentions are good. I wouldn’t so easily excuse others for trying to set me up based on race, but my grandma totally gets a free pass. At least Ming is the only Asian worker on her unit.

On dating other Asians

Oh, dating. A potentially complicated matter for anyone. My mom recently told me that I need a boyfriend (thanks, Mom, thanks for that). Part of me agrees, though I am in no hurry (thanks, grad school, thanks for that). I’m not going to sit here and tell you that dating has been more complex for me because I am transracially adopted, but there are some anecdotes worth mentioning that I’d like to speak candidly about.

I’m 23 years old and I’ve had crushes on boys since about the second grade. However, I was not attracted at all to Asian guys until college. So, I’ve spent a relatively small portion of my life believing my fellow Koreans to be good-looking. Before that shift happened, I never gave Asian guys a second glance and I didn’t exactly look at Asian women as stunning beauties, either. When I was ten, a childhood friend (who also happens to be a KAD) developed a crush on me and I couldn’t stand it. I was actually upset at him because I thought he liked me solely due to us both being Asian. After all, we were pretty much the only Asian kids in our elementary school. I had only ever had crushes on white boys and, at that age, I never saw myself in a million years liking an Asian boy. This is what I’d consider a solid example of internalized racism—embracing negative views of my own race. No matter how sweet my friend was to me, he wasn’t white and his chances of me returning his crush did not exist. As horrible as it sounds, to have a crush on an Asian boy felt like moving a step down..inferior somehow.

Well. Fast forward 12 years later. Lo and behold, I finally ended up dating an Asian guy. Chinese American, to be exact, and his parents both immigrated to the US as adolescents. Somehow I got over my repulsion to liking Asian guys. I think perhaps this is partially due to my college having a modest, but visible population of Asian students. I remember having class with this one guy from Japan whom I was rather fond of. I wasn’t romantically interested, but it was easy for me to see attractive qualities in him. Somewhere during my undergrad years, I started seeing Asian guys instead of seeing through them. I think this change also went hand-in-hand with greater acceptance of who I was as an Asian woman. When I ended up dating my last boyfriend, there wasn’t some crazy, eye-opening epiphany. It just felt..normal? Nothing that special. I was afraid of there being barriers between me and other Asians raised in Asian families, but being with my last boyfriend helped me to dispel a lot of generalizations I had made about being Asian American. Maybe my resistance to like Asian guys also grew out of my own insecurity about not being ‘Asian enough’ to be with them.

Even now, I do not deny my insecurities, but I do feel freer to date within my own race without embarrassment. Who knows what guy I’ll ultimately end up with. I’m not sure that’s really the point of all of this. The point is that I am Korean and I can finally see other Koreans as attractive. As beautiful, even. Take that, internalized racism!