Donna, 32, had never been a churchgoer. But when her boyfriend Marcus, 41, started attending a local Catholic church regularly, she made the effort. He'd asked her along several times, she finally said yes, and she immediately regretted it.
The congregation was roughly two hundred people. Donna was the only Black woman in the building. Not one other. A few South Asian and Hispanic faces, but not a single other person who looked like her. She leaned over and quietly told Marcus how she was feeling.
His response? "Who cares?"
She cared. A lot. She sat through the rest of the service feeling unseen, and the atmosphere between them went ice cold.
Over breakfast afterwards, she tried again, properly this time. She explained that her discomfort was real, that representation in a space matters, and that she'd actually love to go to a Black church together. She told him the energy tends to be different: more joyful, more expressive, more of what church means to her culturally, even if she's not devout.
Marcus said no. He said he'd feel uncomfortable at a Black church, despite never having set foot in one. And then he went a step further: he accused Donna of "punishing" him by suggesting it, since she doesn't really care about church in the first place.
Donna was furious. She'd made the effort for him. She'd sat through real discomfort, the kind that's hard to explain if you've never been a visible minority in a room, and when she asked for the same consideration in return, she got a flat refusal and a guilt trip.
She's wondering whether she's reading too much into this, or whether something bigger is going on here.
Where do you stand? Was Donna out of order, or does Marcus need to check himself?