Women of colour sometimes don’t get our intended happy endings, not because of chance or our own shortcomings, but because of what society has decided we deserve. We have to carve out something different.
If we refuse to accept the denigrating behaviour, we may experience painful loneliness and the devaluation society projects onto unmarried women of a certain age. If we stay, we’re mocked as being “stupid’ or not loving ourselves. Shame is such a core feature of so many of our dating experiences.