intersectional heartaches

The other day, while sitting on my couch, mid-monologuing to my walls—as I often do—I stumbled upon a haunting conclusion about my love life. Before I go into that I need to give you some context.

If I had to summarize my love life, since moving to Portugal, in one word it would be traumatizing—and I do wish I were being dramatic. I hope you are familiar with the concept of intersectionality because if I were to delve into it right now, we'd be here forever. Intersectionality isn't just a buzzword in my life—it's the lens through which every interaction, every relationship, every romantic entanglement is filtered. I am an African woman, who is black and on top of that is plus-size. Those intersectional aspects of my being play a crucial role when it comes to dating—especially in a white-majority country.

During a conversation with one of my housemates, a doctor—who coincidentally is from the same country as I am—I mentioned my upcoming surgery and intention to lose some weight to reduce any possible complications and to also facilitate the healing process. To that, he seemed almost baffled. One of the reasons he was worried about my weight loss was that he didn't want me to do it to conform to the male gaze and the European standards of beauty. Where I'm from, fat women have never been considered unattractive—quite the contrary, men value curves. We're not treated like fetishes or little secrets they can't be seen with out in public.

I remember being catcalled and men just normally being attracted to me because of the way I looked—although my body began developing very rapidly at a young age, these interactions were rather problematic because I was underage, but that's not the point of this! Those problematic interactions shaped my early understanding of desirability, but in contrast to my experiences here, they stand out for a reason: they existed. I'm not saying I miss that harassment or that male attention but it was only recently that I realized that that has never happened during my time here. And because I moved here before my brain had fully developed, I never quite grasped why that was. I've noticed that only "ethnic" men seem to demonstrate any sort of attraction to me publicly, and now I understand why—and this isn't to say white men aren't attracted to me, or better yet women who look like me, it's just hard to separate fetish and fantasies from genuine attraction.

In talking with my white girlfriends, I noticed that our love lives were very different, in the sense of how men treated them versus how they interacted with me and another friend of mine who looks like me. They had far more success in dating, men usually respected them more, took them more seriously, and probably most importantly didn't treat them as sexual objects, as much. So, while I sat on my couch and reflected on these 7 long years dating Portuguese men—which is what I've mostly dated since being here—I realized that to a great number of them, that's all I'll ever be. Of course, that had dawned on me before.

I had a…colorful friendship with this guy that was on and off for a few years. The period in which we were off was because he had gotten himself into a relationship. When we reconnected again, he seemed like a completely different person. He apologized for how things went down between us and that he missed our friendship. I, personally, missed the sex so we got back to talking and hanging out again but because he was different this time around, I found myself developing feelings for him.

Portugal is a small country, so a 30-minute drive is significant, yet he'd make that journey whenever one of us wanted to hang out—always at my place. Knowing my love for popcorn, he always brought some over—a seemingly small gesture that meant more than it should have. He also expressed how much he liked being with me because he felt like it was a safe space and he could be himself, so we didn't always have sex when he came over because we liked being around each other. That was until the nurse came into the picture. He was my friend so obviously, we talked about our love lives.

I could see that things with the nurse were progressing, as much as he tried to downplay the situation. It was to a point where their respective friend groups knew about them being together and they all hung out—I saw this all through Instagram because again, he was trying to downplay their relationship. He never wanted to stop seeing me but I was getting tired of the situation because I was at a point where I needed more, not just from him but from anyone who wanted to be in my life. When I realized they were getting pretty serious and taking trips abroad together and doing couple-y things, I had to break it off because certain things started to dawn on me.

First of all, we always hung out at my place because he possibly did not want to parade me around the city and risk being seen with me—here, I presumed it was because of the nurse and possible acquaintances seeing us. He did just the bare minimum to keep me interested because I was satisfying a fetish for him. And this I knew for a fact. He would talk about my body often and how he loved my curves—and his general love for curvier women—but when I thought about his ex and the nurse, they were the complete opposite. When I realized all this, I broke things off and told him he should focus his attention on the nurse because I needed more and he was never going to give me that.

