To leave no doubts here, the answer is: A lot of empathy, Chuck! Actually, I once had a short termed relationship with a beautiful African lady. Nothing serious, but yet I was wondering about future problems, too. That our paths eventually seperated had nothing to do with this, though.

“it will tell me a lot about their true character”
This leaves me wondering – I hope nothing I said, maybe about your parents, offended you, Chuck?
:-/

Although I wonder what those on the far ends of the “political spectrum” feel about my situation (Laura and UpInSmoke on the right and Grey or whomever on the left) as it will tell me a lot about their true character.

Chuck: I hope that C.S.’s wisdom is of service to you

Good to see, actually, that we’re becoming a community here (complete with the rebelious teenagers!).

But the socioeconomic barriers are still vast. My advice, if you want it: First of all, whether or not to pursue any relationship against your parents wishes is complex. I agree about following your heart, but you have to weigh your heart feelings for your relationship with your parents against those for the girl. And, also, of course, whether she’s “worth it” in terms of being someone you could trust for the long haul, and whether or not you think your feelings will go the distance.

You seem fairly close to your parents so you can probably see that their objections come from valid concern for you, whether misguided or not. Remember that predjudices come from fear, and it might be worthwhile to see if you can gradually help them overcome that fear. Express to them that you can see why they might have concern about your future with this girl. Tell them the reasons that you think she’s it…as you expressed here, she’s taken herself above the station she was born into, and that’s pretty impressive.

As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about a conference I attended yesterday on nonviolent communication. It’s a pretty radical (but sensible) method of communication created by Marshall Rosenberg, and you may be interested (for broaching this subject with your parents as well as just generally..it’s really quite interesting). Basically the idea is to learn to understand the feelings and needs of the other person and then respond to that, so you are always seeing the real reason for what they are saying. That builds empathy so instead of feeling angry (even if there’s reason to feel that way) you can react without judgment and that builds the bridge to solving the problem.

Oh, and about my generation, here’s a story from my youth. In high school, I developed a close friendship with a black guy. His Dad was a New Orleans musician and was playing for one of our school dances, so Keith asked me to go with him. Now, he did want to date me, while my feelings were just platonic (and honestly I can’t say if it’s just my real feelings or if cultural taboos made me this way, but I’ve really generally not been attracted to black men) and I’d made that clear to him and to my parents. Didn’t matter to them though, they hit the roof and forbade me to go with him. Their objections were based on their fear that I’d be “encouraging him” and that I’d end up getting drawn into a romantic relationship with him. And it really wasn’t so much that they personally objected to that, but they were very concerned about what “other people” would think. And they weren’t the type to have been concerned about their own reputation (not at all the “keeping up with the Joneses type and never did anything for show), but they did truly fear that I’d face criticism, harassment, etc.

These things are just pretty ingrained and I think it’s going to take a few more generations to undo them. That’s sad, but that’s reality. And the economic divide will probably never go away; hopefully though, people like your parents will see the difference between the legitimate concern of marrying a person who doesn’t want to better themselves vs. the unfair concern about someone who has already proven that she does, and will, rise out of that situation.

I loved X. She was removed from my world. I am grief stricken. But it is far better to have loved her than not, or to never have had the blessing of loving her.

Unbelievable that these ‘Romeo and Julia’ problems still happen today! Sorry for you, Chuck. We have to love our parents, but sometimes they are a p*** in the a**. If you’re both in love, I’d say, forget about your parents, let them reconsider if their prejudice is more important than their son. If it’s just a friendship, maybe you can manage to avoid confrontation. But don’t rely on what I say, pls, better get some second and third opinions. To be honest, I’m notorious for screwing my relationships (oops, pun not intended).

Chuck: I second C.S.’s words. Very sad.

And, o, if I were you I would follow Gray’s advise on this one.

In other words, objectively spoken it is not better at all… it is what one does with it.

No, objectively I’d still say it’s better. Anything that has the potential to shape a person, to make them better able to love others, is positive even if it is hard and even if it is possible to mess it up and have it create the opposite effect. I think if you’re in love and it’s still too early to know if you’ll lose it, you can’t objectively evaluate whether the potential loss could ultimately be a good thing. I guess my perspective is that I’ve now experienced the loss several times and it was excruciating (certainly at the time I couldn’t have seen it as a positive) but it shaped my ability to now love others more fully, and to have a marriage that I’m confident will not end till “death do us part”. I don’t think I could have come to this relationship unless the others had been experienced, including the losses.

And believe me, if someone had quoted those lines to me during the time that I was experiencing my first love, I’d have felt the same way as you do. It’s probably not something you even should consider at that point in your life. The words aren’t convincing because it’s unthinkable that the current relationship will end, and so it’s better not to even go there. Better to just live for the moment and experience it all, and then see what comes. If that first relationship doesn’t end, that’s great, but that’s the exceptional case. Nothing wrong with believing that you are going to be the exception though

Come on, Chuck, sometines you have to follow your heart, not your parents!

Loss of love certainly hurts, but I have to agree with Tennyson. It might be easier to have never experienced love, but not better. The experience changes a person for the better, and one becomes a better person, more capable of loving others (as long as the pain of the loss is mourned and not allowed to poison future relationships.)

In other words, objectively spoken it is not better at all… it is what one does with it.

In either case he was… wrong.

In my opinion that is.

I find views like that to be so extremely silly that I have an incredible hard time respecting people who share those views.