Boundaries with families after wedding?
TLDR; if you religiously "pass" around your parents to keep the peace with them, how do you navigate your relationship with them + your in laws when another "passing" romantic partner comes into the picture?
Background: I'm a queer East African "cultural Muslim" (more of an agnostic theist than anything else), live in a city separate from my family so I keep my social life separate from theirs, took off hijab and blew up at them about religion then ended up meeting them in the middle to fast Ramadan and pray sometimes, they've decided I'm just a bit of a bad Muslim, and I'm fine with that if it means I get to have a relationship with them.
But now i've run into a bit of an unexpected romantic dilemma 😅 I'm in a relationship with a culturally Muslim male partner (who like me is queer and keeps their social life separate from family). I want to be with him long term inshallah but I'm afraid that us getting introduced to each other's families will mean losing our current social freedoms to our parents' "traditional" expectations of a married couple. For example, right now, we don't have to do regular visits to each other's families or have our time together interrupted by family deciding to visit all the time, we don't have to deal with our parents' opinions on how we choose to raise our kids (e.g. telling us we have to pray 5x a day so our kids will), and most importantly we don't have anyone interrogating us over our social lives (e.g. clocking our visibly queer friends). I'd love advice from folks who live with their partners about how they navigated stuff like this, especially since many immigrant kids like us are expecting to have to physically or monetarily support our parents in old age.
Posted May 11, 2025, 12:31 AM UTC