Aw-w-w Sis, you hit the nail on the damned head with this one!!! It'll be 42 years this November 28th that I met and fell in love with my society-identified, white husband (he hates that shit -- according to him, he's Italian-American! I always ask him, "Yeah, and what box do you check on the f*ckin' census, and every other form, Mofo!"😆😆).

Black men weren't interested in my ugly, Black ass (I didn't have the light skin, or the "good hair"). Like you, "I wanted to date them, but they didn’t have any interest in me. They even made fun of me, called me Blackie and ugly, and enjoyed bullying and tormenting me."

But the husband tells me the first time he saw me in the Mess Hall at DLI (I was there for Russian and he, for Intermediate Spanish), he told his friends (a mixture of Black, white, Latino) at the table, "That's gonna be my wife!" They later told me how they laughed his ass under the table.

But the joke was on them. He pursued me like a Mofo -- giving me his car whenever I needed to go shopping (I didn't have one), having flowers delivered weekly on the doorstep of the off-campus apartment I shared with Laurine, my Army, Japanese-American, Russian linguist classmate and Donna, the Navy, Chinese linguist. We drove to Big Sur and hung out on Cannery Row. We enjoyed Monterey in a way I'd only dreamed about from reading books. Me and Laurine used his car often to go to San Francisco to visit our Russian teachers and learn about their culture so we could be better in our classes. But most importantly, he listened to and heard me. And when I got pregnant, he asked my mother for my hand in marriage (I was 24).

We got married at the courthouse in Monterey with my roommates and his friends in attendance throwing sunflower seeds instead of rice, after which, we were all to head to a planned, kick-ass reception/party at a swanky downtown hotel for which he'd paid. Everybody else made it -- we didn't. We got in his car and drove to Salinas, CA and stayed in a frumpy-assed motel -- and fell even deeper in love. I like the simple things.

As you said, "He so happened to love and accept me for who I am" -- and still does.

Again, like you, "At first, these comments used to bother me, but now they roll like water off a duck’s back. I truly don’t care what Black men think of my love and marital choices. I don’t owe them anything. I am content with my choice to prioritize love over the color of someone’s skin and I am all the happier because I made that choice."

Our two sons are grown now with brown babies of their own and I'm not only so, so proud of them -- but of the man who helped grow them into the men they've become.

Thanks for letting me share...