The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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For all the educated girls from non-WEIRD cultures I knew, "he's a doctor - and no he's not married, you know I'm not that kind of girl" would have made this problem 90% less troublesome than you are making it out to be, or in some cases 110% (as in her mother would have become an actual ally). Was this true in her parents' corner of Indian culture?
Some more context:
The "modal" model of a typical relationship in India is that the couple will start seeing each other largely on the down-low. Things don't blow up immediately? Loop in your friends. Things don't crash after a few weeks or months and they really like each other? Then parents are (usually) informed. Things are serious? Introduce them in person. By the time the parents are meeting each other, you're practically engaged.
Theres definitely major variance. Stage in the life cycle. Liberal vs conservative, in social terms. Sanity, maturity. But that's roughly how it works for most of us. I don't think it's that different in most of the West, but each step is a bigger milestone here.
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You're right, but the denizens of even a specific cultural group aren't homogenous. I won't pretend to have the full picture, but she is scared to introduce me because:
We don't know for a fact where this is going. Just knowing where we want to take this isn't sufficient for it to happen, even if it's necessary. Neither of us are quite delusional enough to make promises about marriage just yet (well... now that I say that. She was drunk, it might have been a joke).
If she brings me over, that raises the stakes massively. I can see she's deeply anxious about what they might say, or the pressure they might put on her. In her words, her parents simultaneously want her to get married ASAP and are also deeply disapproving of her dating around. Even if it's serious dating. Don't ask, it perplexes both of us. But I've heard of much worse. Seen much worse: the girl I'd seen for 5 years had hidden my existence from her family for the entire duration (!)
(Indians can be quite culturally conservative, not that I don't know millions of relatively liberal folk.)
I think the biggest barriers might be mental. Hers. I'm good at charming the average parent. I'm very polite, funny, and yes, a doctor who is doing pretty well for himself. That matters a lot. I would bet good money that if she'd let me meet them, I'd win them over. But she knows, deep down, that if this happens and it doesn't pan out, it'll make the heartbreak all the worse.
I won't push her. I've raised the idea, to prove I'm serious. I'd bring sweets. Perhaps she might change her mind on that when she realizes that the infatuation is permanent, but I'm here to date her and not the family, as much as I'm fond of her brother.
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