How Do I Get Men Outside My Race To Commit To Me?

I agree with others that it sounds like one of her problems is narrow-mindedness and another is self-loathing of her own race, but I think she also may be setting her sights too high.   Either she is trying to date 8s thinking she is an 8 when she is really a 5, or she knows she is a 5 and is shooting for 8s (and then wondering why that isn’t working out, when it’s obviously because the 8s are going for 10s).

I also wonder why she places such a weird premium on having been with a very low number of partners.   I mean, I’m all for being safe sexually, but if you are that age and have had that few partners then maybe you are placing too much importance on sex and what sex means for a relationship.   Making a relationship sexual doesn’t have to mean that it’s super serious, and if you expect it to mean that, then maybe that’s why guys aren’t committing.   How can you expect them to commit to you when you clearly aren’t opening up to them?   Loosen up, have some fun, don’t worry about where every relationship is heading right out of the gate and just see whose company you enjoy.

I also wonder about her “standards” – when I was in my 20s I wanted the “whole package” – looks, intellect, high powered career.   I did get all that in my boyfriend, but the things that I really value about him now (we are in our early 30s) and what I’d be looking for if I were single are kindness, maturity, and generosity of spirit.

@Eathan
Where do you live?

She sounds frustrated with dating, and I think we can all empathize with that.

The good news is she is CURIOUS about learning how to do better.   Whether she takes the advice and re-phrases the question is up to her.

I do have to wonder when Jae says she doesn’t find black men attractive and only wants to date Caucasian men. The term “Caucasian” covers a very wide spectrum of types and ethnicities. Is she trying to “trade up” somehow? Fit in with the dominant culture? She seems to place such a high premium on the man’s being Caucasian to the exclusion of everything else. How ironic that she claims to have such high standards when she dates men who don’t really want her. Since  she dates men who are willing to lower their own standards in order to go out with her (for sex), this tells me that she doesn’t place a very high value on herself, despite the fact that she thinks she does.  Like the man who wrote last week complaining that the women he was dating didn’t value his niceness, the men Jae dates don’t really value her for who she is – a black woman. She is over-emphasizing race to the exclusion of more important qualities like commitment and tolerance.

I’ve been lurking for a few weeks and as someone who recently decided to finally try online dating, this post definitely strikes a chord with me.
I do hope that Jae or someone else who has lived in the UK chimes in about how interracial dating might be different there.   Black men who want to cross over don’t seem to have a problem anywhere.   I’ve been as a tourist   several times but it’s hard to know what life is like there. Plenty of men here in the U.S.(black, white, and other, will check every box but black), so I hope she’s not contacting them b/c I can see how someone like that might respond and go out with her but not commit.
If she can find some, she’d probably have better luck with certain white expats from countries where I see a lot of white men married to black women (France, for example, and Germans are open to it too). My black friends who lived in London for a bit dated those guys while there.
One thing that I will say as a black woman is that someone’s ability to seriously date outside of his race doesn’t necessarily depend on having a “habit” of dating interracially, but perhaps on simply encountering people of that race in daily life.   It’s great if he does have a black girlfriend in his past(there are things that you don’t have to explain) but that’s not necessary for you to be the one who gets the ring.   Of course, Scandanavian and German men don’t seem to have gotten that memo, as many of my friends here in the States and Canada have gotten married to men of that background who NEVER got to see or date any other black women.
And here in the U.S., it’s the black women who frequently block out men of other races (although truthfully, since we aren’t presented as the paragons of beauty anywhere, a lot of those men don’t find us attractive anyway-I mean, I’ve read/heard white men describe Beyonce as being obese for goodness sakes. Our bodies are definitely not appreciated by a lot of men).
However, in the UK, once you leave London, the non-black population plummets so I wonder if Jae is facing the challenge of being just too different for the men.
I don’t think she should associate the failure to commit with the men’s race, b/c ultimately, a man who is into her enough won’t care what his family and friends say, and some of those German men who married my friends did have family members who disowned them, and in one case, the mother (but not the father) refused to come to the wedding.
It’s always a problem when a black woman says that she won’t date within her race.   It’s a problem to me when anyone says that.   They are likely attaching a negative or positive (and frequently offensive either way) stereotypes to those people.   If the UK is like the US and Jae is a highly educated professional, then statistically, the men who share her education and income level are less likely to be black. For me, a good education is non-negotiable so by default, that does leave a lot of   black men out, but I would never say no to one who met those criteria simply b/c he was black.
I disagree that she’s overrating herself overall, although reining in the ego and being kinder, gentler, and more nurturing is something that she might need to work on.   But I will say that she needs to understand that a black women could be an 8 or 10 but at least on a white man’s(and really society’s) scale could be a 5.   Plenty of people on this site claim to be 8’s or 10’s without challenge, so I’m loath to do that here.   However, thanks to the media, her value as a trophy even if she’s gorgeous just isn’t there. I hate the rating system, but I’d say that if she was a white woman who only wanted to date black men, she could be a 5 or lower and still be quite successful. White women are the ideal and given a lot of value by men of all races. They are always going to have the most hits in online dating.
I’ll admit that a lot of successful black women have trouble putting what makes them successful professionally and academically to the side when dating.   And we can have some excessive requirements.   Are nice professional men who would commit   contacting her but getting ignored b/c they are losing their hair or are only 5’8?  I wonder if she’s turning down white men who probably on paper match her well but maybe don’t look like Pierce Brosnan (b/c if I was in the UK I’d imagine that’s who I’d fancy).
I think she can have plenty of options, just not as many as her white counterparts, and if educated black men fancy her too, she needs to give them a chance. If she was writing in with the same story and complaining about not being able to get any black men to commit (which is FAR more common), then I’d have the same advice.   Odds are, to get what she wants, she needs to open up her racial preferences(ironic, since black women are usually being scolded to give someone OTHER than black men a chance).   I can see how many won’t and she doesn’t need to entertain them, but she shouldn’t treat them all as if they can’t.
Truthfully, as far as getting a commitment, my black friends got to the altar a lot FASTER once they started replying to the white men.   A black man who has it going on is either dating interracially where he gets a lot of mileage for the black male stereotype and for being successful and educated (much more rare for black men than for black women-is that true in the UK too?)
So I hope things will work out for Jae.   My friends, who I think are probably 8-10s in every way (Ivy League educated, multiple degrees, good looking) have done really well with the white men, and found men who were attractive, equally well-educated (something that was going to be impossible to come by since the black men we went to school with repeatedly passed us over OR dated and wouldn’t commit).   She does need to accept that for a lot of men of ALL races, her looks could be amazing but still don’t translate for them b/c it’s not what gets thrown at them everyday.
Sorry this is so long, it kind of combines my thoughts from a lot of things, esp. on the topic of race, that I’ve been reading here.

Ruby #15, I agree with you. It sounds as though if Jae were offered the choice: “Which would you rather have: a white guy who will date you but not commit to you, or a good guy of any other race (black, Asian, Hispanic) who wants to marry you?”, she would choose the former. She DOES sound more obsessed about race than about any other quality.
  
That is sad, but – to each his own. Everyone has their different tastes, and while we may not consider them particularly wise, so be it.
  
I would offer that Jae needs to prioritize. What matters to her most (even if others find it misguided)? Is it more important that she be married to a good guy, or that the guy she finds is Caucasian? (By “Caucasian,” I think she means white, even if Caucasian does take a much broader sweep of ethnicities.) If it is the former, then Evan’s advice is spot-on. If it is the latter… well, she should be aware of just how much she has narrowed her choices, and should also be aware of the good points Karl R brings up in #1 about the tolerant white guy’s viewpoint.