Dear Pastor,

My boyfriend is from India. We have been living together for at least two years. I really love him and I know he loves me. We try to keep our relationship a secret. His other Indian friends don't know about it. If they come to visit, I hide in the bedroom. He said maybe we won't get married because of my race. I am black and his society and family won't accept me. He told his mom and brother about me. He told them that he has a friend that he likes from Western culture and they said marriages in Western culture do not work.

In India, his dowry is high because he is a doctor. I cook for him and do everything for him. It's like we are married. I am currently in university doing my degree. I come from a middle-class family. I am not rich. I am 22 and he is 28. He asked me if I wanted to go. He told me that he won't stop me if I wanted to go. He knows I really love him. He said he will feel hurt if I leave him because he loves me. But, the fact is, I can't stay with him and watch him marry some other woman from his society. I know he breaks a lot of his culture's rules to be with me, but what if we can't be together? I would have to start over with some other man. He will just go home today and get married tomorrow.

Please, pastor, I need your advice. I have never cheated on him and I don't have any plans to do that now or in the future. Good men are hard to come along and he is one. In Western culture, you have to be lucky to find one. Should I stay with him?

T.S., St Catherine, Jamaica

Dear T.S.,

This is not a healthy relationship. This man says he loves you but, at the same time, he doesn't want anybody to know that both of you are lovers. And when visitors come to the house, you have to be hiding in the bedroom. Foolishness.

Listen, this man will not marry you. Understand that. He is using you because it is convenient for him to do so. Get it into your head. He is going to leave you when he believes the time is right.

You must move on and you must do so now. He has used you enough. It is time to give him the pink slip.

Pastor