Why do reluctant women in arranged marraiges end up perpetuating it?

[YogSothoth]

@Angua

*That said, I was pressured into pressing long-term SOs for marriage at around the 2-3 year mark, the reasoning being that by that point, we presumably knew each other well enough to know whether we wanted to make a life together, and if there was, at that point, no shared vision of a future together, then carrying the relationship on further, was a waste of everyone’s time.

I’m curious, was the option to simply not marry ever seriously entertained? What would your parents think if you just wanted to pursue a career and be single for life?

@Anaamika

So here’s the funny thing. I opened this thread this morning and just as I did, my cousin called me to tell me my half-brother is married - arranged marriage of course. I am not close to these half-brothers, but they are decent young men, and both of them are nurses. This half-brother is really fat and very shy, so I don’t think he would have ever been able to get married the old-fashioned way. He nearly has a heart attack at the thought of talking to a girl. I wonder how that wedding night is going to go. :eek:

Well this type of marriage does help some of us who are socially inept.

@Anaamika

No. You stay together until death do you part. I clearly remember that where I grew up, in the upstate NY area, I lived amongst a gigantic Indian community. One of the women there, her husband was committed to an insane aslyum. She had two wonderful children she was raising alone. He had tried to harm her and the children. After some years she applied for, and got, a divorce. And the stigma in the community amongst the elders was insane. She was ostracized and unloved. I know a lot of this because no one else would be willing to look after these sweet, sweet children, so I volunteered often, because I loved them and didn’t mind, and made a little money. But there was no doubt she was a second-class citizen.

Did anyone ever explain what good staying with an incarcerated husband is supposed to do? What’s the point? Or was it just the way things are?

From your posts, it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of remarrying in Indian culture, is there? Do women who have been divorced get snatched up by other men for marriage or is it really hard for them to find another husband? And what happens if a husband dies? Are women supposed to remain widows or do they remarry?

@Anaamika

It doesn’t work like that. It isn’t ever going to be “women don’t need to marry” even if all women make lots of money. It’s in the culture & religion that a woman’s ultimate fulfillment is to cleave to her husband, to make babies, to serve his family.

One thing I’ve been really wondering lately is how professional women who are unmarried are treated. There’s probably not a lot of them, and the only Indian woman I can name off the top of my head is that actress, Aishawari or something, and even then I think she was recently married? I dunno, haven’t googled her. But profession, single, Indian women do exist in business right? I can see bullying a younger woman or girl and using familial honor to shame her, but there must be a smattering of 40 or 50 year old women who are single and powerful, like an India version of Angelina Jolie, who is respected and don’t have this kind of pressure.

@Anaamika

Even my rich cousins, who had money to go to college, both majored in Interior Design - a “wife” job if I ever heard one - and married at twenty-one. 21! That’s it! That’s your whole life and then you become your husband’s. Ugh.

I would be horribly resentful if that was my life. If you ever talked to them about it, how do they feel about their situation, knowing the kind of independence they could have elsewhere but still being married so young

[Angua]

@YogSosoth

I’m curious, was the option to simply not marry ever seriously entertained? What would your parents think if you just wanted to pursue a career and be single for life?

That was certainly an option that was available to me. But it would be expected that if I followed such a route, I would be single. No long-term boyfriend or significant other that would come to family events etc and be treated as if he were my husband. Now that I’m getting married, I’m still expected to have a professional career as well.

[Anaamika]

@YogSosoth

I’m curious, was the option to simply not marry ever seriously entertained? What would your parents think if you just wanted to pursue a career and be single for life?

Well, I am kind of seeing it, since I am with a man but not married. It’s been seventeen years so my family simply can’t deny it. The ones that love me no matter what have taken to calling him my husband. I am not an asshole. I don’t correct it. If that’s what it takes in their minds to accept him, that’s fine with me.

Did anyone ever explain what good staying with an incarcerated husband is supposed to do? What’s the point? Or was it just the way things are?

I was considered too young to understand, so I never really heard. It just wasn’t Done. I don’t know what else she was supposed to do.

From your posts, it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of remarrying in Indian culture, is there? Do women who have been divorced get snatched up by other men for marriage or is it really hard for them to find another husband? And what happens if a husband dies? Are women supposed to remain widows or do they remarry?

Women are pretty much supposed to remain widows. I can’t think of any woman I know who remarried after her husband’s death. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that it’s extremely uncommon.
On the other hand, when my uncle’s wife died of cancer, it was not even a week before they suggested he remarry. And I knew a man, casually, who lost his wife, two little daughters, and parents in the Panam flight that crashed back in the 80s. When I remarked to my mom how sad that was, she rolled her eyes and said “He’ll just remarry. It’s no big deal.” Even at that age - and I was young - I couldnt understand how it was so easy to replace your entire family. Now I do know that Indian men are often expected just put their grief aside and remarry quickly, especially if there are no male heirs.

