“My family really wants me to get a boyfriend. And they’re...

“My family really wants me to get a boyfriend.  And they’re pushing it hard.  I have five grandmothers.  Actually my grandmother has four sisters, and I call them all ‘grandmother.’  They’re the ones who raised me.  They brought me to school.  They gave me whatever I wanted: toys, dresses, horse riding lessons.  They completely spoiled me.  But all of them are very conservative.  And every time I go home to visit, the conversations seem to get narrower and narrower.  There’s nothing about how I want to live my life.  Or my plans for my career.  It’s always: ‘When are you coming back to Hungary?’, and ‘Did you get a boyfriend yet?’  When they were young life was very difficult without a man.  All of them got married around the age of eighteen.  So they think I’m running out of time.  They’re obsessed with me meeting someone, and they always have the perfect person in mind: nice boy, tall, curly hair, great family.  They’ve introduced me to five boys already.  The last time was an ambush.  I was home on holiday, and they told me a ‘special someone’ would be joining us for Sunday lunch.  He was ‘studying to be a lawyer,’ and ‘so very handsome’, which turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration.  It was so awkward.  They sat him right next to me.  They kept saying: ‘Isn’t she so pretty?  Can you believe she’s never had a boyfriend?’  And whenever there was silence, they’d say: ‘You have this in common, so you should talk about that.’  This went on for two hours.  His face was so red the entire time.  After he left, I set a rule: no more introductions.  Never, ever again.”
(Amsterdam, The Netherlands)