Interracial Marriage

Tricia & Christian -
London, England, United Kingdom

Married November 2014

Take a Picture, It'll Last Longer

Tricia’s boyfriend, Christian, was visiting from London when she noticed that he was acting funny. “I had returned home from work,” she says. “He met me at the gate and seemed quite excited for me to come inside… I had just entered the bedroom when I saw a cute replica of Kung Fu Panda on the bed, with a mysterious box in his paw. The panda was singing the song, “I’m too sexy for my shirt!” Christian took the box from the panda, got down on his knee, and asked me, “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Before we tell you what drew Tricia and Christian to one another, let’s find out how they found our site in the first place. Christian felt he had to venture online to meet the sort of woman he wanted to. “I have always been attracted to dark-skinned, exotic women,” he explains. “I found it hard to meet someone like this in my immediate area.”

Tricia nods in agreement. “I wanted to meet someone outside of my immediate environment who was not only racially different, but culturally different as well. [Your site] was not my first experience with online dating, but it has been the most successful of all the sites I’ve tried.”

She signed up with the username “Sweetnsxxe” (get it?). “I was pretty confident,” Tricia remembers. “I was on the site four months before we met.”

Christian was looking for much longer than that… In fact, he says he was a member for four years before finding the right person for him. When he spotted Tricia’s profile, he was quite impressed. “Her intelligence and open-mindedness came through in her writing,” he says. “She was direct and seemed to want the same things I did, in regards to a relationship. I also thought her photos were absolutely beautiful!”

To gauge her interest, Christian sent Tricia one of our icebreakers. “Christian flirted with me by sending a teddy bear, which I thought was quite cute,” says Tricia. She clicked on his pic to learn more but found that info were in short supply. “I thought his profile was vague,” admits Tricia. “I did not like his profile picture, but I loved the last photo in his album, where he twists his mouth in a very cute kind of way. I just went awwww… So I decided to give him a try!”

While Tricia wasn’t blown away by his profile, once they started talking on Skype she became intrigued. “Communication between us was quite easy,” she reports. “He asked the questions that mattered and he was able to handle the answers I gave. He was open-minded and willing to accept me for who I am — with or without makeup,” she laughs.

Right from the start, Christian had the sense that something special was in the works. “Even very early on, she made me feel like no woman has before,” he remarks. “I have had some bad experiences but with Tricia I felt that she was genuine and straightforward. It made me confident that meeting her would only strengthen our feelings for each other.”

With mutual affection achieved, it was time to get these two in the same room. Tricia’s early doubts had evaporated — she was ready to meet. “Most of all it was the fact that my children loved him — even on Skype,” she notes. “I think that children are often a better judge of character than us adults.”

So Christian flew from London to Trinidad. The exhaustion and irritations of his journey melted away once they had exchanged a hug of greeting. As he puts it, “I didn’t mind having a baby screaming her lungs out in my ear for 45 minutes, after a long flight. We were together, and that was all that mattered.”

Tricia remembers the first thing to cross her mind when Christian walked over to her. “Wow, he is quite good looking! Is this the man I am going to marry?” Christian says he came to an embarrassing realization. “Dammit, I’m staring at her!”

Fortunately, she didn’t mind. Tricia was just happy he’d made the trek to see her. “I could hardly believe that he was actually here with me. That we were face-to-face, no more Skyping or messaging. This was real!”

The visit validated Christian’s hopes about their compatibility. He was certain they would see each other again. “I knew that this was not just a date, but the beginning of something beautiful,” he says.

Another date? Tricia was up for it! “Well, since he had flown all the way from London, I had no choice but to give him a second chance,” she jokes. As they continued to learn more about each other, each new discovery only deepened their feelings for one another. “I found that she was much stronger and more complex than I had initially thought,” Christian says. “Also, her cooking was amazing!”

Any valuable takeaways from their online dating experiences? “Be honest with yourself and those you interact with,” begins Tricia. “Show respect even though things don’t always turn out the way you planned.”

She also warns against judging a book by its cover. “Throw away those stereotypes that are often used to judge others, especially about women who do not live in developed countries. Many of us are well educated and our sole purpose is not to gain a ‘green card’ or foreign passport. Like you, we seek that human connection which is universal — love, and thus peace.”

Christian’s word of advice for singles starts with a light-hearted reference to his smitten state, back when he met Tricia in person for the first time. “Don’t stare — it’s not polite,” he laughs, then grows reflective. “As a man coming from the West, its important to know that we don’t always have the best ways or practices where we come from. One of the most important things in dating interracially and interculturally is to have an open mind. Also, be honest and show humility.”

He’s certainly glad that he approached this relationship the right way. “I feel complete and I am walking around with a silly grin on my face,” Christian says of the love he now enjoys. “I see things much clearer now. I know where I want to go and what I want in my life.”

Tricia has seen a lot change for the better, too. “I am much happier now. It has brought even more focus and meaning to my life,” she says.

We asked the couple if they went looking for someone like this or if their chemistry came as a surprise. Tricia’s take on the question of “type” is this: “I didn’t really have a type, but I knew that I would know it when I saw it, and I definitely knew that he was it,” she says after some thought. Christian answers this way: “She was not my type, she was the woman of my dreams!”

Now you know why it’s no wonder he wanted to marry her. “First he proposed to me on Skype and I said, ‘yes,’” Tricia recalls. “But because he is such a gentleman he promised to propose to me in a traditional way.”

If a singing panda with a ringbox can be called traditional, then that’s just what he did. And the story doesn’t end there — Tricia and Christian sent us photos from their lovely wedding ceremony.

Tricia adds, in closing, “Follow your heart, despite what others may think or say. Many good things may not come to pass if we never try. Take the chance, step up and grab what is yours!”

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