Unraveling the European fantasy of romance for Black women

There’s something that happens to my body once I cross the Atlantic and am wandering on foreign land, far away from home in a place where I don’t speak the language. My shoulders that were once squared and settled near my ears dutifully drop and regain their place with my neck, chin, chest and clavicle.

Instead of my frame being hunched over, shrouded from the world in fear, angst and horror, my body sways from side to side, like a loving sashay to a lover. My resting bitch face is replaced with a smile that usually only gets glares in return. Turns out, Europeans don’t know what to do with an overly cheerful American.

But I can’t help myself.

I feel…closer to who I would actually be if I wasn’t perpetually crushed under the tonne of American capitalism that taunts me with how many ways I am not good enough. In Europe, I can stroll the streets and pretend that I’m not far as hell from that magical number in my bank account that would make all my career anxiety about earning potential disappear.

I can spend 10€ on a little lunch and not worry that the $45 I would’ve spent on the same meal at home (without tip!) will blow the shoestring budget until the next (late) freelance check comes. In Europe, it is all a fairy tale and nothing feels real. Certainly not when it comes to romance either.

Now, Spain is my place. In June after seeing Beyoncé in London, I journeyed onto the Iberian Peninsula where I spent a sweltering few weeks immersing myself in my favorite country. It’d been years since I’d last been to Spain—two years actually. My last visit to Madrid was a mere weeks before my Dad’s death. One could say I had a weird mental association.

But Spain has always been my place where I feel freest and most like myself. After a hard first half of the year and a weird birthday, I wanted some wonder. I strolled the streets of Madrid, Murcia, Valencia and Barcelona. I took buses and trains. I hailed a taxi from hotels when I got lost and Uber wasn’t usable. I ate in back alleys with the lull of fast Spanish rising and falling in a chorus around me.

And I had never felt more at home and more lonely.

The feeling was so reminiscent of the year I spent living in Spain as an English teacher. How so many (female) friends expected every update I gave them to be filled with story after story about how I was enchanted by a brown-eyed, olive skinned Spaniard. When in reality, those same men looked right through me as if I didn’t exist like I wasn’t an option or reality for them.

No flirting, no wide-eyed grins as a mere human, let alone for romance. This feeling got me thinking about the hordes of other Black women who look to Europe to be the place where they finally find love, even if the anecdotal stories from someone’s friend or cousin are a bastion of sheer luck and opportune chance. Not the happily ever after that most of us pine for, either loudly or quietly.

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Unpacking these stories and whirlwind tales that so and so had when they went to Rome that one time or how a friend’s coworker set off a two-week trip in the South of France and somehow never came back because she found her person is often rife with assumption, an oversimplification of the global iterations of Blackness and stereotypes that border on misogynoir and fetishzation.

How Black women are treated in this world and in love is exploited for the vulnerability of it all—watch how fast the dated and out of context statistics come out when a group of Black women who are successful and of a certain age express understandable frustration about the lack of dating prospects. But it’s more than idle chatter that has been perpetuated in most social circles for eons. What is reflected in media and other spaces mirrors that Black women want romance, can’t find it and need to look somewhere other than right where they are to even have a semblance of a chance. 

In 2017, Bravo aired their short lived reality series To Rome For Love. The premise is five Black women who have the time and money to focus on finding love in no where else than Italy, in the Roman capital. Love expert Diann Valentine guides these women through this journey armed with her team who gives the women support as they navigate matches and go on dates.

This approach is similar to that of two travel companies created for the very purpose of getting Black women abroad for unforgettable travel experiences with a side of serendipitous romance on purpose: Venus Affect and Globalnista (formerly known as Black Girl Travel). The former is the brainchild of none other than Diann Valentine.

Getting on board with these trips, at least with the Venus Affect, has a steep price tag: $50,000. But the website promises a life-changing dating experience tailored to your needs and wants in a partner you’re seeking. Perhaps it works. Perhaps it doesn’t. The fact that travel groups and services like this exist speaks to something bigger: how the exhaustion and demoralization that Black women continually face in dating experiences is a pain point for many, one worthy of throwing money at it as a problem to be easily solved. And that financial access and class privilege can eradicate all those worries with a signature on a check. It’s never really that easy though is it?

What none of these travel companies touch on is how the same brand of liberation they are selling to women who may in many respects be reeling in desperation (sorry, I had to say it) and vulnerable in particular ways because of it needs proper nuance and context. Dating and looking for romance, hoping and praying for it, is complicated for anyone in this modern age, especially Black women.

There is no golden ticket that ensures you get there. So many factors can shape whether or not you are partnered: desirability, conventional attractiveness, class, education, likability and how much you perform to be seen as suitable. Engineering our way to love through hopping on continents isn’t a guarantee of anything other than being exposed to those who are different from your natural environment. But maybe these travel companies purport that is the point?

I’m sure none of these travel companies who are selling a dream share negative possible experiences that Black women could have in Europe attempting to date. I’m sure they haven’t described in detail experiences I have had a multitude of times traveling in Europe over the past decade of feeling invisible or being harassed and denigrated as if I was a sex worker.  A few years ago when I was in Milano grabbing a quick pizza for a late dinner, an older Italian man accosted me smiling and saying the Italian word for nipple over and over again. Once I realized what he was saying, I ran away, feeling disgusted. Is there a disclaimer for the inevitable racism that is sure to happen?

I love Europe for many things. I look to Europe lovingly most days. But I am also able to see the truth of what Europe is although what it represents is quite different. I don’t want to underscore the importance of exposure and seeing that there are infinite possibilities beyond where you have been rooted. That is the epitome of what travel has done for me since I first got my passport at 23-years-old. But possibility is not delusion. It is not painting what is ugly as beautiful and calling it a masterpiece. There is love to be had in this world for Black women. That I know to be true. Is it in Europe waiting for most of us? Maybe. But also maybe not.

I think that’s the point. Love and the receiving of it is not controllable. And as dire as the seeking of romance as it seems for Black women today, I don’t think we need another rose-colored whirlwind travel tale—or thousands of dollars to pay for it—to make us feel farther and farther away from what might (or might not) find us randomly on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday.

Enjoyed reading this newsletter? Want to support the growth? Consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5/month or $50/annually. Paid subscribers will receive mini-podcasts bi-weekly and early access to virtual travel chats featuring leading Black women in travel.