Hey everyone,

It's going to be almost a year since I started seeing and developing feelings for a girl I met while playing a video game. While this may sound really risky and possibly cliched, she was introduced to my gaming group by a very close friend of mine. She lives in the States and I live in Canada, and we both clicked almost immediately. It took me a good four months of talking to her everyday to get the courage to ask her out, however important that particular phase is in the context of a purely online relationship. We're both financially dependent on our parents and suffering from depression and anxiety and fairly abusive parents.

She's transgendered, and was just a year into her transition when we first met. I knew what I was getting into and accepted her for who she is, not who she was or how she looks. I was, and am attracted to her still to this day, and I really want to make this work.

Before I really get into the request for help and advice, it might be best for me to share my relationship with my parents and their reaction upon finding out about my relationship.

My parents are pretty emotionally abusive and controlling, being raised in a very orthodox Indian culture. I only told my mother about my relationship with the girl, and she didn't take it the way I'd naively hoped to.

She said that she expected me to make smarter decisions with my life and that I was making a mistake. But she didn't stop me, per se.

I didn't tell my father. He found out a few months ago by snooping around on my Facebook. I was called to their bedroom and was interrogated for a solid hour about her. He called her an "it" for being transgender and said that "that freak will never have room in this house". What I'd expected. I said fine and walked away, wanting to strangle him for insulting her.

To celebrate one year of dating each other, we decided to meet each other in person, since she'd found a job and started saving up money for a bus to my city. I told my mother that I wish to stay with her for the week of her visit. We needed to see if that would work before we decided to proceed with our relationship. My mother and father started crying and shouting that I was ruining my life and that I was going to meet her and getting raped by her because she's a transwoman.

Well, to cut the long story short, we're not meeting up for our one year anniversary. And given my current dependency on the parents, I can't see her for another year and a half.

This brings me to the core of this post. What can I do to keep this relationship going for the time I'm dependent on these two? I'm currently unable to get a job (applied everywhere, got no responses), and the cost of living alone and being financially independent is too high for me to manage alone. I'm pretty much stuck here for another year and a half. She's in a similar situation, except she's making some money so she manages to take care of her basic needs.

Sorry for the rambly post, I felt like sharing this for catharsis.