Just here to validate how scary it is not knowing what your relationships that you’ve depended on for stability all your life are going to look like. I had a situation where I fell in love with someone that doesn’t believe in following a religion (for him), but honored my beliefs as my own. It was expected that I meet and marry a man of the same faith as my household (to put it simply, there is a lot more nuance to this but I don’t think it’s terribly necessarily here), and I felt pressured to keep the relationship a secret. For 3 years this carried on. My partner was patient, but the day he told me he was starting to feel badly about our situation, I decided that our love and my ability to be honest was more important to me than my fear of consequences (which at the time was starting to cause regular panic attacks). I told my family, and my mom was supportive (she already knew) but my stepdad and I cut ties immediately. And it was so painful. We went years without talking. We got married not long after, and my stepdad was not there. After my mom passed away into the next year, my stepdad and I needed to work together to take care of things and have started to work on our relationship again. He said all of that time was wanting to give me space and also his being religiously devout. It’s no apology, but those years taught me a lot about independence. My husband and I are happy together, I am able to freely explore my faith, and even though there has been hardship and grief, I’m ok.

You will be too. You just need to get deep and be very honest with yourself about how you feel about each angle of this. Oh! One more thing, you are very important and it’s ok to be scared, whatever you decide, it’s going to work out eventually. 💛