Reply to Everything was great for 6 months and then family finds out and boom: he ends it. Advice?

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Reply to "Everything was great for 6 months and then family finds out and boom: he ends it. Advice?"

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[quote=Anonymous]OP —I remember this when you first posted, and my initial thought was…yea, that’s not going to end well.

I’m American-born, but from one of the cultures mentioned in this thread — doesn’t really matter which, the general attitudes are the same.

What I wanted to say is that it very well could be that he didn’t KNOW what he wanted.  When he met you, he liked you, thought he could have a longer term relationship with you, etc etc., but also was saying the right things to his parents to keep them happy.   And then, when his family was opposed, he just couldn’t push back.  Basically, he might not have gone into this relationship intending to bail as soon as they found someone suitable, but rather realized he wasn’t strong enough to buck tradition.

Those of us who have one foot in the west/America and one from a culture like Iran/India/Pakistan/Afghanistan, where there is a tradition of arranged marriages, filial piety, and men who have been babied by their moms, are frequently very conflicted over balancing the two.   Usually we’ve worked it out by the time we’re in our mid-30s, but not always.   Check out The Namesake for an excellent interpretation of this conflict.

I tried the matchmaking thing briefly and ran like hell, my brother, on the other hand, was an enthusiastic participant. He’s very happily married to a woman who is a great fit for him, but had two close calls that would have been disastrous had they had not blown up right before engagement/wedding.

I dated someone from another similar, completely incompatible, culture in college — we both completely understood the conflict, and it still sucked.

This is just a long winded way of saying, he may not have been intentionally devious when he said all those things.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider your relationship as dead as a doornail, but that it might be more pleasant to not assume that he was a lying dirtbag. [/quote]

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