Dating as a brown person

I am a mixed race person of black and white origin, I know I am not bad-looking, people tell me I look good a lot of times and people always act surprised when I say that i’m not dating anybody. I am about 1.74 height wise, late twenties and I live in a progressive European capital city. Dating honestly feels so frustrating and I really feel it’s because most gay men are just not that into non-white men. Fyi, I am happy to date any and all races. In my surroundings coincidentally all the gays of colour are always single and even they are seemingly only into white men.

Sure, it’s not like nobody ever looks at me, but most of the time I feel invisible and the other times, more often than not i’m being fetishized . At this point it almost feels impossible to get something better.

Being in a progressive European city, nobody wants to be called racist and people always try to be inclusive, but I think the overwhelming majority just doesn’t really want to date a POC. Something that is almost never admitted, but certainly not something that I have never heard. And honestly, I just really want to know if this is really just what it is, if this is how people actually feel.

On a more intrinsic level I do love myself and I have talked this through in therapy many a time. But self love isn’t a replacement for romantic love.