My Son Is Gay and the Family Wants Him Married: What Parents Should Do
For parents who are frightened, under pressure from relatives, and want to do right by their child. What a forced marriage would cost, how to handle the family, and what acceptance looks like in stages.
What should parents do?
My son is gay and the family wants him married: what should I do? The most protective thing you can do is refuse to arrange a marriage he doesn't want. A wedding will not change his orientation; it is likely to create a second victim, a wife who was not told, and to cost you your son's trust.
Parents ask me how to fix this. I tell them the son doesn't need fixing. The family does, and that is much harder work, because it means standing up to people you've spent your whole life keeping happy.Dr. Prerna Kohli
You have found out, or been told, that your son is gay, and before you have had time to understand it the family has started asking about his wedding. An aunt has a girl in mind. His grandmother has said something at a function. His father has stopped speaking about it, which may mean he is thinking about it constantly. And somewhere in your own mind a voice is saying that marriage would settle him.
It won't. What a forced marriage would do to your son, to the woman he married and to your relationship with him is set out plainly below, and then what you can actually do: with the relatives, with each other, and with a son who is probably watching closely to see whose side you are on. If the two of you are struggling to agree on any of it, that is exactly what a first session is for.
My son is gay: what a marriage would actually do
The belief underneath the pressure is that marriage will change him: that with a wife and a child, the attraction will fade, or at least stop mattering. It doesn't. Sexual orientation is not a phase, a habit or a rebellion, and it does not respond to a wedding, a wife, a child or a change of city. What a marriage does is add two more people to the problem.
The first is his wife. She will be a woman from a family like yours, who enters the marriage believing it is what it looks like, and who will spend years trying to understand why her husband is kind and absent. Many wives in this position are never told; in the main Indian surveys of men who have sex with men, the men themselves reported that almost none of their wives knew. When she finds out, and many eventually do, she will have lost years she cannot recover, and the family that arranged it will be the first place she looks for who is to blame.
The second is the son you have now. A man who marries under pressure to keep his family's peace learns, often permanently, that his family chose its comfort over his life. Many stay in contact and never fully trust their parents again. Some cut off entirely. The grandchildren the marriage was meant to produce, if they come, grow up in a house with a secret at the centre of it.
What the research shows
Sources: Ryan, Huebner, Diaz and Sanchez, Pediatrics (2009), a study of 224 white and Latino lesbian, gay and bisexual young adults in the United States, with rejection reported retrospectively; the first Integrated Behavioural and Biological Assessment (IBBA), India, as reported in Ramakrishnan et al., AIDS and Behavior (2015). The American study is used for the direction of the association between family rejection and harm in that population, not as a risk estimate for Indian families; the Indian survey describes men recruited at cruising sites.
The first two figures are the ones I want parents to sit with. Rejection in that study was not a feeling; it was measured as things parents did, such as trying to change a child's orientation, excluding him from family events, or blaming him for the discrimination he faced. Arranging a marriage he does not want is on that list in everything but name, in my view; the study did not measure marriage pressure itself.
Why the pressure is so hard to resist
Most parents I see do not want to force their son into a marriage. They want the relatives to stop asking, and marriage is the only answer they can think of that would make that happen. The pressure comes from a place that is real: in many Indian families, an unmarried son in his thirties is a question the parents are expected to answer, and "he is gay" is an answer that is likely to be received as a catastrophe, a scandal, or a lie.
There is also grief, and it is legitimate. You had a picture of his life, of a daughter-in-law, of a wedding you would host and grandchildren you would hold, and that picture has to be given up. Parents often grieve that picture as they would a bereavement, though the son is not lost, and the grief deserves to be treated as real rather than argued away. What it does not do is entitle you to make him live the picture in your place.
Acceptance comes in stages, and you are allowed to be in an early one. Shock, denial, bargaining, grief and eventually a new normal are the stages many parents describe, in no fixed order, and they are described in detail in the stages parents go through when a child comes out. You don't have to be at the end of that road to do the one thing that matters now, which is not to arrange a wedding while you're on it.
What to do with the relatives
The relatives are the pressure, and the relatives are also the reason parents give for caving. The answer is not to convince them, which rarely works, but to stop the question at your door.
