Dear Prudence,
How do you get over breaking up with someone when they didn’t do anything wrong and you still love them? My ex-girlfriend is amazing. She is beautiful, smart, and kind—but it turns out her family are huge racists. This isn’t something she had kept secret from me exactly, but I had thought it was racist like my grandma (who sometimes says something she heard in the 50s and hasn’t thought about since, but will stop if you explain why it is hurtful).
My GF’s parents, siblings, and two in-laws, however, are full-on racists. Her brother has a swastika tattoo on his neck (it wouldn’t be any better anywhere else, but he isn’t even a secret fascist. It is out and proud). My GF’s argument is that she keeps in touch with them because otherwise they won’t hear any other point of view. That she is just doing what I do for my grandma, it is just taking a longer time.
I can respect that, but I have a mixed-race daughter (her mother and I were 15 when she was born), and I can’t have her be a teachable moment OR a casualty to this. My GF insists she’d never bring my daughter around her family … but then what? She wants to spend holidays with them, so my daughter is always excluded from our holiday celebrations? And what if we have kids? They get to meet the racist uncle and bring that home to their sister?
So we broke up right before Thanksgiving dinner, after the father made a gross comment about my ex, and now I am in a seedy motel trying to reschedule my flight home. I know I made the right decision. At the end of the day, my daughter comes first.
But I just don’t know how to have a break-up that isn’t angry, I guess. It isn’t my gf’s fault that her family are racists or that she wants them to learn better. I’m not wrong, I don’t think that my daughter deserves better than having that around her, even indirectly.
It is a no-fault break-up, and it sucks.
— Blame Game Fail