Dear Sugars,

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for more than two years. We’re in our early 20s and head over heels in love with each other. We plan to live together and eventually get married. He’s from a Middle Eastern Islamic family; I’m white and Christian. Although we have no issues with our differing religions and backgrounds, his parents do. My boyfriend finished college last year and he’s still living at home. When his parents found out about me shortly after we began dating, they threatened to kick him out and cut him off. Instead of standing up for our relationship, he told them that we broke up. I’ve been his dirty little secret ever since. I’ve put my emotional needs on the back burner to placate his family, but I don’t want to continue making this sacrifice. I’m tired of having to hide and I’m becoming resentful of my boyfriend.

Is it selfish for me to want him to stand up for me and for us? When I try to talk to him about it so we can finally resolve these issues, he apologizes and then brushes me off by claiming there’s nothing he can do. Where should I draw the line? I love him and I want to be with him, but I don’t know if our future is viable because of his family. When should I walk away?

Dirty Little Secret

Cheryl Strayed: Your boyfriend may tell you he wants to marry you, Dirty Little Secret, but his actions tell a different story. It’s this: His reluctance to disappoint and possibly defy his parents is greater than his commitment to you. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and allow that he may have had good reasons to keep you a secret early on in your relationship in order to keep the peace at home. Perhaps he needed his parents to pay his college tuition, or his status as a full-time student made it difficult to cover the expense of renting a place of his own. Or maybe he opted to avoid stirring the pot on behalf of a relationship that might turn out to be short-term.

Now, more than two years in, those possible explanations are no longer valid. If he were serious about wanting to have a functional long-term relationship with you, he’d be the one trying to talk to you about when to break the news of your existence to his parents. He’d be the one working to resolve the divide between his parents’ opposition to cross-cultural romance and the fact of his true love for you. He isn’t. You are. This spells doom.