After the conversation with my housemate, I had no choice but to sit down and analyze every interaction I've had with all the men I dated and it was daunting, to say the least.

Before I go on, something I picked up on—and this is a fact whether you agree with it or not—is that white men see black women, in general, as hypersexual beings, and that problematic perspective is translated in the way they interact with us. I, myself, would not say I am a very sexual person, if anything I identify as a demisexual. But looking back and seeing how a lot of the times I was treated as a pair of walking tits and not much more and any efforts made to maintain a connection with me were purely to satisfy sexual cravings, was earth-shattering.

That isn't to say I didn't meet decent people who embraced who I was, but they were few and far between. It also doesn't mean they didn't possibly have any internalized fatphobia or biases. There is one particular guy, who I fell in love with and today we are strangers. He confessed his love for me—unprompted and a month later he was gone. He swore up and down that he was a piece of shit and I deserved better than him, or that he wasn't ready to give me what I needed because he couldn't be in a relationship. During the almost one year we were "seeing" each other—because he could never commit to the term dating—he did make a few remarks about him never having been with a person as big as I was or something of the sort. Needless to say, after he professed his love for me after he ghosted me a month later, he entered into a relationship…with a skinny white woman.

I don't think his problem was commitment—well not entirely—it was commitment to a fat woman. I lost the love of my life because he couldn't wrap his head around being with a fat woman. Well, at least this is my perspective anyway.

Dating in these parts has been an eventful endeavor—and I haven't even spoken about all the racism, stereotyping, sexual harassment, and assault that I've had to endure. I realized, sat on my couch in tears, that unless I found a miraculous man who had no problem with any of these insignificant things—because let's face it, a person's weight shouldn't dictate how they're valued or treated—I would only have success in dating if I went back to my country.

You could say "Stop dating white men," and to that I say yes, maybe but here's the thing: I meet most of these creatures through dating apps. I'm not a particularly social person because I struggle with social anxiety so I don't meet anyone "the old-fashioned way." I've had Tinder Gold before because my bank offered a free subscription—random I know—so I got to see the people who wanted to match me and very rarely was there a black man on that list, and the ones who were there I wouldn't date to begin with because they were just not my type. There's also an underlying issue of social class that is very prominent in my country, and having grown up upper middle class, my parents expect me to find someone of a similar background because that's who is going to be able to provide for their daughter the same way they have—of course, my parents don't know that I'm not dating to find a provider, otherwise, my being in university would be almost pointless, I just want to love and be loved. However, these are things I think about because money does put a strain on relationships. And this distance I create between myself and men who seem to not be doing so well financially isn't reserved for black men, it's a standard for everyone. Again, not to find a provider but because I would like to live a comfortable life and I'm working hard towards that, so I want to be with someone that can keep up with me.

I am digressing, pardon me I tend to ramble. So, there I was, sitting on my couch reflecting on my love life and how miserable it has been so far. I was not able to come up with any solutions for my problem. Even after I lose some weight for my surgery, I am still going to be a fat black woman. I'm not aiming to lose weight to be skinny, I have never been skinny in my entire life. And I don't mind having a bit of weight it doesn't bother me as much anymore—we'll unpack that trauma some other time. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the future holds. I don't know how that'll go, because in the meantime I have sworn off dating—I say as I am currently going through a "breakup," but this time I genuinely don't think the intersectionality of Lwiny had anything to do with it, I just think he was a piece of shit.

I wish I had wise advice to leave you with, but I'm still trying to comprehend my predicament. Maybe life doesn't owe me love, and maybe that's okay. But it would be nice, wouldn't it? To not have to keep learning resilience the hard way. Yet here I am—with an odd comfort in knowing that I'm still standing, still wondering, still daring to hope, still ready to love.