A
female
age
30-35,
*zHeStEr09
writes:I am 17 years old and I am with a 18 year old black guy. I live with my grandparents and they grew up back in the days were black people were nothing but slaves and the help. Well so my grandparents don't like it at all, but i really don't care. He is the sweetest guy I have met so far, I know people think I should get out and met more people but why go out and met someone when your happy with the person your with, cause I am defiently happy. I haven't had the best luck with guys in the best. ... I am with someone that means ALOT to me... He works and has a car and will be getting his own house in January. I won't turn 18 till next year in december. He plans to start college this coming year in August (( going to college then medical school)) and then I will graduate next year, but I will get out of highschool half a year early cause I have enough credits. Then I plan on starting college the next year in august. I don't have a job, but mom has always said she will pay for me to go to college so that I will have a good education and I truely wanna go to college. I wanna be a forensic scientist. I plan on going through with highschool and college ALL THE WAY. I am ready to marry my man and to settle down, not yet start a family, but just be with someone that excepts me for me. What can I possible do to get out of the house sooner than i turn 18 Reply to this Question
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female
reader, miminoisette +, writes (21 November 2007):
 Er. You're seventeen? Unless your grandparents are in their 140s, the most they remember is Jim Crow, which was hell, but not slavery. If you're dating a person of color, please try to educate yourself on the issue of racism then and now; otherwise, you're stepping into a minefield without any convenient smiley faces to mark the disaster spots.
As for getting out early, just... wait. I promise you there aren't any extra months between seventeen and eighteen. You'll have a stable home, as opposed to an apartment with a boy who probably doesn't have any experience living on his own, either. He'll still want you when you're eighteen. (If he won't, perhaps you need to reconsider your devotion to him.)
Take the time between graduation and college to learn more about what it's really like to make it as a young couple on your own. Even if your mother's covering your schooling, there will be rent to pay and possibly car payments for one or both of you. Think about how you're going to juggle household chores with school. Plan as much as you can. You'll be glad you did.
I wish you the best of luck.
A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (6 November 2007): Your grandparents need to get their heads out of the 18th century. They may eventually do it or they may not, but unfortunately there's a limited amount that you can do about it. You may just have to distance yourself from the situation and let them deal with it in their own time. Sooner or later they will have to decide to accept him or lose their grandaughter because of it. (That nasty side effect is that this sometimes reveals that the parents' racial hangups are more important to them than keeping a relationship with their own children. Ouch.) Don't force the issue all the time with the grandparents. Try to keep steering clear of obvious sources of spats about it. But definitely don't accept anything less than decent normal respect for the BF from them either. He should be be treated with a normal level of respect by them. No halfway about it.It also helps if the grandparents sense that you're dating this non-white guy just because race truly does not matter to you. Rather than if you originally started dating him partly just BECAUSE you wanted to force your grandparents to accept it.And these cases can get even more complicated. Sometimes the parents of the girl are pissed becuase they know that the girl is letting herself be treated worse by the non-white guy than she would ever tolerate being treated by just a lowly "white boy" boyfriend. There are some cases where the parents are actually doing the right thing (wanting the BF gone for being a bad guy towards their child) for all the the wrong motivations (because the parents/GPs are just racist). In a case like this it can really get tricky for the outside advisor to know what to say to everyone. I'm not declaring that this must be your situation or anything. It's not even politically correct to suggest this at all. But it does happen sometimes so I wanted to mention it.
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