The divorce proceedings lasted 1.5 years, during which both Ankur and Deepak felt depressed, and lonely. Eventually, I realised I had not done right by the girl, felt very guilty, and decided to rectify my mistake.” Once Ankur proposed divorce, his family and in-laws started threatening Deepak which resulted in him relocating to Mumbai. “I thought I’ll marry the girl, and keep Deepak on the side. His family coerced him into getting married to a girl, even after he had told them about Deepak. Familial acceptance, financial stability and job security are all tricky paths for us,” explains Ankur. Even holding hands in public with your same-sex partner can be subject to judgement, and the endless misconceptions such as gay men being overtly sexual harms us. My friends often remark, I don’t seem gay based on what they see in movies. Right from childhood till accepting themselves, a queer individual goes through lots of turmoil. Mental health issues stemming from cis-heteronormativity are a huge stressor when it comes to queer couples. “Mental health is always a challenge. I was scared of being abandoned by my family or ridiculed by society,” said Ankur. “I had trouble accepting my identity-which is often misrepresented as a sexual disorder, or mocked on television and films. Even after meeting Deepak, ‘gay’ seemed to be a hateful term for him. Hailing from Haryana, Ankur had a complicated relationship with masculinity growing up. The representation of happy couples is a possibility of a future wherein gay men may not need to marry women to have some semblance of a family, and may offer parents an alternative window which allows them to become optimistic about their queer child’s future,” says Ankur who identifies as a cis-gay man, and lives with his partner of 12 years, Deepak.Īnkur and Deepak have been together for twelve years, and plan to get married soon. “There are very few examples of successful queer relationships. In a country like India where LGBTQIA+ individuals grow up without examples of queer couples around them or in media, stories of happy queer couples in long-term relationships allow them to be hopeful of a future where they can too be happy. In a cis-het normative society, the dearth of representation is a roadblock in self-identification, and the stressors stemming from a queer identity add to the burden of a relationship. While there are many similarities between cis-het (cis-gender heterosexual) and queer couples in terms of the hopes and dreams they nurture, there are glaring differences as well. Relationships are complex, queer relationships even more so.