I told my parents I liked men to avoid their arranged marriage proposals.
So I’m pretty straight, maybe slightly bi if we count femboys. Let’s get that out of the way first. I’m also an Indian male around 28 years of age.
My parents have been trying to find me a partner because apparently it is ‘time’ for me to settle down
I have been here for a few years while my parents are still in India.
I’d also like to clear up some misconceptions around arranged marriage. A lot of non Indians seem to think it’s literally your parents choose who you marry and that’s that, but that’s not really the case.
Instead it’s more like your parents tap their network to find potential partners for you, if you like each others pics then you guys meet in person and then you decide whether or not you want to get married.
So basically your parents are Tinder and you get a meeting or two to decide whether or not you want to get married. It’s not quite as bad as many of you think it is, but the whole process feels super rushed and I’d rather date someone before I figure out if we’re compatible or not.
Anyways, my parents have recently been getting on my case about getting married. Apparently I’m getting older, need to settle down and give them grandchildren or something like that.
Basically every time I see them or talk to them online they have a new potential match for me, a picture of some new girl and ask me if I’d be willing to meet her.
​It’s honestly super annoying, but I’m too non confrontational to really put my foot down and say “I don’t want an arranged marriage”, after all if I do there’d be an argument or at minimum some interrogation about why I don’t want one.
​Anyways, I was thinking of ways I could get them to stop harassing me about getting married and the idea in the title popped up in my head.
Decided to tell them that I like men to get them off me, but end up they try to find men to matchmake me with
I decided it’d be a lot easier to just come out and say that I like men then to explain why I didn’t want an arranged marriage.
My parents were fairly conservative but weren’t the types to disown their kids, and if I just said I like men I’d have a solid reason to not get an arranged marriage – I didn’t like girls
​Soooooooooo that’s what I ended up doing last time I was visiting back in India. They were showing me pictures of some girl and I just looked them in the eyes and said “Mom, dad, I actually like men”.
They got really quiet and awkward and asked me if I was sure and I said yes. My mom told me they’d love me no matter what and to do what makes me happy. My dad was a lot more awkward and quiet but later gave me a similar talk about how he was a bit uncomfortable with the idea, but recognizes that times are changing and I should do what makes me happy.
​Overall I did feel kinda bad because of how genuinely my parents seemed to respond to me, but was happy with the result, they stopped giving me arranged marriage proposals and stopped showing me pictures of girls
​That is until last weekend when I went back to India again. I visited them as usual and was greeted by my mom who was more excited than usual.
She sat me down and pulled out a binder with a bunch of pictures of guys. Apparently my parents had spent the last month or so looking for any and all Indian men who I could potentially marry.
So now I guess I’m dealing with the exact same crap but instead of being greeted with pictures of cute Indian girls I get to see pictures of Indian dudes instead.
FML lol
​At this point the plan is to find a girlfriend and tell my parents she totallllllllly turned me straight or just find a friend to act as my bf idk