This may be a shocking letter to anyone who thinks they know me well.  I think it is better to reveal the truth before it is too late and things get worse. You can hate me lifelong for this, unfriend me from your facebook list, delete my contact from your mobile or choose to abuse me through your emails and phone calls.

Yes, I am gay/homosexual.  I chose to tell you this now, as there is enough strain in the relationships around me. I chose to get married out of peer and family pressure to adopt a conventional life. This was a big mistake. I take the blame for ruining my wife’s mental and physical health by not being the ideal husband material that she and society would have expected of me. But I am also quite clear about not to wanting to live in this make-believe world, which I am sick and tired of.  I am pretty sure Maitri* is too. This marriage was dead long back, according to me. Everyone in the family and a few close friends around us know that there has been a strain in the relationship. I chose to stay away from my family during my higher studies in the middle of this strain, just to do justice to my academics, which was then the first priority. I dropped numerous hints about not being comfortable getting back with Maitri (without revealing my orientation) during counseling sessions, psychiatry consultations, meetings with family and friends when my family sought our reconciliation as a couple. I returned home to give Maitri the moral support that she then required, as I was told she was depressed and likely to inflict harm on herself. There was no love whatsoever and there will never be. All through this, there is terrible guilt and shame that I have jeopardized her life and mental health.

Many times I  thought of opening up about this sensitive issue but always stopped out of fear of being ostracized. I didn’t want to lose my parents, my brother and the few close relatives and friends who genuinely cared for me. My biggest mistake was that I chose to hide the truth and lead a supposedly normal life, just because I was not brave enough to confront my inner demons.

I have never had a good relationship with Maitri. I did not respect her dreams of wanting to be a mother. I was fearful of bringing a child into a family situation such as ours, as I did not want another new life to become the next casualty. Maitri, you were wonderfully patient and tolerant while I went about my domestic routines mechanically. I often wished you realized you deserved better, took legal action or nullified this broken relationship much earlier…but you chose to stay on for reasons best known to you.

Yes Maitri, I was cheating on you: meeting random people through social networks and roaming about like a nomad. Not all those dalliances were just for physical gratification: I was also seeking moments of mental peace where I could find it, as the atmosphere at home was depressing. I felt helpless, caught in a self-woven web of infidelity and deceit, including self-deceit. I felt unable to express myself and seek appropriate liberation, as I feared I would be misunderstood and rejected.

I know this news comes as a big blow to people who have always stood up for me and supported me in good and bad times. My relationship with my brother has strained so much over the last couple of months. He and my parents never liked my attitude towards my wife, and I lacked the courage even then to admit that I was gay. I didn’t want to continue living with my legally wedded spouse purely for a formality. Whenever I articulated these thoughts, it created more unpleasantness among my parents and brother.

There was also my fear of losing my professional standing and facing societal rejection. These are normal but important fears that any gay/queer person would have, considering the rigidities of our society.

There are certain things I want to be very vocal about:

1. My parents did not ever know what was running through my mind. I seriously wish people don’t talk ill of them, as it is I who let them down, and this is no fault of theirs.

2. I do not wish to continue my married life and Maitri does not wish to grant me a divorce through mutual consent as she has been wronged greatly. I accept that. She will be supported by my father as he strongly feels I have been indifferent to her.  Maitri, I would like you to know now that my ignoring you had nothing to do with your qualifications, looks, tolerance, or earnings. I take the blame for messing up your life.

3. If my parents feel I have no more place in the home I share with them, I will move out and stay separately without being a nuisance to anyone back at home or to anyone in our close circle of family and friends. I would, however, need some time, may be a couple of months, to make suitable arrangements.

4. If my relatives and friends choose to stay away from me and cut off all communication, that is their choice. I know it is very difficult for people to digest this.  I will patiently wait for people who can accept me as I am.

5. I am not here for your sympathies or for advice that tries to convince me to continue my current existence. I just want to live my life with some mental peace and dignity, whatever little may be left of both. I am prepared to fight alone. I know the path ahead is going to be rocky. I am not contemplating suicide, as I want to live and breathe on my own, given a second chance.

6. And the last word to my parents and my brother/relatives and friends: please don’t hate me. Allow me the option to repent for my mistakes and try to restore the chance at happiness for two lives without worrying about family honour and stuff like that. I have already fallen in the eyes of everybody and I don’t want to lose my near and dear ones at any cost.

7. I never intended to hurt anyone voluntarily, but my conscience, fighting a bitter battle with me daily, made me realize that I had better come out in the open before the situation escalates. I feel disgusted with what I have done, but I guess, after years of introspection, I now have a clearer view and have chosen to come out and come clean, whether I am accepted or not.

