u/Emmlair101

I’ve always struggled with making friends, especially Pakistani/muslim friends. Im 25 now and the past year I’ve been actively working hard to make new friends and maintaining them.

The past 2 months I entered this new Pakistani friend group and we’ve been hanging out a lot and I have so much fun with them, usually it’s 1-2 times a week, but it does get late night and I end up coming home around 12am most of the time. I love these people and it’s genuinely been bringing me out of my shell, and I’ve been trying out new things and making so many memories.

I still live with my parents and have a degree, im looking for a job in my field but still have a part time job at the moment. I contribute in the house, do my chores, do grocery shopping, cook sometimes, pick up my mom from work, so I am a good daughter.

But my parents are still so strict and controlling over my friendships and I’m so sick of it. If I go out too much they get tired of it and call it “partying” and say I’m acting different and going against them just because I really want to go out. I always tell them where I’m going exactly and they even have my location on Life360. I’ve been able to go out every single time but usually I have to fight for it and it’s getting so tiring.

Today it was a friends birthday dinner and a lot of them from the group live in the north while I’m in the south so I’d have to drive up there. I told my parents I was going and they immediately said no and how its far and these friends are new so how am I already so close with them and why do I feel the need to go to every single hangout with them. They’re like I should just move out and live with my friends if I wanna be with them so often. So I ended up not going. Like they’re constantly spewing the most unreasonable stuff ever and I’m so sick of it, I feel like I’m being so restricted and prevented from living my life. Like I’m literally 25. They’re also like once I get married, would my husband like it if I was out this often and had friends constantly over, like what?? My parents are like they don’t know these people and what kind of Pakistani they are and literally just making the most absurd assumptions. They also don’t like that I come home so late.

Like apparently it’s fine for my younger sister to go to her friends birthday dinner last week because it’s a uni friend and they’ve been friends for longer so she must be a good person and whatever, but they don’t know what kind of people this new group is and they don’t want me falling in with the wrong people. And just because I’ve been so pushy to them about letting me go out with my friends, that means my friends must be the problem just because I wanna go out with them so bad?? It’s fine if I go out with my long time school friends who are non Muslim but this new group, nope.

What do I do, how do I convince them to let me live my life. They also bring up Islam a lot in this situation and are like we have to live by guidelines we can’t just be out with friends all the time. I am so sick of my parents dictating my life like this.

I’ve always struggled with making new friends, especially Pakistani/muslim friends. Im 25 now and the past year I’ve been actively working hard to make new friends and maintaining them.

The past 2 months I entered this new Pakistani friend group and we’ve been hanging out a lot and I have so much fun with them, usually it’s 1-2 times a week, but it does get late night and I end up coming home around 12am most of the time. I love these people and it’s genuinely been bringing me out of my shell, and I’ve been trying out new things and making so many memories.

I still live with my parents and have a degree, im looking for a job in my field but still have a part time job at the moment. I contribute in the house, do my chores, do grocery shopping, cook sometimes, pick up my mom from work, so I am a good daughter.

But my parents are still so strict and controlling over my friendships and I’m so sick of it. If I go out too much they get tired of it and call it “partying” and say I’m acting different and going against them just because I really want to go out. I always tell them where I’m going exactly and they even have my location on Life360. I’ve been able to go out every single time but usually I have to fight for it and it’s getting so tiring.

Today it was a friends birthday dinner and a lot of them from the group live in the north while I’m in the south so I’d have to drive up there. I told my parents I was going and they immediately said no and how its far and these friends are new so how am I already so close with them and why do I feel the need to go to every single hangout with them. They’re like I should just move out and live with my friends if I wanna be with them so often. Like they’re constantly spewing the most unreasonable stuff ever and I’m so sick of it, I feel like I’m being so restricted and prevented from living my life. Like I’m literally 25. They’re also like once I get married, would my husband like it if I was out this often and had friends constantly over, like what?? My parents are like they don’t know these people and what kind of Pakistani they are and literally just making the most absurd assumptions.

Like apparently it’s fine for my younger sister to go to her friends birthday dinner last week because it’s a uni friend and they’ve been friends for longer so she must be a good person and whatever, but they don’t know what kind of people this new group is and they don’t want me falling in with the wrong people. And just because I’ve been so pushy to them about letting me go out with my friends, that means my friends must be the problem just because I wanna go out with them so bad?? It’s fine if I go out with my long time school friends who are non Muslim but this new group, nope.

What do I do, how do I convince them to let me live my life. They also bring up Islam a lot in this situation and are like we have to live by guidelines we can’t just be out with friends all the time. I am so sick of my parents dictating my life like this.

So I have this guy friend who I occasionally hook up with and a couple days ago we snuck out just to chill and chat and it led to us going in the backseat eventually. We both trust each other, or at least I trust him, so as I was giving him head we both mutually decided to film it lmao, he filmed on his phone and I told him to send it to me once we got home, but he didn’t.

Couple days went by and we hung out again with our group of friends and on the drive home with him I told him to send it to me again because I don’t think it’s fair that he has a video of me going down on him and he won’t send it when we both mutually agreed to do it. His reasoning is that his private part is in it and it’s his nudes and that’s more crazy than my face being in it, which I get it, its valid, but then I don’t get why he agreed to film in the first place. Roles reversed, if he was going down on me and we agreed to film, I would send that video to him no hesitations, bc I trust him. He says he trusts me but I guess not. I don’t feel comfy with him having a video of me doing a sexual act if hes not gonna trust me and send it to me so I told him to delete it and he did (I hope).

He said that im always mad about something and how he always has to walk on eggshells around me and that I should just relax and it’s not that serious. Also that im pressuring him to do something he is not comfy with. Like?? I get it, but im also not comfy with him having that video then, like what’s the point of doing that stuff if theres no trust. Because I actually don’t mind filming at all, but not if he’s gonna keep it from me especially when my FACE is in it. I trust him enough to know that he definitely deleted it because he’s just not that type of guy, but I still feel weird about this whole thing.

So I have this friend that I made during the past summer (I was at work when she came to customer service and I helped her and we both looked familiar to each other so we exchanged instas and turns out we went to the same high school n even attended elementary in a diff city at the same time and had no idea so it’s like some red string theory I swear) and since then we hung out lots and talked a lot and I was so excited to finally have a close Muslim friend since I don’t have many.

However, for some reason during Ramadan she became distant? I don’t know if I did anything wrong but every time I would ask to hangout or I’d ask her if she wants to go pray taraweeh with me she would always be busy. Our birthday came up in the beginning of April and we wished each other happy birthday and I even got her a gift but again she didnt put in any effort from her side to hangout and we haven’t really messaged since. I’m just so confused. April 20th there was some first come first serve interviews thing going on so I asked her if she wanted to come with me since i know she was looking for a job too but she never even responded to my messages.

I’m just so lost, I thought she was gonna be a life long friend, but it’s not even been a year and our friendship is already falling apart and I don’t even know why. I don’t know if I’m overthinking or not. Should I confront her about it or is it better to just let go and move on?