By Ifrah Yousuf
/ Nonfiction /
“You have to tell your family about us.”
Your jaw falls on the floor. Never thought you would ever hear this sentence let alone from a guy you are dating. In all the relationships, you used to be the one asking (begging) boyfriends to tell their parents of your existence which never happened organically. They always found out accidentally when they caught him secretly talking to you on call or seeing the texts on a random phone check. After which they ground the boyfriend and order them not to talk to you ever again. Then as a grown-up adult and in a mature, serious relationship, you believe the guy will be taking the step forward and introducing you to his family. I mean he has been talking about getting married someday. But it’s been two years and you haven’t met his mom, haven’t talked on call, or texted with her because she doesn’t know you exist.
Everywhere else, if a guy is not introducing his girlfriend to his family despite being in a relationship for years, it is a red flag. However, in Desi households, there is no concept of dating. One is either single or married to the spouse their parents chose for them. So to introduce the partner to the family has to be a long game where one has to be:
A) 1000% sure of the person you have chosen, because if you tell your parents and then later break up, you have lost one of the cards and won’t be trusted with a decision for the rest of your life.
B) There shouldn’t be a single flaw in the partner that parents can hold against you.
C) The state of mind should be like a rock so their emotional blackmail doesn’t create a drift in the relationship, and
D) Have some family members in the corner for support as you embark on the tough journey.
So when you want to tell your mom about the white boy you are dating, dial a group call with her and the younger siblings. First, talk about how life in America is so different from Pakistan. The amount of time you have to spend cooking, cleaning, and washing dishes while studying and working. Ask them how their life is going and how everyone in the family is doing. Mom will probably rant for a good half hour about how her brother has been rude to her again and she hasn’t been talking to him since. You divert the conversation to happier topics since her being in a good mood is quite crucial when you break the news.
It’s not like you don’t want to tell her about him. There have been many boyfriends before and she has been kept in the loop of your dating life because she is a “cool” mom. Although she knows about 3 boyfriends out of the 11 because, of course, she doesn’t understand the meaning of a casual relationship.
So you wait till the relationship is serious and you are talking about marriage and the future even though you are only fifteen and you don’t know anything but at the time you think this is it. It’s then you decide to tell your mom about him or her reading your Facebook chat with the now ex-boyfriend on the family computer that you forgot to log out of. Like every Desi mom, she ends up blowing this out of proportion, beats you up a little (a lot), and orders you to end this relationship because you are too young and should solely focus on school even though you have been an A-grade student the entire time.
This happened twice so you don’t share with her about the third serious relationship until after 5 months of dating because one can never be ready for her wrath anymore, especially when the university that you used as the escape is closed during the pandemic. But this time it wasn’t your education that she had a problem with but his lack of ambition that she held against you. Slowly, it starts to affect your relationship and eventually, you break up.
It devastates you and you don’t know how to function in life anymore. You start therapy again because your panic attacks have taken a stronger hold and you can’t even sit in a classroom anymore. During this, you realize your mom has a pattern of disapproving of every boy you tell her about and you vow not to tell her about your future relationships.
Then in the first month after you move to the United States to pursue a Master's in Creative Writing, you match with a boy on Bumble. He picks you up at the apartment and takes you out on your dream date, at an Art Museum. And it is exactly how you imagined it. Walking around observing the art pieces, commenting on the bizarreness of abstract art while teaching him about colonization and representation of South Asian art. For lunch, he finds a halal Shawarma place where you are concentrating hard not to spill food on yourself.
Then you both walk to a local comic book store where you talk for hours about your mutual love for the Marvel and DC Universe. He drops you back to your apartment. While walking you to the door, he suggests a plan for the second date and hugs you goodbye. You walk back up with a Cheshire cat smile on your face wondering, where has this man been all your life?
Slowly, you start to go out on more dates, and it is getting serious. He downloads an app to learn Urdu for you and isn’t hesitant to try your spicy cooking. He is there to celebrate when you have your first MFA reading. He is there to console and hold you when you find out that your grandfather passed away. He helps you shop for your apartment kitchen as you couldn’t bring anything with you. He installs a bidet in his house and makes sure there is always a praying corner for you. You tell him you love him knowing it’s too early but you don’t care. He tells his mom about you and asks if your family knows about him. And you tell him no.