- Agree the line between the two of you first. One of the most damaging things is a father saying one thing and a mother another. Decide together what you will say, and say the same thing, every time.
- Choose the shortest true answer you can live with. "He's not getting married, and we've accepted it" is enough. "We'll see" invites the aunt to keep looking. You don't owe anyone the reason.
- Refuse the introductions, not just the wedding. Every "just meet her" is a step toward a marriage he doesn't want. Stop it at the first step, when it is easy, not at the engagement.
- Expect the pressure to escalate before it fades. When the usual questions stop working, some relatives try tears, illness, and the honour of the family. Hold the line through it. It does fade, usually, in my experience, within a year of a consistent answer.
- Let your son see you do it. He needs to see you refuse on his behalf. In my experience it does more for your relationship with him than anything you say to him privately.
Whether and when to tell relatives the actual reason is your son's decision, not yours, and it is worth asking him rather than assuming. Some sons want their parents to tell the extended family so they don't have to; others want it kept close. Either way, telling relatives without his consent is a breach he will not easily forgive, in my experience.
What to do with each other
In my experience fathers and mothers rarely arrive at acceptance at the same speed, and the gap becomes its own problem. A mother who has come round finds herself managing a husband who hasn't; a father who is trying finds himself blamed for not trying faster. Some marriages take real damage here, and it is one of the most common reasons parents come to see me together.
What helps is separating the two jobs. The first job, refusing the marriage, is best done by both of you now, whatever you each feel, and either of you can start it. The second job, coming to terms with who your son is, can go at two different speeds, and it helps to say that out loud rather than pretend you're in the same place. A father who cannot yet say the word gay can still say "he's not marrying", and that is the sentence that protects everyone.
You do not have to reach acceptance at the same speed. If the gap between you is becoming its own problem, that is something I work on with parents together, without either of you being asked to feel what you don't yet feel.
The engagement that was three phone calls away
A couple came to me a month after their son had told them, because his father's sister had already found "a suitable girl" and the son's father had not said no. The mother had accepted it, more or less; the father had not, and his silence was being read by the whole family as consent. The son had stopped coming home.
Our first sessions were about one sentence, and about the father being able to say it: the marriage was not happening. He said it to his sister on the phone, in a call his wife listened to. The pressure got worse for some months and then stopped. The father is still, two years later, not entirely at peace with his son's life. He is at peace with his son, who comes home for every festival, and that turned out to be the thing that mattered.
Composite illustration; not a real client.
If the relatives, or the words for your son, are the part you can't manage, that is where a first session starts.
What to do with your son
Your son is probably watching two things: whether you will protect him from the family, and whether you can bear to know him. The first comes before the second, and it is the one you can do today. Tell him, in words, that you will not arrange or push a marriage he does not want, and that you will handle the relatives. He may not believe you at first; many sons have heard reassurances before and then watched an aunt produce a photograph. He is far more likely to believe you when he sees it done.
The second takes longer and cannot be rushed or faked. Ask him questions and listen to the answers. Meet his partner, if he has one, when he is ready to introduce you, and treat that person as you would treat any partner your child brought home. Say less than you feel in the early months, because the things parents say in shock are the things sons often remember for decades. And if there is a thing you cannot say yet, say that you can't say it yet, rather than saying something you'll regret.
Two warnings. If anyone in the family suggests treatment to change his orientation, understand that conversion therapy does not work, can cause lasting harm, and has been classified as professional misconduct for medical practitioners by the National Medical Commission. And if your son has become withdrawn, hopeless, or has spoken of not wanting to live, please seek professional help for him immediately and stay close. Family rejection is strongly associated with harm for young gay men, and family support with protection.
How counselling helps parents
Counselling here helps parents hold a line with relatives, work through the gap between the two of them, and find words for their son that don't wound; it is for parents alone, together, or with their son if he wants to come. Most of the parents who come to me are not looking for permission to accept their son; they have decided that already, or are close. They come because they can't hold the line with the relatives, because the two of them are at different stages and it is damaging their marriage, or because they cannot find the words for their son and are afraid of saying the wrong ones. Those are all things counselling is good at. Some parents come with their son for a session or two; most come alone, and that is fine. Nobody here is going to try to change him.
