I don't need to make an announcement about who I'm dating. It's

In the marketplace where rumor is a currency and applause a storm, Shibani Dandekar speaks with a steady hand on the helm: “I don’t need to make an announcement about who I’m dating. It’s up to me to decide when and what I want to share about my personal life, and it is up to the audience to decide how they look at it.” Hear the two sovereignties she names: the inward throne of choice, and the outward court of opinion. She separates them like night from day. The self governs disclosure; the crowd governs interpretation. Wisdom begins when we stop confusing the two.

In the style of the ancients, let us measure each phrase as a mason measures stone. “I don’t need to make an announcement”: this is the refusal of spectacle, the rejection of the trumpet at the city gate. Not every joy is a proclamation; some are a candle shielded by the hand. “Who I’m dating”: the tender province where trust and time weave their quiet cloth. “It’s up to me to decide when and what I want to share”: this is agency named in full daylight, a charter of boundaries written without apology. “It is up to the audience to decide how they look at it”: this is the concession that perception belongs to others, yet their gaze does not seize our keys.

The meaning is double-edged and merciful. On one edge gleams privacy—an art of keeping the hearth from the wind. On the other edge glints responsibility—accepting that once a story is released, it will travel in shoes not our own. By holding both, the speaker teaches the old discipline: disclose by conscience, not by pressure; endure judgment without surrendering the right to choose. The ancients would call this sophrosyne—measuredness—a harmony between speech and silence.

Consider a real-life parable from the house of fame: Greta Garbo, hounded by curiosity and crowned by cinema, made no public roll-call of lovers; she cultivated distance as a craft. “I want to be alone,” people quote, but beneath the misremembered line lived a deeper practice: the right to unveil the self on her own terms. Garbo’s privacy was not contempt; it was a boundary that let her work remain work and her soul remain hers. Critics speculated, biographers chased shadows, and yet the center held: her art endured because her life was not devoured. The lesson echoes Dandekar’s stance—guard the door, and your gifts can breathe.

There is another mirror in letters: Elena Ferrante, who kept her name behind a veil so the novels could walk unescorted. When some sought to unmask her, readers learned again the two sovereignties: a writer may choose what to reveal; the world may chatter as it will. The chatter did not add one watt to the books’ light. Disclosure, to be sacred, must be voluntary; otherwise it is not revelation but theft. In love, as in art, timing is a theology—when and what are sacraments of the will.

From these examples we harvest a clear teaching for any age of glare: choose your circle; steward your thresholds; let curiosity knock but not command. The heart is a garden; gates are not insults to the passerby, they are kindness to the roots. Announce what strengthens the covenant; keep quiet what needs darkness to seed. If the audience chooses poorly—mocking, conjecturing, misreading—answer with the calm of ownership: they own their opinion; you own your life.

Practical rites for travelers under bright lights (and for the rest of us, who live before smaller crowds): (1) Write a privacy creed—three lines that state what you want to share, when, and with whom; revisit it when seasons change. (2) Create a disclosure ladder: partner, family, inner friends, outer friends, public—climb deliberately, not by dare. (3) When asked about who you’re dating, keep a ready phrase that honors both curiosity and boundary: “We’re happy; we’re private.” (4) If you do share, share for connection, not for control; relinquish the hope of steering how they look at it. (5) Protect sacred hours—times when no feed, camera, or microphone crosses the threshold. (6) Praise others’ boundaries aloud; a culture is healed when we normalize the word “enough.”

Thus the saying stands like a well-built gate in a noisy street. The hinge is freedom; the latch, discernment. To live this way is not to hide; it is to honor the dignity of beginnings, to let tenderness mature before it meets the wind. Keep your gate; open it when love is strong and ready. And when the watchers murmur, remember: their gaze is their own, but the key is in your hand.