💞 Terrified to tell my parents about the person I want to marry

Two years next month. That is how long I have been with someone my parents have never met, someone from outside our community, and every time marriage comes up at Sunday lunch as a general topic, something my mother brings up almost fondly, my stomach folds in on itself a little because I know I am running out of vague answers about being busy with work. My parents are not unreasonable people. They have colleagues and friends from every background you can imagine, they voted for a woman from a different caste to head our residents' association last year without blinking. But marriage inside the community was never discussed in our house, it was just assumed the way water is assumed to be wet, and assumptions like that do not bend easily just because you ask nicely. My grandmother still keeps a list of suitable families on a page torn out of an old diary, updated every time someone's son finishes his degree, and my mother laughs about it but keeps the page anyway, tucked inside a drawer neither of us mentions out loud. I have rehearsed this conversation more times than I want to admit. Different versions depending on whether my father has had his evening tea yet, whether my mother is in the room too since she cries fast and that changes everything about how the rest of it goes. Every version I imagine gets stuck somewhere between stunned silence and a fight that takes weeks to cool down, so I keep pushing the actual conversation two months further away every time I plan it. The person I am with has been more patient than I think I deserve, sitting through a year of just a little more time with no real plan behind those words, meeting me at a cafe three streets from my house instead of anywhere closer, just in case, and neither of us has an answer for what happens if my parents simply never come around. Has anyone here gotten through a conversation like this and come out the other side still speaking to their family?

Neither of you having an answer for what happens if your parents never come around is the heaviest piece, more than the talk itself. Some couples I know went ahead and let things rebuild slowly. Others waited years. No version removes that worry, you just decide which risk you can live with.

The patience your partner has shown for two years already says a lot, worth remembering on the harder days. In my case, my mother's initial shock faded faster than my father's did, and he still brings it up occasionally even now, years later.

Rehearsed a similar conversation with my own parents for almost a year before having it, different versions depending on my father's mood exactly like you described.