circeya

I am 26 and I am the oldest grandchild. 9 months ago my cousin got married (i did not attend the ceremony because of the obvious reasons: cant stand my relatives asking curious questions like "So when are YOU getting married?", "oh poor girl, do you at least have a boyfriend?") and a week ago she gave birth to a little boy. At first, I was very jealous that she has it all: degrees (BS, MS), career and a family... I am muslim, therefore my relatives find it very strange that I am not married at this age. They also find it awkward that I called off my wedding 5 years ago. I want to please them and be an exemplary girl, get married soon, have kids... but wait, it is my life we are talking about. I dont have to live my life just to make my grandfather happy. Of course I want to make them proud, but i certainly won't be making life-changing decisions based on my relatives' opinion. Every person has his/her own happiness recipe. Yeah, my cousin is happy having: husband+kid+career. But I may not be very happy if I was in her shoes. First, I want to move to USA and start an academic carrer with a PhD, second, meet a nice guy and get married, have kids and be a respected professor in my field. So my happiness recipe is: PhD + successful academic career + living in USA + loving husband + healthy kids. So, obviously, I set much higher goals than my cousin does. And I sincerely respect myself for that. Determine your own recipe of happiness! What do YOU want? What will make YOU happy? Getting married? No, I dont think that an ambitios, self-sufficient person like you could be happy fully devoting herself to her family. From my experience, weaker people with low self-esteem get married early forming co-dependent families (and if your cousin is tend to be depressed, it is clearly a sign of lack of confidence). They think, it is easier to experience life supporting each other. Maybe they are right but I dont want to have a co-dependent family, I want to have a family based on mutual love and respect. I am sure the same applies to you. We all eventually get what we wanted. Your cousin may have dreamed aboud wedding since she was 15 but you had another dream - getting into NYU. And you did it, congratulations! Now it is time for you to dream about the next thing and you will eventually get it! Concentrate on your own dreams and goals because only they can make you truely happy.