You try to explain to him how it works in your culture. One tells the family about the relationship when you are planning to get married, not when you have been dating for one and a half months. Plus the track record of introducing your exes to your mom has not panned out in your favour, you want to have your bases covered this time. You don’t want to give her a single reason to blow up. Even though you know she doesn’t need a reason to gaslight and manipulate you into thinking you are incapable of making a decision.
You tell him that you have been playing a long game. She knows of his existence as a friend and how he has been helping you adjust to a new lifestyle. You are going to keep up this act for a couple of months, during which you will talk him up at every opportunity, painting him as the perfect boy to exist. You will give her enough information for her to suggest that you should date him as he seems like a nice guy. You agree with her and promise to ask him out. This will lead her to believe she has been the matchmaker behind it all along giving her no reason to get angry.
But when he speaks from the heart, keeping this relationship secret from your family makes him wonder whether you are even serious about the relationship. It reminds you how you felt when the guys in the past have done that, so now you are on call with your mom waiting for her mood to lift so you can tell her how much you love this green-eyed white boy.
The moment you tell her, as expected, she gets angry. She dictates every single way how he is different. He is white. He is Christian. The marriage won’t be accepted within the religion even though we share Holy Books. She reminded you how the man’s religion becomes the woman’s and the marriage will cast you out of Islam and even the future kids will follow your father's religion. She then tells you that this is not the time for all of this. Recaps why you are in the US and should be focusing on education and being independent. In that moment you recognize the irony of how only when you are in a relationship is when she becomes a feminist and wants you to focus on yourself. However, not so long ago she wasn’t even in favor of you going to the US for a Master's unless there is a husband to escort you.
She screams and shouts at you to be realistic and points out how both of you are poles apart. You try telling her that you have talked about all of this and he is eager to learn all about the cultural and religious exchange. You tell her you can work around the differences as you are an adult who knows how to communicate. Instead of listening to you, she continues to suggest that you call him your friend and not your boyfriend cause this is too soon to be talking about all of this and brings up your previous failed relationships and predicts this will end too. At this point, you are crying and don’t want to talk about this anymore. You tell her you have to go to work and cut the call.
You don’t talk to her for a week. You don’t have it in you to fight with her anymore. You already have a lot on your plate other than having to justify why you should date the boy who has been calming you down when you are having panic attacks because you are overwhelmed trying to set up a life in a foreign country.
A week later, she calls you herself. She needs someone to vent to and you have been the designated therapist from birth. She tells you how your brother has been advocating for you. He makes her understand that it’s better if you have at least one man in your life who can keep the other strange and weird men at length. She reminds you that she still isn’t onboard and thinks this is a mistake but it’s better to have one man there to protect you than being around random men who might take advantage of you. You take this as a win and continue talking about random things until it’s time for either of you to cut the call.
During this entire debacle, you identify a pattern in how your mom has dealt with any “selfish” decisions you made. At first, she will be fuming with rage and will tell you this is completely wrong and you’re going to fail, (the undergraduate university you chose, the field you chose to study, going to the US to study). Then, she will share your decision with another person who will tell her that this is a great plan, (the regional director of the school she teaches at, her teacher-friend, son’s friend). After that, she will take point on your decision and make it seem like she has been the mastermind behind it all along and never had a problem with your decisions at all.
Now, each time you run into an argument with her, you are aware of her manipulations and you keep your ground while repeating your stance over and over to her. She doesn’t budge from her point during the first call so you give her space for a couple of days to come to terms with how firmly you stand on the decision and eventually she gives in.
15 months later.
On every call, she asks you where the boyfriend is and how he has been doing before she even asks about your wellness. She sends him Eidee for Eid-ul-Fitr, clothes for Eid-ul-Azha, and Christmas gifts. She remembers herself, when is Easter and make sure to wish him on the family group chat where she insisted you add him to. She wants to see how you both decorated the house together after you moved in with him (which again she wasn’t on board with at first, but you knew the pattern by then). She is excited to meet him when you both visit Pakistan in the coming summer and is making a list of all the places and foods he should try. When you hear them talk on call, where one is trying to say something in Urdu while the other is trying to string a sentence in English together, you can’t fathom how far you have come along in this journey.
This is never easy and you need tons of patience, courage, and emotional bandwidth to do this. But if you are confident about your relationship, then you are ready to introduce your liberal white boyfriend to your conservative Muslim mother.
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