I (F, 22) and my boyfriend (M, 22) are in a long-distance cross-continents relationship, and I don't know how to cope with not knowing if we have a future

[lena8007]

I'm currently in a long-distance relationship. I've known my partner for a little over two years, and we've been together for almost a year and a half. We met as university students in the UK, me in London and him in York, but he happened to spend a year in London for a temporary job before finishing his degree. That year is when we became really close friends, and that friendship slowly turned into something more.

I want to say a bit about him, because I think it matters. He's genuinely my best friend. We can talk for hours about anything, we laugh at the same stupid things, and we have so much in common that being with him has always felt easy and natural. He's one of the kindest people I've ever met, and he's also incredibly smart and wise in a quiet, grounded way. When I'm overthinking or upset, he's the one who helps me see things clearly without ever making me feel small. He understands me in a way very few people do. I don't just love him, I really want him in my life, his kindness, his mind, his calm, all of it. Being with him has made me a better and happier person.

From September 2025 we did long distance between London and York. I had graduated a year before him and started working full time, while he had one more year left of his bachelor's. We took the train back and forth a lot, and honestly, it was fine. We made it work because we both wanted to.
The complication is where we're from. I'm Romanian and moved to the UK, and he's Indian, with his parents living in Dubai. After he graduated, his parents didn't want to fund him staying in the UK while he looked for work, so he had to move to Dubai. Since July 2026 we've been doing long distance between London and Dubai, which means we only really get to talk on the phone in the evenings and text during the day.

He's been applying for jobs in London, but the job market is awful right now and he's struggling to find anything that pays well enough. On top of that, his parents don't really care about our relationship and wouldn't do anything to help it. Now they're going through something of a midlife crisis: they want to move back to India and start a business, and they're pushing him, someone with a law degree, to build that business for them, move to India with them, and work there.
I have no idea what's going to happen, and there's nothing I can do about it. I also don't feel I'm entitled to do anything, because it's his life and his decision. I want him to be happy, truly. But the uncertainty is wearing me down. Not knowing if I'll ever see him again, putting my whole heart into this without knowing whether there's a future at the end of it, is harrowing, and it's affecting my mental health quite badly.

I don't know what I should do, or what perspective I should take to get through this. Has anyone been in something similar? How did you cope with the not-knowing, and how did you decide whether to keep going?
Thank you for reading this far.

You sound like good mates more than anything who are now pen pals

This isn’t a serious romantic relationship
you talk but you don’t see each other
you sound like wonderful friends and I’d leave it at that

Sorry OP. I would back away from this. He sounds like a mummy's boy who will follow them to India, whilst stringing you along because he can't get any action in Dubai.

You don’t need to know the future right now, you are still very young.
You haven’t mentioned the right to stay and work in the UK for either of you, but I would imagine that’s a major hurdle and not a certainty for either of you.
I think you’ll just have to wait and see what happens. If he decides to go to India with his parents and set a business and life there, then you have an answer.
Meanwhile, you might well meet someone else, and it might be sensible to cut back on calls . You don’t want to have your entire social life tied to someone living so far away.

How long would you give it, as it is , before you put him into the ‘friend’ box?

At some point he will have so make some sort of a move to commit either way. Is he allowed to stay in the UK, or was he here on a student visa?
If he’s allowed to stay, could he not just get any job in order to be with you?

If he isn’t willing to DO anything, then he has made a decision about your relationship 💐

What do you know of Indian culture and the family dynamic Op? He is very unlikely to go against his parents ever. IME Indian men respect/fear their parents so much they stay little boys for ever (in their parents eyes).

This is not a viable relationship OP. He’s not going to come back to the UK and you definitely won’t be welcome to go there by the sounds of it. There’s no point in continuing this. Break it off now before your heart gets truly broken.

Op, I’m very familiar with this culture. His family pressure will always win. They will not approve. They don’t already. You are wasting your time. By some miracle even if he does choose you, it will only be a matter of time before he goes back to them. I’m almost certain that he also knows he is wasting your time. Save yourself the trouble

It's not clear to me how much time you actually spent living in the same place after you'd become a couple, but it clearly wasn't a lot. Honestly, OP, this has no future. I wouldn't dismiss your boyfriend's parents' plan to move back to India as a 'midlife crisis' either it's a sensible move. There's no permanent way of staying in Dubai as a non-UAE citizen even the 'retirement visa' is only five years renewable, and dependent on being worth more than a certain amount of money. Moving somewhere they have citizenship is a sensible move. But that's irrelevant. This relationship doesn't have legs, and you're both very young.

It's doomed.