Everyone knows Valentine’s Day is about love. While many factors play into creating relationships, these couples didn’t let the ideas of gender norms or race affect who they fell for. Here are a few MSU couples loving against the odds.
Alyssa and Nickle
When political theory and constitutional democracy junior Alyssa George and social relations and policy sophomore Nickle Trudeau hold hands or kiss in public, they are often labeled as lesbians.
For them, classifying their nine-month-long relationship is not that simple.
“I am a pan-romantic gender queer,” Trudeau said. “I feel like I have the ability to fall in love with anyone and once I fall in love I find them more attractive and develop sexual feelings. That puts me on the asexual spectrum, they said.”
As Trudeau uses the term gender queer.
“I don’t identify as a women or a man, so I’m in the non-binary umbrella,” Trudeau said.
George, who said she classifies as lesbian, also technically considers herself polysexal, because she’s fallen in love with Nickle.
The couple commonly gets mislabeled by people who aren’t educated on the LGBT community.
“A lot of people think I’m a gay woman when we’re being affectionate,” Trudeau said. “There’s no frame of mind to categorize our relationship expectations wise. I think it’s just hard for a lot of people to switch over to try to think our category.”
The couple feels support from family, friends and religious leaders as they fully embrace gender diversity at MSU.
“We get a fair amount of support from both of our parents. It’s nice to know that we have a support system even though this is the first, relationship like this for both of us,” Trudeau said.
George and Trudeau are both religious and spiritual — which doesn’t conflict with their preferences and sexualities, they said.
“My priest was actually the first person I came out to and he really wanted to reassure that I wouldn’t be driven from the church and I would always be accepted in the congregation,” Trudeau said.
During George’s childhood, her father was a pastor.
“He would talk about loving people. That’s our duty, to love everybody. That’s another part of our relationship that I like, we are very spiritual, it’s another level to connect at,” George said.
The couple said onlookers often don’t connect the dots and realize the pair are romantically involved, because of the heteronormativity people tend to abide by.
And while George and Trudeau blur the traditional lines of relationship roles, other couples’ differences can be more black and white.
Albertina and Michael
Food industry and management sophomore Albertina Mays was waiting in line at Chipotle on a football game day when she turned around and began talking to physics junior Michael Gottschalk.
As the couple began their relationship, Mays, who is black, and Gottschalk, who is white, didn’t think twice about their interracial appearances.
“I didn’t have any thoughts about it,” Gottschalk said. “I just liked her so I started dating her. Race didn’t really influence my decision-making,”
Four months later, Gottschalk remembers his first impression of Mays — she was easy to talk to, even in line.
Mays doesn’t believe relationships should stay limited to specific races.
“People have their own opinion with dating whoever they like or love and I feel that we are all people and we all should have our own rights in the world to be with whoever we want to be with,” Mays said.
Mays feels support from her friends and family to date him.
“I was talking to one of my friends, and she was like ‘well, you know it comes with a lot of responsibility being with someone that’s from another race.’ She was saying if I were walking down the street with someone of my race no one would turn their head twice, but with him they’ll probably do that,” Mays said. “It’s just out of the norm. My friends are like ‘you’re going to get more attention than usual.’”
Religion is the largest difference between the couples’ cultures. Even though Mays and Gottschalk both grew up Christian, their religious traditions differ.
Mays now considers herself as apostolic, while Michael identifies his faith as nondenominational.
“The way that church goes is very different from what I was use to growing up,” Gottschalk said.
Mays’ advice for anyone pursuing an interracial relationship is to “just be open-minded.”
“Never in a lifetime did I think I was going to be with him,” Mays said. “Its either at the end of the day going to be a yes or a no to whatever question that you have for someone else that you like. It’s your opinion at the end of the day, no one else. At the end of the day, be happy.”
Melanie and Christos
Urban regional planning junior Melanie Nieske, who is Hispanic, and Wayne State global supply chain junior Christos Burdalas, who is Greek, grew up practicing martial arts together.
After a fear of rejection and a few failed attempts from Burdalas to ask Nieske out, Nieske took the matter into her own hands.
“Are you trying to ask me out?” Nieske recalls saying to Burdalas one day.
“No, I will not go out with you, but will you go out with me?” he responded.
Two years later, the long-distance interracial couple have different but overlapping backgrounds and family values.
In the Greek community, “you get looks no matter what,” Burdalas said.
“I think it really adds to the person,” Nieske said. “I love going to the Greek festivals. He’s teaching me Greek dancing, which I am not nearly as good (at) as him and his sisters, but it’s a lot of fun and I think that it’s something I really love about him because it adds to who he is and I appreciate that.”
Burdalas has no issues with interracial or intersexual relationships.
“One of our good friends just came out of the closet and he has a boyfriend that he’s very serious with,” Burdalas said. “We were talking about it where two people are free to do whatever they want. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or what your orientation is or whatever you prefer. It’s your life to choose what you want to do with it.”
Burdalas and Nieske consider themselves different sides of the brain, adding to their diversity.
“She’s very artsy and creative and I’m very business (oriented) ... I like to plan,” Burdalas said. “We’re very different in the sense, in the way that we think and solve problems or whatever it may be. But we compliment each other.”
When asked about the future, Burdalas promptly responded, the future include Nieske.
“I fell in love with my best friend,” Burdalas said.
