Yve also reacts to Mohamed, who's 23 years younger than her, saying he wants a mom for a partner.
90 Day Fiancé season 9 star Yve is opening up about her rocky relationship with Mohamed. So far this season, the couple has struggled over cultural differences as well as his expectations of her as a Muslim man even though she doesn't follow Islam, and in an interview with ET's Melicia Johnson, she addressed the criticism from fans they've both received.
Mohamed is 25 years old and began a relationship with 48-year-old Yve when he slid into her DMs, but his move to America from Egypt didn't go smoothly. She got upset when he told her that she couldn't be in the same room with another man alone due to his religious beliefs, and he was upset that he was expected to do things like cook breakfast for himself while she worked. He also clashed with her friends and had a major fight with her because he wanted her to no longer wear bikinis. Interestingly enough, while Mohamed strictly adheres to his religion for the most part, he doesn't have an issue sleeping with Yve even though they're not married. Yve told ET she is in fact bothered by the hypocrisy he displays on the show.
"For sure. I have a problem with that because when I feel that there's levels of double standards or hypocrisy and somebody wants to try to have me follow them and impose them on me, then yes, I'm going to question that," she notes. "As I do as a person in general. I question everything. I love research and I love learning. So when something seems like it's a double standard or has some aspect of hypocrisy in it, no, that doesn't sit well with me. And I don't think it's fair because just like the bikini thing, you're upset about that, but you can pose pictures of yourself [shirtless]."
"I think that you have to fully accept that either maybe it's a learning thing or growing thing, but yes, it does kind of set off a red flag in that are you using your religion to kind of execute something or is that just controlling?" she adds. "So that does bother me. ... He came here and thought he's just going to kind of impose this kind of more male-dominated type of like energy or religion [but] I'm a very kind of confident, independent woman. And I believe in equality, so that's probably not going to work that well. So you either kind of, like, accept that and begin to acculturate and things like that. Or yes, maybe it's not going to work if you're just stuck in those ways and want to be stubborn and not want to grow and understand me as a person and a woman and who I am."
Yve responded to Mohamed shockingly telling cameras he wanted his partner to act like his mother and getting upset when Yve couldn't cook him breakfast because she had to work. Yve said it was definitely a misunderstanding due to Mohamed still learning the English language.
"What he actually meant was I want to be loved unconditionally as a parent would love a child," she says. "And I think that that was definitely a misconception and definitely taken in the wrong way because of just a little language barrier and him not knowing how to convey that properly. ... He can make his own food. When his mom would go to his grandmother's, he was in charge of making his own food."
She later addressed Mohamed's criticism of her that she knew what to expect with him given he's a Muslim man so it didn't make sense that she now had issues with him wanting her to act more conservative, and said it was unfair.
"I think that when Mohamed made a blanket statement that 'she knows everything and she came to my country,' well, that's not necessarily a clear perception because every time I went I was like in a tourist bubble," she explains. "We did touristy things. We went to the pyramids, we went to museums, we went to the castle, things like that. So, it's not everyday living. I specifically asked him like, 'What should I wear?' And that was kind of the only kind of so to speak rules I was given. Like, 'OK, you can't show your arms. You can't show your legs.' Fine. I can handle that. I'm going to another country. Of course, I'm going to do my research. But when he told me two weeks into us communicating and getting to know each other that I was not going to be judged for my culture or religion, I took that to heart."
Yve said Mohamed was never clear to her that she had to convert to Islam for their relationship to work out.
"And if he did want me to, if he was serious that he wanted me to potentially follow the Muslim faith, then he should have said that to me," she notes. "And knowing that I would not convert, that probably could have ended our relationship right then and there if that was conveyed to me and that was never conveyed to me. ... I was very clear with him about how I am. I'm a professional woman. I of course will take on these roles as a wife, but I'm definitely not a housewife. So I was very clear about like, I know women sometimes don't work there, but that's not my situation. I'm a professional and I'm not going to quit working. So, don't expect me to just be home baking cakes and three meals a day, because that's not probably going to happen. So we did talk a lot about the future, about what he would do when we got here as far as personal training and he's a food engineer and the job opportunities here."
Yve acknowledged that Mohamed was definitely not prepared to deal with the cultural differences between living in Egypt and New Mexico.
"He's very used to only one type, this perspective of what he's just known his entire life," she says. "And so I think he didn't realize what a huge difference it would really be. And me being such a kind of professional woman and very driven and also living a life without a partner, it's something that I would have to kind of acclimate to as well, because I'm a very busy woman."
"I mean, he had never traveled before prior to that," she notes of his arrival to America. "He had never even been on a plane. So I don't think that he really realized what a huge difference it would be, even though I tried to tell him. I even tried to tell him about the clothes. Like, 'You're going to see more cleavage. It's hot. You're going to see girls in short shorts.'"
As for what attracted her to Mohamed in the first place, she said it was fate and they actually both weren't looking for love.
"I had written off marriage," she shares. "He had a bad experience of being previously engaged and basically didn't want to get married either and actually told his mother that. And she was upset because that's not following their culture. And I don't think he necessarily was looking either. He likes to work out. He was following fit body hashtag [on Instagram]. And there popped up me. And then he thought when he saw that picture and went to my profile, he just thought I was like, the most beautiful woman he's ever seen."
"But then when we began talking, we just totally clicked," she continues. "I mean, I literally had on my phone at that time, this picture of this Egyptian thing. And I had dreams about Egypt since I was like in third grade. And so I was supposed to go to Egypt, actually. I ended up going in September, like three months after we met. And I was actually thinking about going out on a trip in October with a friend of mine. And I ended up going earlier because I met him and then I just left. And that flight, like the price, the timeframe. One night I was looking and the stars aligned. I'm like, 'I'm coming.' And he was like, 'What?' And our first meeting was like two people that just hadn't seen each other in a long time."
The two then had an intense emotional connection.
"I, for my first time in my life, felt that somebody had my back," she shares. "And we were going through a difficult time through our kind of 23 months of waiting for each other. We were in a global pandemic and we were really there for each other emotionally to get through this very difficult time. And Mohamed was just so different than anybody that I ever met. He literally saw straight through me, like into my soul. And literally from the tone of my voice, my expression on my face on video chat, he knew exactly what was going on with me. And that was such an amazing, beautiful thing because for him to just be able to tune into me, to me was such a deep, emotional connection. And he just conveyed to me, even though he wasn't physically here, that he had my back."
"Like he'd say to me, on video chat, like, 'I look into your eyes and I see this innocence of a child, that you're...' He saw my soul," she continues.
But her feelings definitely changed upon his arrival in America.
"I feel like there was a little bit of a shift, which was difficult for me because I was like, where was that man who always had my back?" she acknowledges. "And I think some of it came from the frustration of again, waiting to get here, then waiting for paperwork and things to get done and waiting. We had to reschedule our wedding a couple times. So all the waiting, I think that he became frustrated. ... And then it was surprising to me because we interacted every single day, like, multiple times a day. And then all of a sudden you're not approving of my life when you were pretty much viewing it from afar, knowing exactly what I was doing, where I was going day in, day out. So, that was really difficult."
Yve was cryptic on where their relationship stands today.
"Well, we're kind of getting through this timeframe and making sure that things work," she says. "So sometimes you have to kind of move forward with the things that you need to do. And so I'm here today just by myself. And so we'll just see what the future holds."
90 Day Fiancé airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.
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