"My parents have apologized to me multiple times. I mean actually until this year, I'd never told them about what happened with my ex-boyfriend. And their reasoning was always, 'You know you looked disturbed. We didn't know what was going on with you. We thought this would help you.' It took me a few years to get them to this point where they were like, 'OK. We understand that didn't help you, and that was wrong of us to think that that would help you.'"

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Typically, if your helpful plan requires a country with less stringent consent laws, it merits a rethink.

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That's not a great apology -- or even really an apology at all -- but Daria is so, so much more understanding than we would ever be. "My parents had a pre-existing notion of what [life was] supposed to look like. So you know, 'Our kids are gonna get married at this age, married to a doctor, engineer.' And, 'Hopefully, our kids won't have any crises in the middle.' I wasn't doing all that stuff that they had in mind, according to the timeline they had in mind, so instead of talking to me and sorting through that (communication wasn't really a big thing for them for some reason) they just thought this was the next best option."

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Apparently, there's no life problem that a loveless, involuntary wedding can't fix right up.

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Daria even finds a way to fault herself a bit in this whole scenario:

"I do think that communicating with them [her family] more openly and not being afraid of disappointing them would have been beneficial. They really started to get nervous about the future after I had shut them out and it sort of slowly spiraled downhill for many years. Things only started to pick back up once we started to openly communicate."

In the years since her abduction, Daria has mended relationships with her parents, and even some of her extended family in Pakistan. In fact, she recently returned from her first trip back there since her forced marriage. This trip was on her own terms: To buy stuff for her wedding. To the person of her choosing.

Also check out 5 Cultures With the Most WTF Wedding Rituals and 5 Reasons 'Traditional Marriage' Would Shock Your Ancestors.

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