Hearts Still Care

I am writing this because a recent conversation with my sister showed how easily my relationships can be judged through comparisons that overlook their different foundations. She believes a partner’s right to speak to a parent should be reciprocal: if she cannot speak to her father-in-law in a particular way, Hamza should not speak to my mother that way either. She also sees Anand differently because he has been part of the family for decades and supported my mother through difficult times.

I understand her perspective, but Anand and Hamza entered my life under different circumstances, occupy different roles, and have distinct relationships with my family.

Comparing Anand and Hamza as though they occupy the same place within my family misses the central point: they entered my life at different times, under different circumstances, and have developed fundamentally different relationships with me and with my family.

This is not about deciding who matters more or who has more rights. It is about recognising that these relationships cannot be judged by the same standards.

Anand is family in a way that is difficult to explain

Anand has been my spouse for almost twenty-six years. In September, we will have been together for twenty-six years.

His place in my family is not based on longevity alone. Anand is the person who gets things done. He makes phone calls, fills out paperwork, deals with banks and government offices, speaks to handymen, solves practical problems and takes responsibility when something needs to be sorted out.

He is the family’s all-purpose fixer, and everyone knows it.

My mother, my sister and my cousin regularly turn to him:

“Anand, do this.”

“Anand, get me this.”

“Anand, how do I do this?”

“Anand, can you sort this out?”

And he does.

He has managed this house for years. I have given him that responsibility because he is my spouse and because I trust him to handle it.

A long time ago, my therapist described Anand as the Rock of Gibraltar. That remains accurate. He is solid, dependable and still standing when everything else is falling apart.

But that description has limits.

A rock is a rock. It cannot be cuddled. It does not necessarily provide emotional intimacy.

Anand is my spouse, my family and my rock. He has been beside me for twenty-six years. But his relationship with me is not the same as Hamza’s.

That is why the comparison fails.

Hamza occupies an entirely different place in my life

Hamza came into my life in 2019, and we began our relationship in 2021.

That is around the same time when Geeta married Ishan, so the duration of her relationship with Ishan and mine with Hamza is not dramatically different. But the circumstances are entirely different.

Hamza entered an existing relationship and an established household. Anand had already been part of my life for more than two decades, and my family already knew and accepted him.

Hamza also entered a polyamorous relationship, something most people do not instinctively understand. I did not fully understand it until I lived it, and Hamza is still finding his place within it.

He was around twenty-two when we began seeing each other. He is twenty-nine now. He has grown enormously, but he is still learning where he fits, how to speak, when to speak and what his role is within a family structure that existed before he arrived.

He is also less comfortable speaking English than Anand. He is not as quick or confident in conversation, and he does not ease a room in the way Anand can.

So he often keeps quiet.

Because Anand has been with me for so much longer, Hamza naturally defers to him. He generally does not approach Anand directly; he comes through me.

That makes sense. I am the person with whom he has the relationship. I am the person whose reactions he watches.

He looks for me in a crowded room. He thinks about me. He brings me food even when he is tired after work. He worries about me. He cares about what I am feeling.

When somebody has a problem with me, he stands up for me. He will tell me when I am wrong, and he will tell somebody else when they are wrong.

That is Hamza’s role in my life.

Where Anand is my rock, Hamza is my emotional partner. These are not competing roles. They are different roles, and both are real.

My family also has to acknowledge Hamza’s position

Hamza is a Muslim man.

That should not matter. But pretending it does not matter in the context of my family would be dishonest.

He is aware of the attitudes around him. He knows that my mother and sister have voted for the BJP. He has heard conversations about Muslims, Israel and Palestine, Narendra Modi and other subjects that have made the family’s political and social attitudes clear.

He knows he is not necessarily entering a room where everyone sees him without preconceived ideas.

That is difficult because he knows I am, in many ways, the only person, apart from Anand, who will look at him without that filter.

He knows that I see him—not his religion, not the assumptions attached to it, and not what somebody thinks a Muslim man should be.

Him.

That is another reason his relationship with my family cannot be compared casually with somebody else’s relationship with their in-laws.

The comparison with Ishan and my mother is misleading

Geeta has compared how she deals with her father-in-law with how Hamza deals with my mother.

I understand why she sees a parallel, but there is not one. The relationships are fundamentally different.

Anand has always understood the distinction between being my spouse and being my son-in-law. He has regarded Goodie Pua as his mother within this family, and there was genuine affection between them. But he has also understood that my mother is not Goodie Pua and his mother-in-law.

That creates a particular boundary.

Hamza’s relationship with my mother began differently.

When my mother became seriously ill, Hamza cried because he genuinely thought she was going to die. He did not react like someone worried about his partner’s mother. He reacted like someone losing his own mother.

He had placed her in that position emotionally. He regarded her as a substitute mother.