Talk confidentially with Dr. Prerna Kohli
Confidential sessions with Dr. Prerna Kohli, for parents alone or with their son, online from anywhere in the world or in person.
Message on WhatsApp Book a SessionCan therapy make our son straight?
No. Sexual orientation does not change through therapy, medicine, prayer or marriage, and every major professional body says so. Treatments that claim to change it can cause lasting harm, and the National Medical Commission has classified them as professional misconduct for doctors. If someone offers you such a treatment, walk away; there is no evidence behind it. What counselling can help with is your grief, your marriage and your family, all of which are real.
Is it something we did?
No. Sexual orientation is not caused by parenting, and decades of research have failed to find any family pattern that produces it. Parents ask this question because often because guilt is easier to bear than helplessness; if you caused it, you could undo it. You didn't, and you can't. What you do have influence over is what happens next, which is a good deal more than you may feel right now.
Should we tell the relatives the real reason?
Only if your son wants that, and only in the way he wants it. Some sons want their parents to tell the extended family so they don't have to face each conversation themselves; others want it kept to the immediate family for years. Ask him. Telling relatives without his consent is one of the few things that can permanently damage your relationship with him, because it takes the one decision that was his.
What if he agrees to marry, to keep the peace?
Then he is offering to sacrifice a woman's life and his own so that his parents can avoid their relatives, and the right response is not to accept it: don't arrange it, don't push it, and help him see whether the choice is actually free. Sons make this offer when they believe the alternative is losing their family. Tell him it isn't, then prove it by handling the relatives yourselves. A son who marries to protect you will usually spend years paying for it, and so will his wife.
A girl says she knows he's gay and wants to marry him anyway. Is that a solution?
It is an arrangement two adults can choose, and it is not for parents to arrange. If the two of them, with full knowledge, want a marriage of convenience for their own reasons, that is their decision to make and their strain to carry. If the suggestion is coming from you or from relatives, understand that it is still a marriage designed to hide him, and the pressures that strain such marriages, children, in-laws and the question of an exit, are severe.
Will he have a lonely life?
Not because he is gay. Gay men in India build partnerships, friendships and chosen families, and some are raising children with partners. The loneliness that does threaten gay men is the loneliness of being cut off from their own families, which is something you have real control over. A son who knows his parents are on his side has a very different life from one who is managing them, and that difference is the one you get to make.
His father refuses to accept it. What do I do?
Separate the two jobs. Refusing the marriage needs both of you now, and a father who cannot yet say the word gay can still say that his son is not marrying. Acceptance can come at his own speed, and often does, once the pressure of the wedding question is off. What damages families is a father's silence being read as consent by relatives, so ask him for the one sentence, not for a change of heart. Counselling together helps many couples through this gap.
How do we handle the questions at weddings and functions?
With a short, consistent answer you have agreed in advance, delivered pleasantly and then followed by a change of subject. "He's not planning to marry, and we're fine with it." Relatives who push get the same sentence again. It feels unbearable the first few times and becomes routine faster than you expect, because many relatives ask out of habit rather than interest. The ones who persist will do so regardless of what you say.
Should we meet his partner?
Yes, when he is ready to introduce you, and it is worth telling him you'd like to before he asks. Meeting a partner is the moment many sons describe as the turning point, because it is the first time acceptance became an action. Treat the partner as you would any partner your child brought home: with courtesy, and with a willingness to be surprised. You do not have to feel ready to do it well.
Where do we get help as parents?
From a psychologist who works with families and will not try to change your son; that is what I do, individually and with couples, online or in person. Sessions for parents alone are about grief, your marriage, and the practical problem of relatives; sessions with your son, if he wants them, are about finding words that don't wound. Needing help with this is normal, and in my experience parents who get it early lose far less than those who manage it silently.
Related reading
Related pages people read alongside this one:
- Counselling with Dr. Kohli, including sessions for parents and for families.
- What to expect in your first session, if you've never seen a psychologist before.
- The stages parents go through when a child comes out, on the grief and where it leads.
- In-law interference in an Indian marriage, on how family pressure works from the inside.
- Lavender marriage in India, on what a marriage arranged to hide him would become.
- Is my husband gay?, written for the wife such a marriage would create.