Have you lived outside the U.S. before?

If you want to move, do it. It would probably be very interesting for you. But I would not travel expecting to get a relationship out of it.

I mean, living abroad is already a lot. Even mundane errands like buying AAA batteries can become a whole afternoon's odyssey. The language barrier is isolating. Cultural customs, etiquette, food, transportation, bathroom habits, etc., all need to be relearned.

But okay, you've probably heard all that. So I'll just share my own dating experiences as a mixed American living outside the U.S.

I've lived in Holland and Indonesia. I can kind of relate to your situation in the sense that before I moved to Jakarta, I was pretty psyched about the idea of just blending in with everyone else. In the U.S., I've had a lot of bitter experiences with fetishization, and I looked forward to being in an Asian country where that would be a non-issue.

Well, it didn't work like that. Yes, I blended in visually at first, but as soon as I opened my mouth it was clear that I didn't belong. Locals still tried to rip me off. It's not like they restrained themselves because I was Asian too, no way.

Moreover, it turned out that Indonesian dating norms were different from American norms. A guy refused to kiss me goodnight in front of my relatives' house because he didn't want to embarrass them; the bar scene was not a thing because Muslims didn't drink; most people lived with their parents, so they would sneak around to hotels to hook up. It was just all very uncomfortable.

On top of that, being American and non-white blew most people's minds. Being mixed was an even more confusing variation on being a non-white American. Indonesians would say I was bule (foreigner), but not really bule, because I wasn't "Western" (white). I still got people fetishizing me, but this time for my "Japanese" look, because they thought Americans were easy, or because they saw me as a connection to other Westerners. Then again, me being Chinese was a distinct negative, because there were ethnic tensions between Chinese Indonesians and Indonesian Indonesians that don't exist in the U.S.

And on top of all that, I still got flak for being American (a neocolonialist oppressor) and Dutch (the colonial oppressor).

What I'm trying to say is, if you feel out of place in the U.S., in some other countries you'll feel doubly and triply out of place. There is no such thing as a prejudice-free paradise. It's just that the ways people stereotype you shift. Sometimes you can't predict what those ways are; you don't know what you don't know.

I think you should still move abroad if you want, but you should go in expecting nothing.