“Oh, God, another Asian girl/white boy couple,” I groan, dropping my fiancé’s hand.

He hates it when I do this. So do I, really. I know it’s unkind and self-loathing, but every time I see another couple of our racial makeup, a little part of me sinks. We live in San Francisco, so this dip is as common as the hills. In these moments, I wish we were anything else ― that he were my gay best friend or we were startup co-founders, that he were Asian and I were white, that we were exquisitely ambiguous races, or that I could sink like my feelings into the sidewalk, be a little worm, and date whomever I want without considering social perception.

Shame is neither the wisest nor most mature part of oneself, but it still has a voice. “Stop it you guys!” my shame wants to say to these other couples. “Can’t you see the more of us there are, the worse it looks?”

“It” meaning the prevalent trend of Asian women seeming to end up with white men. “It” meaning the perpetuation of Asian fetish.

The first time I heard the term ”Asian fetish,” I was the only Chinese kid in a tiny school. Other students in my class had been pairing up to date since fifth grade, exchanging love notes and making each other Alanis Morissette mixtapes. I waited for my ”Jagged Little Pill” cassette, but nothing came in fifth grade. Or sixth. Or seventh. Or eighth.

Finally, in ninth grade, I got an email on Valentine’s Day from a sporty, popular boy. The subject: DON’T SHOW THIS TO ANYONE. The body: a truly terrible poem asking me to be his girlfriend. “Oh, my God,” was all I could think. “Someone likes me!” Who cares if his grammar left something to be desired! I got on Instant Messenger and said yes.

When classmates heard the news, I learned the term Asian fetish. Friends told me he’d been suffering from it for a little while now. I had only been familiar with the word “fetish” in regard to something like “foot fetish,” so I understood the implication: to be attracted to an Asian person was a kinky, odd thing. To be taught at a young age that someone likes you because of a “fetish” tells you that you are by nature strange, abnormal. I internalized: to be attracted to me was to have some sort of perversion. And so I learned to think of all Asians as less desirable and to be turned off by people who were turned on by me.

Even as I forayed into dating this boy, I was put off by much of what he said. My friends weren’t wrong about his Asian fetish. “I just feel like Asian girls are deeper than other girls, y’know?” he said to me once.

I thought it would get better in college but every time someone non-Asian showed interest, the whispers would start: I heard he had a half-Asian girlfriend in high school. He took a Japanese class last semester. Huge fan of sushi. Like, big time.