I met my boyfriend when we were in high school. It was one of those “when you know, you just know” kind of relationships, and even after school ended it stayed that way. After practically growing up together we decided to go our separate ways for college, knowing full well that it wouldn’t affect our relationship in any way. It didn’t! After college ended I decided to stay in Bombay and Rohit decided to move to Bangalore to pursue his career, so we began the whole long distance thing all over again – this is as much of the story that my parents knew… Let me tell you the rest!
So, it’s true – Rohit did move to Bangalore after his final year at college because he wanted to pursue a career in tech and the company’s flagship office was located in Bangalore, so it made sense for him to go there to get maximum training. I was working in advertising, so Bombay made sense. After 8 months or so I got a knock on the door one Saturday morning and it was Rohit! He had flown down for the weekend to surprise me (I know what you’re thinking – and ya, he is just that kind of guy, hehe). We had the best weekend together, it felt so good to be in the same room, same bed, same everything – with no screen in between us! Things were about to get even better; when we went out for dinner one night that weekend, Rohit explained that his company had decided that he had received adequate training to head up one of the smaller offices. Guess which one they gave him?! Bombay!!! I was so, so excited – I still remember we even ordered a cake at the end of dinner that night to celebrate!
A couple of weeks passed and at the end of the month, Rohit moved to Bombay. He hadn’t looked for a place because we had decided that after such a long time apart we were due a nice weekend together before he went house hunting. The thing is, like I said, we’d been together since high school…we made it through college apart and now life was finally giving us an opportunity to be together – so we took it. After a weird discussion between us (which reminded me of when Monica and Chandler decided to live in together in FRIENDS), we agreed that it was the next step in our relationship, but that we wouldn’t tell our parents about it. Even though they had known we were together for such a long time, it just wasn’t something either of us felt we were comfortable telling them.
Things were really nice. We settled into a two bedroom place about twenty minutes away from work for me and half an hour for him. It was a whole new phase to our relationship and felt natural but exciting at the same time!
My parents decided to come and visit me for Easter weekend. This was after we had been living together for about 3 months. Obviously we knew this was going to happen at some point or another, so we had made arrangements beforehand. Rohit was going to stay at his colleague’s house for that week and my parents were going to be under the impression that he was still working in Bangalore – simple.
We had a lovely Easter weekend. It was nice having my parents in town because I am close to them and I also got to see some of my mom’s old school friends from when she was in college here (they live in Delhi, otherwise). I took them to nice places for lunch and we managed to have dinner in town as well. Then the long weekend ended and I had to go back to work. I had told my boss that my parents were in town for a short while, so she had agreed to be a little easy on me that week so that I could make it home in time to have dinner with them and stuff.
That night when I got home I found mom and dad sitting in the hall. Dad with a drink of Scotch and mom with a worried expression on her face. What was going on? They acted normal and didn’t say anything, so I figured nothing to urgent had happened and we went about our evening but had a relatively quiet dinner. My mum asked about my relationship with Rohit and how we were handling distance and those sorts of things – I had to lie, obviously, but told her that we were managing.
The next morning I left for work and went about my day as normal, but around evening time I got a text from mom saying, “Come home please, we need to talk.” I freaked out – they had figured we were living together and I was going to be in so, so, SO much trouble!! I made my way home sheepishly and spoke to Rohit and told him what had happened and that I was on my way home. I told him that he should come in an hour or so to help me pacify them. Little did I know…that was not what was about to happen!
When I got home, I saw that my mom had gone through my cupboards and suitcases and all. Perplexed and a little angry, I asked her, “What are you doing???” She replied, “I was looking for some of your warm clothes to take back with me to Delhi for when you come in winter and suddenly I came across guys’ things – deos, clothes, shoes… I think you need to tell me what’s going on? Have you been cheating on Rohit?”
Before I could even respond, my dad decided to chime up and lend his voice to this insane conversation, “Tanya, you know our families are very close – because of your relationship with him they have become even closer. We would have never maintained such a close relationship with them if we knew that you were going to do something like this to him.”
It sounds terrible, but I burst out into laughter!!! They obviously got very annoyed. By then the doorbell rang and of course it was Rohit standing at the door – with some flowers for mom and a bottle of Scotch for dad – thinking he was here to pacify them. My parents opened the door looked at him, looked at me and then looked back at him.
Now the charade was definitely over, it was time to come clean. So we sat down over tea and explained that we had started living together a few months back and that things were fine between us, but that we hadn’t understood how to communicate this to them, etc.
My parents’ questions were pretty strange – has he been fired, do his parents know, etc, etc. Anyway they weren’t angry – it actually made us feel pretty stupid about the whole thing. Especially since mom wasted no time in calling his mom and telling her the situation while we just sat there like a couple of 10-year-olds, not sure what to do! I guess both of us realised our parents were pretty chilled people and we had been the ones who were dumb to not tell them that our relationship had progressed to this level.
Anyway, this was all about three years back! We’re married now – obviously we live together and both our parents know! The thing is though…I’m pregnant! We found out last week – and yeah, you guessed it – we haven’t told our parents yet! They’re coming to town next weekend anyway for a little get together… We’re excited to tell them, but thinking about it made me feel the same butterflies I did three years back when this happened!
Be honest with your folks! They may just be a whole lot more cool than you think!!!
* Names changed to protect privacy
Image: Shutterstock
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