Comment from "d'opele" on Salon.com, in response to "White Men Seeking Sexy Asian Women," June 18, 2009

Slightly obsessed
I feel a little obsessed with this subject as it has tangentially touched my life. I'm a caucasian female American. Over 30 years ago I fell in love with my first boyfriend. The love, as long as it lasted, was mutual. I was an erotic ideal for him. But I remember him mentioning, even as I lay in his arms, that he had another ideal - an "Asian ideal." I felt stung to the quick by this - I could never ever become Asian for him. We broke up, he went on to a shortlived marriage - which ended when, while still married, he had an affair with a Japanese American woman, whom after a messy divorce he eventually married. I've never met her. They've been married for well over 20 years now. About a year ago he and I got back in touch. I have been in a somewhat vulnerable emotional state due to trying personal circumstances. We rekindled a rather steamy epistolary relationship, and my feelings for him were rekindled. He told me that he has no intention of leaving his wife, that he finds his marriage "comfortable" despite its being entirely sexless. ("I haven't so much as kissed my wife in years," he said.) At the same time, to my growing horror he let me know that throughout the entire course of his marriage he has carried on affair after affair after affair. He has arranged and compartmentalized his life so that his marriage and family life are insulated from the double life he leads. I realize now that my first boyfriend, now an aging middle aged man, is a classic highlevel narcissist, nothing more than a serial philanderer sex & romance addict. I am very disappointed though resigned to have come to this realization. But I still wonder, and this is what bothers me: that he knew beforehand that he had an "Asian ideal" and I believe that's the type whom he intended to marry all along. Is it possibly racist to have this a priori requirement in mind? To me it's not as though he fell in love with a woman who happened to be Japanese.

I also often wonder if his wife is aware of his double life. He has told me some self-serving rationalizing theories about how only in Western cultures do people expect to successfully combine marriage with romance & sex. Perhaps he married his "Asian ideal" because he has a business-like contract relationship with her (they are the very image of professional success and propriety I'm sure) while he carries on on the side. However, he goes to pains to shield her from his philandering. Culturally I suppose she's more American. If culturally she were Japanese then perhaps he wouldn't have to so carefully conceal his tracks from her - she would expect him to have sex & romance outside the marriage. He says that, ironically, she is terrified that one day he will leave her, just as she feels she stole him away from his first (caucasian) wife.

I don't know. Sometimes I think it's all tied up with his high-level narcissism. He's a conqueror of worlds, of sorts, very very accomplished. Marrying an Asian, in his particular case. Is it a symbol of cultural imperialism? I wonder.—d'opele

Comment in response to"d'opele," June 18, 2009

d'opele
Do you realize how lucky you are to have escaped from this prick? Why think of him? Forget about all the asian/white garbage and just find a decent man.