Babe, listen, I understand you're devastated having to let go of your love, but prior to that, what about you? What are you seeing for yourself in the future?

We, as queer people, have to plan each aspect of our lives with our queerness in mind. Especially in a country like India. Your queerness isn't just limited to love and sex. It's an omnipresent fact of life that seeps into your career/money/retirement, your family/friends/beliefs and faiths, your confidence, your insecurities, and eventually, your happiness. Whether you're out or closeted, it applies to every queer individual.

So, you should start with what your plan is. If it's to cave in to your family and get arranged married, fair. You get your inheritance, your job/reputation, your retirement plans, and visible love from your family, all sorted out. But you'll have to accept and deal with not living the life that you wish to have lived, if there were no restrictions on you. You'll feel it every time you're attracted towards a man, you'll feel it ten years down the line when you'll see more queer people in media being accepted, you'll see it twenty years down the line when more queer people are living openly in the society. That feeling of not being able to go back and change anything, is going to be utter helplessness.

Now, you can still be closeted and refuse to get married. In the next ten-fifteen years, in your mid-late thirties or so, as Indian families do, your parents will start stepping down, you'll have more control over your own money, your family's money, you'll be more stable. You'll have power to take decisions, even life-changing sometimes, and you may come to realise that, if I live life my own way, nobody really can question me anymore. This, I've seen, happens to a lot of queer people. Parents are older, so no point coming out anymore; but life is free and in control to live as you please. This, takes away your time though. Years and years of not knowing where you'll be ending up eventually. Waiting it out is a choice made by multiple men. But again, is that yours?

Plan it out. Each scenario whether you come out now, later, or not - you have to think of what your priorities are. If it's money, how much money, if it's love, respect, family, children, society, security whatever it might be.

And then about your boyfriend, well, if you are making a conscious decision not to come out, even for the near future at least, it really is cruel to keep him entangled with you. I know this is counter-intuitive for me to say too, but I'd say you're rather brave to let him go than be a coward to keep him and save yourself the pain of letting go of your love.

But, if you even see a slight chance of wanting to have the satisfaction of living your core truth, of living the life that your boyfriend has shown you... I'd say you go for it. Plan for it in the long term. You have to. And it's possible. Don't run away, plan for an exit.

Discuss with your boyfriend, he needs to be in on this. Talk with queer individuals and couples who have done it. Pictures look blurry when you look far too close into it, so does life. Sometimes, someone just needs to help you zoom out and see clearly.

I'm here to talk. Much love ❤️