Actively like me. Not just tolerate.

I’ve been trying to tell you guys all along that my only absolutes for the men I would date are nice and funny and smart. Then I state a preference for dorky engineers or against serial killers, and I get comments about how I need to be more open minded because the man who is right for me might not fit my exacting criteria. In the Options post, I got a comment suggesting that I branch out from white men. The commenter had no way to know that my seven year ex wasn’t white; I’ll let the implications about racism on my part go for now. However, the experience of dating someone from an extended-family culture left me with another absolute, one that I mean profoundly and without exception, and which may well exclude men from other races. I am not fucking around when I say that I will never again date a man whose mother does not like me.

My ex’s mom hated me on sight. She hated me because I wasn’t of her race, her religion, wasn’t smaller than her son, didn’t wear designer clothes, couldn’t offer her family status in their native country like a girl from a good family would, because my parents are divorced, because I don’t eat meat like a reasonable person. She hated me. Things always stayed civil, if you don’t count the times when she would pull me aside to suggest some weight loss goals, but round about year four, when it looked like I could well be permanent, her opposition became more overt. She would call to tell him that it looked scandalous that my car was parked outside his apartment (and seriously! Fifteen minutes after I arrived the phone would ring from a city on the other side of the world, with a complaint about my car! Fucking amazing. All those aunts, all with nothing better to do.). She would announce family emergencies as we were on the verge of leaving for vacations. She would campaign against time spent with my family, who liked him unreservedly from the first meeting. My favorite was that she kept a list of reasons he shouldn’t be with me in her day planner.

It killed me that there was nothing I could ever do that would make me good enough for her son. That we were always delighted in each other’s presence wasn’t enough. I could never love him faithfully enough, or cook enough good food (and god knows my rice would never taste right) or put enough work into keeping a house or be kind enough to his siblings or get enough education or do anything that would convince her that I was a better option than any size-two girl of his race. The big extended family had some nice and some truly cracked-out people in it, but she genuinely believed every last stupidly drug-addicted or recklessly promiscuous or painfully shortsighted cousin, every mean or shallow or petty person in that family would have been sullied if he had married me.

She fought hard, too, which put me in an awful position. There was no possibility she would ever give, so he always had that pressure on him from one side. If I yielded, said that I guess we could skip that trip if his mom really needs him, well, she would do it again and I would always lose. If I held firm, said that we had planned this and we bought tickets and it was important to me, then I had to watch him feel terrible about the decision. I never got the feeling his mom cared how hard that was on him.

It was sad and awful for me, and worse for him. I am not willing to have that problem again. To nice and smart and funny, you can add “his mom likes me” as a rock-hard absolute. For the rest of it, I’m willing to let the world surprise me.