Raven-Symoné said she had previously broken up with her wife when they dated for fears she would be rejected by the Black community, the Jasmine Brand reports.
In an interview with Noir Online, Raven and her wife Miranda Maday opened up about dating after meeting one another in 2015 and how they called it quits before getting back together.
Raven detailed why she felt pressured to end her relationship with Maday who is white.
“I’ll be honest, it was kind of a self-inflicted, old way of thinking that the Black community would be mad that I was dating a white person,” Raven said. “It was this residual thought process that really wasn’t fact. And so I didn’t know how to communicate that with her.”
Maday said she had no idea what Raven was dealing with at the time.
“I just caught people staring at me all the time,” Raven recalled. “It felt weird but then again, it wasn’t really happening. I think I was just carrying burdens that happened in the ’90s and ’80s that weren’t really working for the now.”
Raven says Mayday helped her to “break the code” and helped her accept love into her life.
“So here I am, married,” she said. “I used to really take the bait in the earlier stages of social media when I was first starting. But in regards to my family and how I choose to move forward with my private life, it’s nobody’s damn business, so I don’t really care about your opinion.”
“I learned a long time ago not to really read the comments, not to really give in to every single person’s opinion that decides to comment,” she added.
Raven also spoke about how the Black community responded to her relationship on social media and how she learned to tune out the chatter.
Raven and Maday tied the knot on June 16, 2020. In an interview with Vogue, Raven discussed how they made the most of their time together while quarantining and decided to get married.
“Because of the industry I work in and the industry she works in and our lives prior to that ‘I do, I say yes’ moment, we have been so used to turmoil and all kinds of ups and downs,” Raven said.
“Taking a moment for ourselves and actually giving self-care to our hearts and minds and putting ourselves first—not the career, not the parents, not our siblings, but putting ourselves first,” she added. “We are still in a dreamworld about it.”