From,

Purush*

* Names have been changed on request.
** This letter is part of the South Asian, Married, and Queer? resources collection. Read about this initiative in English and Tamil.

Orinam is a Chennai-based collective that works in the LGBTQI and ally space. As its members and volunteers, our views of marriage as an institution are diverse and wide-ranging.  Some of us have chosen to opt out of marriage to oppose the tyranny of forced marriage and patriarchal inequalities that render it oppressive to cis-women and transpeople. Others of us have also chosen marriage as an institution (whether same-sex or other-sex) and work hard internally at making it non-oppressive. However, as a collective, we feel such an ideological critique of the institution of marriage needs to be separated from support to individuals who are queer and married, and to their spouses. Hence the project South Asian, Married and Queer?, a compilation of narratives on marriage.

Rationale:

Compulsory heterosexuality plays out in our South Asian cultures in ways both unique and similar to other cultures. The pan-Asian emphasis on (heterosexual) marriage as the duty of a son to his parents, and the regarding of an unmarried daughter as a burden on her parents and an indicator of their failure, leaves many young queer and trans persons torn between their desire to please their parents and to live their life on their own terms.

A commonly heard narrative is that of a gay man being unable to resist, and ultimately yielding to, parental pressure to marry a (presumably, straight) woman who does not know her husband’s sexuality before marriage. Issues facing married queer/trans people may, however, be more diverse:

Lesbians and bisexual cis people face social compulsions to marry as well, albeit in ways different from what gay men go through—in gendered power relations in the case of lesbians and bi women, and in the non-exclusive nature of attraction in the case of all bisexual and pansexual cis people.  For transpeople who are heterosexual, pressure to marry may constitute dismissal of both their sexuality and of their gender identity.

Further, not all queer people entering normative marriages do so out of family pressure.  Gay and straight are not two immiscible states of being: many queer people are also attracted to members of the other sex to different degrees, and some may choose to marry a person of the other sex fully disclosing their non-binary sexual orientation in advance.

There’s also growing evidence that some people may realise a preference for same-sex relationships later in life, when they are already in relationships with members of another sex. Likewise, some people may confront their gender identity and desire to transition later in life, after years of living/passing as cis.

At Orinam we have, over the past ten years, been contacted by individuals in diverse situations such as:

• young gay and lesbian people seeking support and information to help them oppose parental pressure to marry
• people in other-sex relationships seeking guidance to help them come out to their spouses
• people discovering same-sex attraction while in other-sex relationships
• transmen and cislesbians being forced by their parents to marry cismen when they have no desire for cismen
• heterosexual cismen who would like to cross-dress and are seeking to marry ciswomen who would be comfortable with this aspect of their spouse’s nature
• man-woman couples in which one or both spouses are seeking to open up their marriage to queer possibilities with each others’ full consent

Given this context, it is a fact that safe, supportive and non-judgemental spaces for heterosexually married gay/lesbian, bi and transpeople, and support for their spouses are hard to come by in LGBTQI groups. As a first step to create one such space for the South Asian context, Orinam would like to curate a set of essays, stories, interviews and poems that specifically address marriage.

Invitation:

We invite submissions (English or Tamil) in the form of essays, stories and poems by South Asian les-bi-gay cispeople in marriages to individuals of the other sex, by trans individuals in marriages they entered into (or were forced into) based on their gender assigned at birth, and by spouses of such queer/trans people. Contributions in form of interviews of married queer/trans people are also welcome.

Contact us:

Feel free to use a pseudonym and remove all potential identifiers. Email your contributions to orinamwebber@gmail.com. We have a committed team of editors who are willing to offer assistance – and full confidentiality – during any stage of your writing or conceptualising the piece. Kindly reach out to us.

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Terms used:

Cis = persons  who do not consider themselves trans

Queer = here, used synonymously with LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, intersex)

Other-sex relationship = used in preference to ‘heterosexual relationship’. Calling a relationship between a man and a woman a ‘heterosexual’ relationship leads to the faulty assumption that both are heterosexual, whereas in reality one or both partners may be bisexual, or for that matter, gay. “Other-sex” is also used in preference to “opposite sex” to allow for the possibility of a relationship between an intersex and a non-intersex person, who may not be of “opposite” sexes.

Same-sex relationshp = used in preference to ‘gay’ relationship or ‘lesbian’ relationship. Calling a relationship between two women a ‘lesbian’ relationship ends up erasing the possibility that one or both partners may identify as bisexual, pansexual or with some other sexual identity.