‘I only date colonizers’: Decolonial love and the remains of empire

This article examines how colonial histories endure within the intimate sphere, shaping desire and romantic attachment in the postcolonial present. Through a decolonial autoethnography, I reflect on my own experiences as a Filipina who, often half-jokingly, tells friends that ‘I only date colonizers.’ What begins as humor becomes a critical site of inquiry: Why does whiteness continue to hold affective and aesthetic power? What does it mean to seek love from those who historically occupied the role of colonizer? Engaging the work of Frantz Fanon, María Lugones, Chela Sandoval, Ann Laura Stoler, and bell hooks, I explore how the remains of empire manifest not only in beauty ideals and racialized fantasies but also in the emotional economies of care, validation, and belonging. I argue that coloniality persists not only through institutions and representation but also through the affective dynamics of intimate life. Through a series of autoethnographic vignettes, I examine how colonial histories become visible in experiences of attraction, misrecognition, desire, and care, while considering the possibilities of decolonial love as a practice of critical awareness. By bringing decolonial feminist theory into conversation with autoethnographic reflection, this article advances decolonial love as a feminist analytic for understanding how colonial histories continue to shape intimate life.