I don’t want a wedding
I was raised Muslim and same with my partner. We both live in the US and neither of us are religious and both have Arab parents. My parents are much more religious than his but both of our parents are stereotypical Arab parents. We are in our early 30s and want to get married this year. I love my partner and I can’t wait to married to him but I do not want a wedding. I just want to go to the courthouse and get married and have no one else there. I can’t do this though because to my parents there is no marriage without katb kitab. So in my mind a katb kitab is necessary for me to get married (my partner agrees with this, it’s important for both of us to have our parents acceptance).
After weeks of arguing I have finally convinced my parents to just have a small katb kitab with just our immediate families present. Except now I don’t even want to do katb kitab, this has been an awful and miserable time for me and on top of it all I am realizing my parents do not see me as a person with thoughts and feelings. In hindsight, this is all so obvious, I had a very lonely and sad childhood because of them but it took arguing for an hour about me being upset to finally be able to identify why this has been so hard (yes, we were arguing about the fact that I am upset. I was repeating myself over and over “I am upset”)
I really really don’t want a wedding or katb kitab now. I do not want my parents with me on a day I am supposed to be happy. I do not care for their acceptance if they don’t even see me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make them see me now and I am so tired of trying.
I don’t know how I’m going to tell them this. It’s going to be the end of our relationship. I’m grieving the fact we’ve never really had a relationship to begin with too. Part me wants to keep the facade going so I can have them in my life but I also know that if I do that it will only result in a life of silent pain.