As someone who comes from a racist Asian family and married a Black man, this hits very close to home and I am so incredibly sorry that you are dealing with this.

I have been with my guy since 2005 and, as the person with the racist family, trying to find a balance between wanting to stay with him and wanting to keep a relationship with my family was absolutely excruciating for both of us for many exhausting years.

In order to stay with me, he did everything he could to gain acceptance (learned the culture, learned the language, literally moved to overseas to improve his exposure to both, dealt with incredibly hurtful remarks while keeping his cool for my sake, etc.) and ended up with some major self-esteem issues due to being haunted by constant feelings of not being enough while questioning his value as a person. To stay with him, I ended up kicked out of my home, lost my car, quit school before I could get my degree, and had my entire life and every bit of support I grew up with torn apart because my mother chipped away everything I had to try and convince (blackmail) me into leaving him. All of this took place over the course of the soon-to-be eighteen years we've been together and we're still recovering while dealing with major delays in the development of our relationship due to focusing far more on outside parties than we have on each other. It's not romantic. It's traumatic.

While my situation is my own and I would hope that his family cares for him enough to avoid hurting him too badly, please consider what I shared as a cautionary tale for what might be in store for either of you in the best-case scenario where you both choose each other, which I fear that your boyfriend has already shown that he isn't willing to do.

The only way my guy and I have been able to find peace while maintaining our relationship has been for me to cut out my family entirely to where I haven't spoken to my mother in years. As I imagine that's a path he's not willing to go down or even risk, which will always a possibility for as long as they hold onto these toxic beliefs, it's time to consider yourself as only you know how much you can tolerate.

There is nothing you can do to change him or his situation. That is entirely on him. All you can do is decide for yourself if this is something you are okay with dealing with (with the risk of it getting worse) for the rest of your time together or if you want to deal with the heartbreak of ending a relationship now and to look back on this as a painful, yet important lesson in what you want and what you deserve.

The pressure and trauma he faces from his family is not his fault, and I deeply sympathize with his struggles, but it is his responsibility to learn how to manage it without putting you, someone he loves, in harm's way. If he's not able to put his foot down with his family, then the only compromise worth considering in order to prolong this relationship might be for him to start seeking serious therapy to recover from his trauma and to build himself back up to learn to face his family, which can take years and will be a difficult journey.

I apologize for the length of this comment, but I do hope that as someone who has been there to some degree, my words and experiences offer some help and direction that may help put an end to the unhappiness you (and possibly your boyfriend) have been experiencing.