Seven years – that’s 2,555 days of love, arguments, laughter, silence, shared meals, cancelled trips, long hugs, and the eternal “what should we watch tonight?” question. They say the seven-year itch makes couples restless, but honestly, if that’s true, we’ve been scratching that itch since year one – sometimes gently, sometimes like two cats tangled in a blanket.

I am calm, composed, mostly sane. Sometimes too quiet – his biggest complaint. He, on the other hand, is a dramatic Libra – expressive, emotional, and allergic to silence. If I’m the pause, he’s the punctuation. Between our ugly fights, I’ve often said, “That’s it, let’s just call it off.” But he’s the one who’s held on, who’s refused to let go when I wanted to walk away. If our love were a movie, he’d be the hero saving the story while I’m halfway through my “I’m done” speech.

We’ve seen good days, bad days, broke days, and “let’s just cancel the trip” days. We’ve argued, laughed till our stomachs hurt, sat in awkward silences, and then somehow found our way back – not because love is easy, but because love and therapy taught us new ways to understand each other.

I’m a coffee person – quiet mornings, slow thoughts, soft music. He’s a chai lover – loud, chatty, and always ready for conversation. We are opposites in every sense, yet somewhere between his chaos and my calm, we found our rhythm. Not perfect. But perfectly ours.

Being a gay couple in India isn’t easy. There are the external challenges – the judgments, the laws, the whispered comments. And then there are the internal ones – the fears, the insecurities, the “what will people say” that never really goes away. But seven years in, I’ve learned that love is both rebellion and refuge. It’s surviving the noise outside and the noise inside, and still choosing each other, again and again.

So yes, we’ve hit the seven-year itch. But instead of scratching our heads about what’s wrong, we’re scratching each other’s backs, sipping chai and coffee, and laughing through it all. Because love isn’t perfect – it’s patient, persistent, and sometimes painfully funny.

Here’s to us – to seven years of imperfect perfection. To chai and coffee, calm and chaos, and to every itch that reminds us we’re still beautifully, stupidly, wonderfully in love.