Back to Ask the Experts Page Back to NYSCCC Home Page
A TRANSRACIAL ADOPTEE WRITES:I am British-Asian. I was adopted by a white British family when I was still a baby. I had a good childhood, but I always felt there was something 'off'. In my teenage years and early twenties I was very promiscuous. I just wanted someone to want me. I ended up getting pregnant, and after my mother told me she wouldn't support me if I had the baby, I decided to have an abortion. I have never really forgiven her.
I found my birth mother when I was in my early twenties and started to write to her. She didn't respond for about 3 years. I found it difficult to be around my own family as my mother, in trying to support me, isolated me by always mentioning it at family meals.
I ended up going to the States for a year, running away and ending up in a relationship with an alcoholic. I began cutting myself, but I did not continue after I returned to Europe and met the man I later married. He is African-Americanand and suffered abuse and abject poverty, foster and group homes throughout his childhood. We had a long distance relationship (him in US and me in UK) for six years. He met my family, and my mother decided she didn't like him and told me he was fat and controlling and why I shouldn't be doing his laundry. I cut off contact with my family for two years after that.
I lied to him for the first three years of our relationship about the number of people I slept with because I was so scared of losing him. I eventually told him the truth, but he found it so difficult to forgive me and trust me again. I developed other damaging behaviors such as working out to the extreme and only eating a salad every day. I lost a lot of weight. I then went to visit him and we managed to start again.
I always felt like I never deserved him and that he suffered so much as a child and that he didn't deserve what I did to him. We planned to get married and eventually did last year. My father came but my mother couldn't make it. My father gave us a plant for our wedding gift, and my mother and brothers, nothing.
My husband has worked so hard trying to build something for us. He has had two jobs, working up to two full days at a time. I seem to just mess things up. I don't know if I do it in a self-destructive type of way or if I am just selfish and egotistical. I have a tendency to make up excuses. I don't know if I have always used being adopted, living as a white person in a brown person's skin, being taken from my birth mother as an excuse for being messed up. I feel like I have never fit in anywhere.
I learned to be completely submissive growing up in the UK in a majority white area. I do what I'm told, follow the rules and everything has run fine. Now I live in the US, I'm married and have a responsibility to myself to sort things out.
When my husband talks to me about respect, I'm not completely sure I can really relate. I wasn't really brought up to have self-respect, and so I'm not sure if I am able to really give him the respect he deserves. I am preoccupied with making other people (specifically white people) feel comfortable, often at my own expense, and I get extremely angry with myself.
As you can see I have some self-esteem issues. I know I have hurt myself and am very good at beating myself up emotionally. I want to stop this self-pitying behavior. I did not go through what my husband went through as a child, and I feel like I am guilty for his additional heartache with me. We have not yet been married a year, but we survived six years long distance. I love him but somehow have a basic lack of respect for him by not always doing what I say I will and not showing him I appreciate all his hard work. Having a shallow long-distance relationship with my family now and not having kept in touch with with him, which I wasn't most of the time when I was living in the UK on my own.
What I want most in the world is for us to be happy, have a family (although I am convinced I will never have a child because of having had the abortion) and a solid relationship. But I keep on not doing what we have agreed for the last six years needs to be done. He is fulfilling his side, but I am not. I get home late and just don't feel like cooking, so I don't even though I had agreed that I would, and I don't know why I'm not doing it.
I don't want to lose him. I feel like there's no point to anything without him. I feel like every time we have had an argument since I've been here (on average once a month), he threatens to send me back to the UK. This just drove me crazy and I began to have irrational thoughts. I understand and knew he had levels of tolerance and could not go beyond them. He walked away from his family at a young age, and I know he would do the same with me.
I just have no idea what I'm meant to do. We are both intelligent, and he has a good secure job and profession. I had one in the UK, but I'm having to re-do things here, so he is supporting me to do what I need to do. Note, I am still making sure the rent is paid so we can still save.
I am sorry for saying all of this. My intention was not to go off, but I am really feeling quite desperate and just need a point in the right direction. I want to save my marriage if it isn't too late. I would be really grateful of any advice at all.
John Raible Answers:
I feel for you, I really do. It sounds like you realize that you have some adoption-related issues to sort out. I suggest that you contact an adoption agency that offers post-adoption services. See if they can refer you to a good therapist who has been trained in adoption issues. Hopefully you can find one near you to visit once a week, and not have to pay too much money. However, even if you do have to pay, it will be worth it. Getting myself some therapy was the best thing I did for myself up to that point. It can help put things in perspective and validate your experience.
If private therapy is not available, look for a support group for adoptees and foster care alumni. You need and deserve help, and with a bit of research you should be able to find someone to talk to. I wish you all the best!
To share your experience or thoughts on this topic, or to submit another question, please click here.
Back to Ask the Experts Page Back to NYSCCC Home Page
08/31/2007