I [29F] moved to the same state as my fathers Muslim family after being apart for years and it’s becoming overbearing.

After being away since I was 5, I recently moved back to the same city as my father’s family. Don’t get me wrong. I love them, but the cultural differences here are driving me crazy. They are all Muslim and fairly religious and there’s nothing wrong with that, however I am not. I was brought up in a fairly neutral household so don’t identify with any religion.

I moved over here late last year and stayed with my family for a few weeks while I settled down. Straight off the bat, me at 29, being a single woman was alarming for them. I wasn’t allowed out past dark, I was expected to cook and clean up after the men and could only wear certain clothing, to the point where I had to hide clothes in a bag and change in a coffee shop bathroom. All the mail I had was opened before I knew it had arrived.

I couldn’t handle it for too long so I moved out to a house after six weeks or so. Ive had to lie to my family about the people I lived with as I don’t know how they’d react knowing I lived with men. When I told them, they phoned my mom, told her I was making a huge mistake and that I should be living with them until they find me a husband and I get married.

Since then, things have been slightly better as I’ve been able to use work at an excuse. But I get phone calls almost every day, sometimes 7 or 8 times in a row, always asking me to come over. They think that my weekends are free for them. I try to do one visit a month (bearing in mind they are over an hour from me) but the last time I visited on the long weekend, my grandad expected I would be staying the entire 4 days and was furious because I wanted to leave at 10pm after spending all day there. They speak in Arabic l most of the time, which I can’t speak, and I usually just sit there watching tv shows I can’t understand.

My cousins birthday is in two weeks time and I have just had a phone call to say “were all getting together on the Saturday so you’ll come here after work on Friday and stay until Sunday night”. Bearing in mind, there won’t be a bed for me so I will be on the couch with no privacy.

Sorry for the rant, and don’t get me wrong, I love my family and I’d be happy to see them occasionally , but I am so restricted when I’m with them. And I really need to find a happy medium. Any one else been in the same boat? Or able to offer any advice? I’m going crazy.

TL;DR: after not seeing my fathers side of the family for several years, I’ve moved back to the same state as them and our cultural differences are making it really difficult to connect.

Submitted June 02, 2019 at 03:27PM by podat321 http://bit.ly/2WauPDl