DD (21) plans to get married and move abroad

[Thatonesong]

My DD is 21, she's a lovely, sociable, smart girl. She studied sports science and is now doing her MSc in Sports and Exercise Medicine. She entered into a new relationship in January, the man is 28 which to me feels like a notable age gap at 20/21, but I appreciate others may feel differently. He is from the Middle East and has made it clear he plans to move home. He proposed to DD at the start of the month, which felt quite fast since they'd been together for maybe 10/11 months at the time, but we congratulated her, she seems happy and airing our opinion is only likely to cause upset.
Tonight DD came over for dinner, without her partner. She told us she is planning to get married in the summer and then move to his home country with him in the autumn after she graduates. I asked if she has a plan for once she is there career wise and she said maybe some sports coaching but he can afford to support them both. This felt like a red flag to me as I don't want her to be fully reliant on anyone else to just survive. She was also honest and said having children is high on her priority list and she "doesn't want to wait until she's older and too tired to be an active mum". I felt a bit gobsmacked tbh, but just said she should spend some time thinking about if this all what she really wants or if she is doing it because it is what he wants/feels pressured.
Since she left I haven't been able to stop crying, my partner thinks we need to have a harsher word with her, note the risks more plainly, such as difficult getting a divorce, likely not possible to have children there, break up and move back here with them (due to The Hague Convention) etc.
I know she is an adult and entitled to make her own choices, but 21 still feels very young!
AIBU to be so concerned? What do I do?

Qatar has shariah law. Let's just say it was not created to help women. I lived in Dubai for a while for work (not a place i would recommend) and met many western women who were in horrible situations due to shariah law. He will hold all the cards, when it comes to divorce, custody, inheritance, etc.

Sorry OP but the more updates you post the clearer it is that this is grooming I think. A whirlwind ten month affair with a naive 21 year old he wants to take back to his country where women are subjugated. The creep of control (her hobbies) is already there. She’s being groomed.

No. I mean you can’t do anything about it but she is almost guaranteed to be lost to you when she’s there. I’d emotionally prepare for this now. The culture, laws etc will mean that she cannot leave him if she wants to. And if she has kids, they will be stuck there. Watch Not Without My Daughter ( which is set in Iran but the culture is very similar). Even if she called you and you went there to ‘rescue’ her in worst case scenario, you won’t be able to get her out.

I'm a little surprised that she would have registered with Raya, OP. I don't think of it as being somewhere where a young student would want to be, from what I know of it.

I don’t particularly know much about it, can you expand why? I thought it was just a regular dating app?

Raya is generally for celebrities / very accomplished peopled.

It's a very exclusive app that celebrities use. It's very difficult to get a membership with.

Theres a thread from a mum who's daughter did the same. And they stayed married and are happy. They are all moving back to the uk.

Ah I see. I’m not too sure why she chose it then! She isn’t famous and is a student, she does have a fairly successful sports TikTok and instagram but not fame levels!

I see I’m not sure how she got membership then!
She has a fairly successful sports TikTok and instagram but certainly isn’t a celebrity!

Oh dear. Middle East. Children. The best thing you can do is tell her to take some legal advice NOW on what would happen IF she decides she wants to move back home to the UK in the future with her children…..I’d do a hollow laugh if it wasn’t so serious.

Raya is not as exclusive as it used to be, but it is still invite-only and for conventionally attractive people. It'll be because of her socials.

On the upside, she could (eventually) report him to Raya for being a twat and get him removed.

Oh right I see. I didn’t realise it was any different to hinge or tinder which I’m more familiar with.

DD seems much more hesitant now, she said she needs to think about it and that she didn’t realise it was so strict. I’m hopeful this is her slowly changing her mind.

I'd never heard of Raya either, so I googled it. The AI summary says:

"Raya is a highly exclusive, members-only social network and dating app known as the "Illuminati Tinder," catering primarily to celebrities, influencers, and high-profile individuals for discreet dating, networking, and discovery, featuring a rigorous application process, waitlist, and strict rules like no screenshotting to maintain privacy. It functions as a curated community for creative and successful people to find quality connections, blending professional and personal networking with a focus on quality over quantity, though its exclusivity remains its biggest draw.
How it Works

1. Application: Users apply with details like their name, age, location, occupation, and Instagram handle, often requiring referrals from existing members.
2. Vetting: An anonymous committee assesses applicants for creativity, professional success, and "something extra," with only about 8% getting accepted.
3. Community: Once in, members see profiles set to a song, focusing on global discovery rather than just local matches, and can network or date.
4. Rules: Strict rules, including no screenshots (leading to bans), enforce privacy, making it a secretive space for the elite.

