similar story

Submitted by iskra (United States), Jan 11, 2008 at 01:37

My boyfriend was like two people. There was the part that was head-over-heels for me, which was wonderful. (That was the part that called me every day to say "I love you.") Then there was the part that had to break it to his parents in the Middle East that he wanted to marry me. (That was the part that told me, "Don't answer the phone if it rings, because I don't want my dad to know you sleep over here.")

See? Two parts -- the one that loves you, and the chickenshit one that's hemmed in by the rigid rules of his back-home society. We take for granted that in America we're free to make choices and disappoint our parents and strike out on our own. But other socieities are much less free, and the people who grow up in them are much more pressured to conform to Mom and Dad's demands.

His parents probably warned him that he could never be happy with you, and that he was breaking their hearts, and that they would be disgraced in the eyes of the neighbors if he married you, and that he would lose his place in his hometown, his culture, his own family, and become something of an outcast. They pulled a "We raised you; you must honor us; you must not marry this American outsider!" number. He was weaker than they were, and he cracked.

Maybe you're lucky. My bf was strong enough to stand up to his parents and marry me anyway. Within a year, he was wishing he'd chosen a traditional Muslim wife from back home. And I was wishing he had, too.

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