>>3795713People have been lying to their families in general since time immemorial. Thing is, his is far from the only such story I've heard - in fact, one of my closest friends went through a very similar situation at only a slightly younger age.
There's something inherently rotten about families that are this controlling. Thing is, where do you even go if you decide to run? Yeah, he's 27, but that's the point of these ultra-controlling families: making members think that theirs is the only home they'll belong in, and that without them, even in the peak years of their life, people like him will have nowhere to go. Even if that's not true, they're certainly going to make you feel that it's true because fear + authority is a combination as old as time itself.
The friend that I talked about had no money and no means to live her life at all, and it's only through her then-fiancé (now husband) reaching out to her from thousands of miles away that she managed to escape in the end. Even now, she's struggling over there - she has a loving husband and is happier than ever before, but despite being the kindest person I've ever had the pleasure of meeting she's often treated very poorly by the locals just for being American and meek, and she now constantly lives not just with the trauma of having lived with her old family for so long, but with the ongoing trauma of being blamed for "ruining the family" to the point where even the innocent members of her family, those she still cares about, are being brainwashed into thinking she's Satan herself.
All this highlights just how difficult it is to get a new start even when you have absolutely nothing to lose and still have the means to create that start for yourself. It's still the right answer a lot of the time, but I really don't fault him for being afraid and not doing anything about it, because people vastly overestimate the success rate and underestimate the pain that often comes immediately after making the big move.
