Living that (dating) double life
Our first book club (usually for paid subscribers but open to everyone this month!) will be on February 24 at 9-10pm ET. We are reading Hijab Butch Blues. See you there! Link will be sent out day of.
Mark your calendars for the upcoming paid subscriber community conversation over Zoom: Feb 18th — at 6pm ET. Link to Zoom will be sent day of.
Paid subscribers now get access to this unlimited chat function with me and each other!
I’ll be sending out an update post in the coming week or so with all the new updates and offerings and scheduling moving forward (this includes one live community event A WEEK and more!!). Stay tuned! Until then, here’s our Feb schedule exploring healthy love:
No one ever tells you how truly painful it is to love when your first ever experience with it had to be in secret.
I had my first ever boyfriend in middle school. It really was just about him holding my books between classes and walking me to the bus stop (we didn’t even touch!). But I remember telling my mom about it when I got home (because I was so innocent! and didn’t think anything of it), and she thought it was really cute— harmless even. But the next day, she had told me I had to stop being this person's girlfriend because she had told my dad and he didn't like it. And that was that.
That was the first time (in hindsight) that I learned that there were things that my parents weren't going to approve of when it came to boys and dating. It was the first time I realized maybe I shouldn’t tell my mom everything even if it felt innocent to me. And it definitely didn't matter if these things were normalized in the society that I was being raised in.
Fast forward, and in high school, I dated my first boyfriend in secret, and I even had a prepaid phone to talk to him — behind my parents back. For me, it was a survival mechanism. It was definitely just a way for me to retain a semblance of a childhood with my peers and still try to make my parents happy or seem like a good Indian daughter. I knew from the beginning of that relationship that I couldn’t and shouldn’t tell my parents. Not just because my boyfriend was Black (and anti-blackness and prejudice is rampant), but also because dating was not supposed to be something on my radar until I was prepared for marriage.
It felt like my parents' love and approval were on the line every time I tried to do something that was deemed normal in the society that I was growing up in. The reality is, is that for so many of us, we don't know how to enjoy a new relationship when we're hiding it from our family because we are so worried about what's on the line or getting caught. And I never really fully allowed myself to experience a relationship and romance and all the things that comes with that because I felt a lot of shame.
But even the downsides were experienced in isolation: As my first boyfriend was unkind, or hurtful, or even as I was anxious and unable to manage emotions due to that anxiety… I couldn’t talk about it to my parents. I fractured myself so I could put on a smile and talk about school at home, and then deal with my feelings and sadness and hurt in private — often crying myself to sleep. Because of this, I learned to even hide these things from my friends. I figured, no one can be there for me. No one should know about this.
It's really sad when I think back on it because that first relationship for me was really profound. All of our first relationships are profound. They have an impact on the ways that we see ourselves on the ways that we learn about ourselves through how we are engaging with other people and are treated by/treat people. And to have to experience that behind my parents that really was one major, initial way for me that cracked my identity and cracked the way that I felt I was able to connect with other people in my family.
And it cracked the way I understood what love is. If you were like me, you may not know how to be in a relationship for the sake of just being in a relationship, how to be young and in love, or how to enjoy the process, how to let things move slowly. You may need things to move quickly, or avoid these relationship milestones altogether. You may ignore red flags to make others happy, and you may not even have any idea what it is you are attracted to, need, or want in a romantic partnership.
Hiding your relationship reinforces this story many of us have told ourselves that we are bad people, and bad children. And this really impacts your sense of self. It impacts the way that you engage with who you are and how you believe you are worthy to be loved or not to be loved.
Hiding relationships becomes more than just hiding a relationship. It becomes hiding parts of ourselves that are changing and that are growing, hiding experiences and lessons that we learned, hiding the development and exploration of our own sense of self. One lie and one secret becomes another secret becomes another lie becomes another secret becomes another lie and it really does fracture our sense of self.
These secrets cause us to be islands navigating all these ups and downs by ourselves, not really trusting if we could share this with anyone else for fear of be judged or rejected or ashamed. They reinforce these beliefs tied to shame and guilt and it really is just so painful and so hard and it really took me so many years to get to a point where I felt like I could start to engage in love in a way that is positive and happy and unfiltered and accept it and receive it without feeling shame and if this is you. You’re not alone.
This is just one of the many ways we engage in this double life as bicultural folks. The constant straddling and back and forth can make it much harder to feel whole in your sense of self, can lead to comfort in lying and discomfort with vulnerability and honesty, and can cause psychological stress and mental health issues.
This month we are going to talk about healthy romantic love. What does it look like? What have you learned about it? What are you seeking? What did you learn, nor not learn, from your immigrant parents?
Hey Sahaj! I wanted to point out that dating when we were younger is not a risk all of us could take or were willing to take and hence, not an experience we all could have. My parents and I came to America with economic constraints, and I infer that is a common experience for immigrants. Also, because we live in patriarchy, I feel like there has been inadequate guidance on dating, whatever "dating" means, as well as on female sexuality and consent and boundaries.