I’ve Been Thinking… Did My Past Shape Who I Fell in Love With?

Last week I was sitting getting some bits done while listening to loads of my favourite music from way back in the day. Keith Sweat, DMX, Joe, Kanye West, Aaliyah and plenty more.

It’s music I still hear now, Dammy loves a lot of it too, but I think actually sitting there with no distractions and properly listening made me reminisce. I started thinking about the music I loved when I was younger, which somehow turned into remembering the programmes I watched, the films I obsessed over and all these random little pieces of teenage me that I hadn’t thought about for years.

And somewhere in the middle of all that reminiscing, I realised just how much of what I loved growing up came from Black culture.

The things I loved without really thinking about why

Music was probably the biggest part of it. 112, Donell Jones, Fugees, Boys 2 Men, Mary J. Blige, Usher, Next, Talib Kweli… I could keep going. At 14, my mum even pretended I was 18 so I could get into the MOBO Awards . I remember I went to see Usher and Kanye live too.

But it stretched far beyond music. So many of the TV programmes I loved had predominantly Black casts. I watched The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Kenan & Kel, Sister, Sister, My Wife and Kids, The Steve Harvey Show, Everybody Hates Chris and City Guys. Thinking about City Guys recently unlocked one of the most random memories I’ve managed to retain from childhood: at school we once had to look after a boiled egg, presumably to teach us some kind of responsibility, and I named mine Jamal. I’m almost certain it was because I liked Jamal from City Guys!

Films were another huge part of it. Martin Lawrence was and still is, one of my absolute favourite actors; Blue Streak was my favourite film and I loved Life. I was also a huge Will Smith fan. I went to the Hitch premiere in London and managed to get my I, Robot DVD case signed by him, which was obviously a very big deal to teenage me. Comedy was part of it too. I loved stand-up and watched people like Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and Richard Pryor.

Then there was basketball. I genuinely loved it. I went to see the Harlem Globetrotters, but it wasn’t something I only watched. After school and at weekends, I’d go with my friends to our little local playground with a basketball hoop and watch the boys play. I had Jordans too, which makes me laugh looking back at pictures of 14-year-old me wearing them now they’re everywhere again.

It wasn’t only what entertained me, though. It was also what I chose to read and learn about. Maya Angelou was one of my favourite poets. Her words stayed with me, and I’ve quoted from her poetry many times over the years, and I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as well as her poetry collection And Still I Rise.

That interest extended into Black history, particularly in America. I read about the Civil Rights Movement, the slave trade, racism and the experiences of Black Americans because I genuinely wanted to understand them. In fact, part of the reason I chose History for my GCSEs was because I knew the course would cover subjects including the slave trade and racism, and I waned the opportunity to learn more about them.

I think that’s an important distinction when I look back now. I wasn’t consciously thinking about race every time I put on a song, watched a film or laughed at a comedy programme; most of those things were simply things I enjoyed. But I wasn’t oblivious to race either. There were histories and experiences very different from my own that I actively wanted to understand.

When I started putting all of this together last week, I realised it wasn’t one little corner of what I enjoyed growing up. It was music, television, films, comedy, poetry, history, sport and fashion. Yet I don’t remember looking at all of those things and consciously grouping them together as Black culture. I wasn’t looking at my music collection, my favourite actors, the programmes I watched or the trainers on my feet and joining the dots.

They were simply things I loved.

Somewhere in my twenties, I made parts of myself quieter

If I’m truthful, during my twenties I suppressed quite a lot of what I’d loved when I was younger. I listened to less of the music and became disconnected from things that had once felt very naturally part of me.

I don’t think there was one particular moment when I consciously decided to do that, and I don’t want to invent an explanation now simply because I’m looking backwards. Life changed, the people around me changed, I changed, and somewhere amongst all of that, parts of myself that had once been quite loud became much quieter. I don’t think I even realised how much I’d pushed into the background until I met Dammy.

One of the things I loved about our early conversations was how many little things we connected over. Music was a big part of that. Suddenly I had someone who loved so much of the music I’d grown up loving. We could talk about the same artists, know the same films and understand the same references. He’d play something and I’d remember just how much I’d always loved it.

There was something incredibly familiar about that connection, not because Dammy was Black, but because we had things in common. I could talk about and enjoy things I’d loved growing up, and he genuinely loved them too. It was actually one of the things that made me feel connected to him very early on.

There’s one moment from before we’d even had our first video call that still makes me laugh. Dammy randomly quoted Blue Streak during one of our conversations without having any idea that it was my favourite film. I remember thinking I was going to marry this man. Slightly dramatic considering I hadn’t even video-called him yet, but apparently knowing your Martin Lawrence films gets you surprisingly far with me!

Then other people started writing my history for me

Perhaps that’s partly why I’ve always found some of the assumptions people make about our relationship so interesting. Since being with Dammy, complete strangers have tried to explain parts of my own history to me based on the fact that I’m now married to a Black man.

I’ve been told I’m only with a Black man because white men didn’t want me. I’ve seen people assume that I suddenly became interested in Black men when I met Dammy. I’ve even been asked why, if I’d always found Black men attractive, I wasn’t with a Black man before him.

That last one particularly fascinates me, because why would the race of someone’s previous partners tell you every kind of person they’ve ever been capable of finding attractive? I’ve found Black men attractive and I’ve found white men attractive. Apparently attractive men have had the audacity to exist across racial groups.

