Dear Diana,
I am gay. My lover is in India and I am abroad. We've been in this long-distance relationship for the past two years. We even manage to meet often. Six months back, he emailed me saying his family is pressuring him to get married to a girl. I told him I will look after his parents.

He agreed, but a few days later he again began fighting on the issue and I finally agreed for him to get married. But now, there's a new problem. I have made quite a few friends here during my nine-year stay who are almost family. But my boyfriend doesn't like it.

If they are coming over or I am going somewhere, I have to inform him in advance. This is not always possible. He doesn't like it if I add new friends on my profiles on social networking sites. So I have even unfriended some good friends.
But he insists that if I cannot leave my friends, then I should not have any expectations from him. I tried to talk to him out of this, but in vain. I don't want to break up nor does he, but I am fed up of fighting every day. What do I do?

Name withheld

Dear Friend,
You know what they say about absence... about it making the heart grow fonder and all? Well, prolonged absence makes the heart forget. I think you should set some ground rules in this relationship. He cannot expect you to not meet your friends whenever you choose to or to "unfriend" them on social networking sites if he is going to get married to someone else.

You cannot keep your life on hold for someone who doesn't have the courage to stand up to his parents for you. Come to think of it, has he even mentioned you to his parents. It's one thing for him to supervise your online activities as a boyfriend, it's quite another thing to expect to have the same rights after getting you to agree to him getting married. He can't call the shots if he doesn't even care to be with you.

Tell him not to have such high expectations if he can't do that. If that doesn't shut his whining, you should seriously consider breaking up with him.

Son, you're too old to be spending on comics!

Dear Diana,
My son spent thousands of rupees on a comic book last week. He claims it is a rare edition, but he's 28 years old and should be thinking about getting married and not about buying comic books. How do I get him to see reason?