What should I do if my over-anxious parents control my life?  I’m [a 24-year-old] woman who can’t move out unless married.  These are the rules in my society.

Be the oddball.

Hear me out.

You know how there’s always someone, in any society, that doesn’t do what others expect them to do?

You know: the weirdo, the freak, the outsider, the outlier, the strange person.

I don’t mean being dangerous or destructive or difficult to deal with.

I mean being the person that just isn’t going to be conventional no matter what.

BE THAT PERSON. CULTIVATE BEING THAT PERSON. DO THINGS INTENTIONALLY OUT OF STEP AND GET USED TO DOING THEM YOUNG.

If you perfect the art of seemingly nonchalant detachment from others’ opinions while celebrating your oddball self, your parents will have a staggeringly difficult time trying to match you up with others. Potential suitors who want whatever passes for a “suitable” match in your world will run for the hills.

If you do this effectively enough, your parents will eventually throw up their hands and give up.

Plan on getting called names. Plan on being an outcast. Plan on people pointing and laughing. And steel yourself against all of that coercive peer, societal, and family pressure to such a degree that, even if their rejection hurts initially, you eventually will not give a shit what anyone else but you thinks of you.

Then, once everyone considers you a “lost cause,” go find anything and everything that supports your independent self (be it education, employment, friends that truly like you for you, travel, your own job, your own transportation, your own residence, your own hobbies, your own passions, etc.).

The people you attract as the person you’ve fought to become are your tribe of choice. Go develop your adult life with them instead.