My own relationship history is actually a good example of that. I got into a relationship with a white boy when I was 16, who would eventually become my first husband and the father of my two oldest children. That relationship became a huge part of my teens and twenties, but the fact that I spent those years with a white man didn’t mean white men were the only men I was capable of finding attractive. It simply means that’s the relationship I happened to be in.

Looking back, though, I think there was probably another layer to it too. I wasn’t as confident in myself when I was younger, and I do think there was a part of me that worried about what people might say if I was with a Black man. That’s interesting for me to acknowledge now, because who we’re attracted to and who we feel confident enough to choose aren’t necessarily always the same thing.

None of that makes me regret the path my life took. I don’t. That relationship gave me my two oldest children and is part of the life that eventually brought me here. But our relationship history isn’t necessarily a complete record of our attraction. Sometimes it also reflects timing, circumstance, confidence and simply who happened to come into our lives.

At the opposite end of that is another assumption: that a white woman who is with a Black man must have some kind of fetish for Black men. But there’s an important difference between being attracted to someone who is Black and being attracted to someone because they are Black.

I didn’t consciously grow up planning to marry a Black man, although there is one slightly strange part of my teenage years that I’ve spoken about before. I used to have a recurring dream about my future husband. We were in a kitchen, there were four children running around us, and the man I was with was Black. Years later, I ended up married to Dammy with four children - something I’ve always found a little surreal when I think about it.

What that dream meant, if it meant anything at all, I still don’t know. Maybe it was my teenage brain piecing together all sorts of things I’d been exposed to, maybe it was coincidence, or maybe our lives sometimes unfold in ways we can’t explain. I’ve never really tried to give it a definitive meaning.

What I do know is that I wasn’t consciously choosing my future husband according to race. The fact that so many things I enjoyed growing up came from Black culture didn’t mean I was deliberately seeking out a Black boyfriend. I met people, had relationships and eventually met Dammy.

He’s a Black Nigerian man and I’m a white British woman. Those things are obviously parts of who we are, and they’ve shaped our experiences and our relationship in plenty of ways. They’ve given us things to learn from one another, things to misunderstand, things to debate and also things to appreciate. But our races alone aren’t the explanation for why we chose each other.

Sometimes I think we see the couple before we see the two people

When people see us, some of the first things they notice are obvious. I’m a white woman, Dammy is a Black man. I’m British, he’s Nigerian. We’re an interracial couple. Those are all perfectly accurate descriptions of us, but I sometimes wonder how quickly those descriptions turn into assumptions about everything else.

Once we’ve put two people into categories, it becomes surprisingly easy to start filling in the blanks. We make assumptions about why they’re together, who they must have dated before, what they’re attracted to and how much their race or culture influenced their choice of partner. In interracial relationships especially, people seem fascinated by whether somebody has “always dated” a particular race, whether one person is trying to become part of the other’s culture, whether somebody couldn’t find a partner of their own race, or whether their attraction must be a fetish.

Before long, we’ve constructed an entire history for two people we’ve never met, based largely on what they look like standing next to each other.

But there were almost 31 years of Laura before Dammy, and almost 31 years of Dammy before Laura. Neither of our histories began when we became an interracial couple. We each arrived in this relationship carrying decades of experiences, interests, influences, friendships, relationships and memories that had already shaped who we were.

And perhaps some of those experiences did influence the people we eventually became attracted to or the things that made another person feel familiar to us. What I don’t think we can do is look at the person somebody eventually married and confidently work backwards, turning every part of their past into evidence that this was always where they were heading.

Looking back at teenage me now, I do wonder how much the things we grow up around influence who we become as adults. Did the music I listened to, the films and programmes I watched, the people I admired, the things I read and the subjects I wanted to understand shape what later felt familiar or attractive to me? Maybe they did. I’d actually be surprised if the things we’re exposed to growing up have no influence on us at all.

What I can’t do is look at all of those things now and say, “Well, obviously she was going to marry a Black man.” That’s far too simplistic. Those experiences may have helped shape me, but they weren’t a roadmap to Dammy.

Those things were simply parts of who I was. I wasn’t listening to certain music because I wanted to be Black, and enjoying things created by Black people didn’t somehow make me less white. My interest in Black history wasn’t about trying to claim somebody else’s experiences either. If anything, it came from recognising that those weren’t my experiences and wanting to understand them.

The same applies to attraction. Finding Black men attractive doesn’t automatically mean fetishising Black men, just as having dated white men doesn’t mean they are the only men I could ever have been attracted to. There’s a difference between being attracted to someone who is Black and being attracted to someone because they are Black.

Looking back now, I don’t think I can neatly explain what any of those things meant. Maybe the things I loved, the people I admired and what I was exposed to growing up influenced what later felt familiar or attractive to me. Even that recurring dream makes me wonder sometimes. Maybe some of it shaped the person I became in ways I didn’t understand at the time. I think that’s far more interesting to consider than trying to turn any one part of my childhood into a simple explanation for who I eventually married.

And perhaps that’s why sitting there listening to all that music last week affected me more than I expected it to.

It wasn’t really nostalgia for one particular song or artist. It was nostalgia for a version of myself that existed long before Dammy knew me, a version I’d made quieter for quite a few years without really realising I’d done it.

Dammy didn’t create that version of me. He simply became someone I could share those parts of myself with, and somewhere along the way, he helped me find my way back to them.

And I’m really grateful that he did.