Key Characteristics Exclusivity: A huge waitlist (around 100,000) and low acceptance rate make it notoriously hard to join, say The Sun and Metro.co.uk. Celebrity Focus: Attracts A-listers and successful individuals, fostering discreet connections, say Metro.co.uk and Grazia Daily UK. Global & Social: Offers global matching and serves as a platform for professional networking and discovery, not just dating, notes Wikipedia. Privacy-Focused: Emphasizes confidentiality with strict rules against sharing profiles or screenshots. Raya, launched in 2015, has become synonymous with elite, secretive dating, a "Soho House for dating," appealing to those seeking curated connections away from mainstream apps, according to Metro.co.uk and Grazia Daily UK."

Very glad to hear that your gentle approach seems to be getting through to DD.

I'd be curious as to why DD would choose to use such a secretive, "exclusive" dating site on the grounds that nobody ever lost money by catering to naive people with delusions of superiority. Was it just the wrongheaded recommendation of a friend... or does DD believe that she belongs in a 'better class' of people|? Because that and a lack of worldly wisdom is quite a dangerous combo.

It's largely what other posters have said, it's not a dating app which you just apply to be on and then pay for membership. I think that they select people who would be considered particularly appealing in various ways.

The Independent suggests that it attracts professional athletes and I wonder whether your daughter heard this and thought that she might meet men from the world of sport with whom she might have an affinity.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/raya-dating-app-what-lily-allen-david-harbour-b2670572.html

That is interesting and maybe a good point. I know she has been on dates with some YouTubers and that sort of general type of person, I just assumed that was London dating. She is a member of a couple of private members clubs but that’s mostly as a lot of her school friends are from that type of circle.

She makes some money from social media but I don’t really understand how that works either.

It attracts the wealthy and the famous from all spheres not just sport. I guess that’s why she’s on there. If she’s attractive influencer that’s how she will have got on.

Women who are conventionally very attractive with some social media profile will probably find it easier to get into Raya than men do, even if they’re not super rich. Men will need a lot of money and / or celebrity.

it definitely reads like she has a compulsion towards older “high-flying” men who will sweep her off her feet, and I suspect it’s rooted in her father’s absence / manner of departure. She won’t realise that, and probably won’t choose to look into that part of her psychology until the day she finds herself at rock bottom and wonders how it happened. (I hope it doesn’t come to that of course.)

it’s known as the Cinderella complex https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/cinderella-complex.htm

it sounds like her sense of self worth is quite low on the inside and her locus of evaluation is on the outside- meaning she gets her sense of self and validity from external things like social media, glamorous events, £££ lifestyle etc versus from within herself. This is actually quite common in girls who grew up with absent fathers or living primarily with their mum, because the father figure is typically the one who instills that sense of self esteem and intrinsic value in in how girls see themselves in relation to men.

She might have a fairytale, idealist view of what a partner is - rescuer, Prince Charming, hero, knight in shining armour etc, versus a partnership of two equals, and therefore she is somehow fearful of real autonomy and especially of handling life all by herself at this important and scary juncture. It’s easier to believe that this man and the new lifestyle will look after all of the scary stuff than it is for her to face discomfort and confront her fears about life.

While this is interesting and perhaps some what accurate, DD doesn’t have a bad or absent relationship with her dad at all.
We divorced when she was small but had a very good co-parenting relationship with a roughly 50/50 custody split.
At 11 DD moved in with her dad full time more or less and did weekends with me, this was because of her intense sports and hobby schedule, her father being generally more free to take her etc.
As far as I know they’ve continued to have a positive relationship although it’s hard to verify as her father and I don’t talk at all now and she doesn’t really talk about him.

Having just read that link on the Cinderella complex I don’t think that really fits DD actually.

Yes she has attraction to a high glamour lifestyle and older protective men, but I think the former comes from attending an all girls private school where a lot of her peers were already in that circle. The latter I can’t be sure where it comes from.

DD doesn’t really give me the sense that she has given up her independence though or fully intends to, I think this is more a case of her not realising how much she would need to give up than actually being willing to. For example even though her partner has expressed he doesn’t want her to keep running, she has been doing it behind his back anyway which doesn’t seem to fit with the link you shared.

If your DD feels that she has to do things behind his back - especially ordinary things like going running but really anything at all! - then that's quite a red flag for the relationship.

I'm glad DD is taking you seriously and not shutting down. I hope that you and her father can keep talking to DD and that she comes to see the problems in this marriage proposal before she makes any big decisions about her future.

Posters on here tend to think in terms of online syndromes - Cinderella, main character, Wendy etc. They’re just simple stereotypes.

It sounds like she thinks it would be nice to marry a rich man, not necessarily anything to do with her father, but doesn’t realise quite what that would involve in an Arab culture. Nor what the control of her running actually indicates.