That matters because when you regard someone as your mother, you expect affection, concern and some degree of reciprocity. You do not automatically adopt the emotional distance associated with a mother-in-law.

Unfortunately, that reciprocity did not exist.

Hamza initially genuinely cared about her and gave her a place in his heart far more intimate than “my partner’s mother”.

Then he lived with her. He watched and listened. He saw how she behaved and how she treated me and him. He saw things that someone who visited occasionally might never see.

Gradually, he came to understand her as a person rather than as the mother he had imagined her to be.

His relationship with her changed because his understanding of her changed.

That is not interference for its own sake. It is a relationship changing as someone comes to understand another person’s character. As no doubt my sister and mother have done with regard to him. 

We are not in a conventional family structure

There is another point that cannot be ignored when discussing who has the right to speak to whose family.

Anand and I are in a homosexual relationship. Hamza and I are in a polyamorous homosexual relationship.

Those facts matter because the family structures heterosexual couples often take for granted do not necessarily exist for us.

A heterosexual man who marries a woman does not necessarily have to announce to his parents that he has a male partner. A heterosexual woman does not have to explain to her in-laws that she is in a relationship with another woman.

Ishan does not have to come out to his family for his marriage to Geeta to exist.

Hamza has not come out to his family.

That is not because he is indifferent to them or ashamed of our relationship. He fears that coming out could provoke a completely hostile reaction. His silence is therefore not a casual choice or a sign that he does not value his family. It is a matter of safety.

That difference has consequences. There is a privilege in entering a family relationship without first having to explain your sexuality or risk hostility before you can claim a place within it.

Hamza has never had that privilege.

Neither did Anand.

When Anand and I began dating, he came out to his family early in our relationship. Even then, I did not suddenly acquire the same place in his family that he had in mine.

I could not speak to his mother as Anand could speak to mine. I could not enter that relationship and assume the same authority. I did not expect to.

So why should that principle change simply because Hamza now lives in my home?

Why should his ability to speak to my mother be judged by whether I have equivalent access to his family?

It was never equivalent. It did not need to be equivalent. It still does not.

Authority comes from the relationship, not from reciprocity

If Hamza lives here as a member of my family and as my spouse, his place here does not depend on whether I can speak to his family.

That is something I have given him.

If he speaks to my mother in the wrong way, I will be the first person to tell him. I already do that.

If I think he has crossed a line, I tell him. If I think Anand has crossed a line, I tell him. If I think my mother or Geeta has crossed a line, I tell them.

That is what family should be. It should not be governed by an abstract rule that says, “You can speak only if the other person has been given exactly the same right.”

Families do not work like contracts. They work through relationships, and those relationships are different.

Boundaries still matter

None of this gives Hamza unlimited authority to intervene between my mother and me.

He does not have that authority, and I have been clear about it.

I have also been clear with my mother: I do not want people stepping into the relationship between her and me unless I ask them to.

That boundary applies to both sides.

I apply the same principle elsewhere. Geeta has her relationship with Ishan. I do not insert myself into conflicts between Ishan and his father.

That is how these boundaries should work.

There are lines, and some of them are fragile. We all have to understand and respect them.

But the existence of a boundary does not mean that every relationship on either side of it is identical.

Ultimately, this is about honesty

I have never been good at pretending relationships are simpler than they are. I tend to speak the truth, even when it is uncomfortable.

The truth is that Anand and Hamza occupy very different places in my life and, consequently, within my family.

Anand has earned his place over twenty-six years. He has worked for this family, helped this family and carried responsibilities for it. He has been there through crises, illnesses, paperwork, bureaucracy, repairs, practical problems and the endless small tasks of ordinary family life.

He has earned the familiarity and authority that come with that history.

Hamza has a different history. He has been in my life for less time. He entered an established relationship. He is younger, still finding his place and navigating a relationship structure that most people around him do not fully understand.

But he has also become my emotional person.

He sees me. He worries about me. He looks for me. He fights for me. He takes care of me in the ways that matter emotionally.

He has experienced my family from a different position.

So when Geeta says, essentially, “Hamza should be able to speak to mummy only when I can speak in his family with authority,” I do not think that follows.

It compares two relationships simply because both men are my partners. That is not enough.

Relationships are not mathematical equations. They are histories: accumulated trust, affection, hurt, responsibility, intimacy and boundaries.

Anand has one history with my family. Hamza has another.

Neither needs to be diminished to make the other legitimate. Hamza does not need to become Anand in order to have a place in this family.

He already has one.

It is simply different.

The mistake is assuming that relationships that look superficially similar must operate according to the same rules.

They do not.

Anyone who wants to understand Hamza’s behaviour must understand the history that produced it before judging the behaviour itself.

There are no simple lines here. There are only relationships and the fragile boundaries we have built around them so that all of us can live together.