My parents were very unprepared for it, because they never expected their perfect Lebanese daughter (in a sense) to come home... and I was always so proud of being Lebanese, so I think it was a big shock for them, but you can’t help who you fall for, and when they found out they were like, oh no you can’t do that, it’s not right, how will your marriage pan out... and they always expected that it wouldn’t necessarily work out because of our cultural differences. They were really difficult about it to begin with, but I think that once they saw his persistence...
He did persist!
He persisted for a long time, for three years... so in the end he managed to prove to them... they came to see that marrying someone who’s the same as you doesn’t guarantee you a happy life-long marriage, and we were on the same level with so many other things that perhaps we could work the culture out. To be honest we’ve been married for two and a half years now and our different cultures haven’t really affected us – I think that anything we disagree on is just because of who we are personally, not necessarily because of our culture!