One thing I’ve been really wondering lately is how professional women who are unmarried are treated. There’s probably not a lot of them, and the only Indian woman I can name off the top of my head is that actress, Aishawari or something, and even then I think she was recently married? I dunno, haven’t googled her. But profession, single, Indian women do exist in business right? I can see bullying a younger woman or girl and using familial honor to shame her, but there must be a smattering of 40 or 50 year old women who are single and powerful, like an India version of Angelina Jolie, who is respected and don’t have this kind of pressure.

Like Angua says, they are chaste, and pure. They are expected not to have affairs or romances. Aishwarya Rai had a very public, gigantic wedding, to Abishek Bacchan, the son of megastar Amitabh Bacchan. They are a very handsome couple but that is so arranged it is not even funny. Single women do exist - just look at Sonia Gandhi - she wasn’t even Indian, but to remain in Indian politics, she had to remain the grieving widow forever.

I would be horribly resentful if that was my life. If you ever talked to them about it, how do they feel about their situation, knowing the kind of independence they could have elsewhere but still being married so young

Never. To say that would be attacking something so fundamental in their lives, they probably don’t even think about it. They think I am the weird one, for not wanting to get married, not wanting to have children.

[Acsenray]

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
He nearly has a heart attack at the thought of talking to a girl. I wonder how that wedding night is going to go. :eek:
[/quote]

At some point, animal urges kick in, but at least he grew up in a society where information about sex is freely available. I’ve heard done horror stories about men in India who were so ignorant about sex or so severely repressed that they seriously hurt their wives on a regular basis.

It doesn’t work like that. It isn’t ever going to be “women don’t need to marry” even if all women make lots of money. It’s in the culture & religion that a woman’s ultimate fulfillment is to cleave to her husband, to make babies, to serve his family.

Indian society is not static. Maybe it’s because you and I come from different communities or social classes, but things are changing. My parents’ generation, born around independence, is quite liberal compared to what you’re describing. There are intercaste, interethnic, interracial, inter religious, inter ethnic marriages. There are divorces. There are very educated and strong women. There are even some childless women. I’m not saying that these people face NO adversity in their social groups, but it’s not fair to say that things will never change.

My grandfather’s first cousin, now nearly 80, he married his college sweetheart, back in the 1950s! She was a higher caste, from a richer family, and they had no place to meet in private, do they rode the Calcutta public bus together for hours, where they could sit and talk without attracting attention.

My father’s brother married his neighbor, 5 decades ago, a woman of lower caste, who moved in and took care of my grandparents until the died.

My father’s first cousin married a woman of higher caste, and from a different ethnicity. She refused to marry until her family consented to him. This was 40-50 years ago.

Another cousin has separated from her husband because it turns out he’s gay, but she is treated as part of the family still, even with a broken marriage and no children. Her brother, whom she lives with, is estranged from his wife, but he has a “fiancée” – they’re in their 50s or 60s. Another cousin lives in America with his SO, a white American, no kids. Another has been married to a European woman since the '60s. Another has been married twice, once to an American, now to a Chinese woman, no kids. I have at least four female cousins who married by their own choice, to men of varying backgrounds.

(There’s also the cousin who we all think probably murdered his pregnant girlfriend/secret wife 20 years ago, but that branch of the family is estranged anyway.)

[Anaamika]

I’m really glad to hear it, Ascenray. I hope everyone knows the disclaimer “These are only my experiences, YMMV” to be true.

Forget my parents’ generation, my generation has not shown to be very liberal. No one in my extended family has not had some form of an arranged marriage, even if there was some limited dating. No one has married a non-Hindu. No one has come out as gay. I have a huge family. It is hard for me to believe we don’t have even one gay. No one has divorced. No widows have remarried.

I am the first one to spend my life with a non-Indian in the entire family. That was a really tough row to hoe, as they say.

However, my parents are of different castes - that at least doesn’t seem to be as important now.

The next generation, though, is turning out more modern and liberal. Here’s hoping.

[raspberry_hunter]

@Anaamika

As to arranged marriages lasting long…I don’t know. I have a bit of a problem with that. If you set up a culture where divorce is extremely taboo, then of course your marriages will last “long”. But that doesn’t mean you know what’s happening inside the marriage, or if they are putting up with each other or what. Or even if that’s better! Is it better to be married and not alone, even if there’s no passion or romance, but you still have a good and faithful companion? Or is it better to end the marriage and be alone?

These are good questions which I don’t know the answer to either. In my parents’ case – and from things they’ve said I suspect it’s more of a partnership than it is any sort of passion or romance – they didn’t have much of a Korean community where they moved (although by the time I was a teenager, there were a couple of families around that we saw on maybe a monthly basis), so they were pretty much committed to the American mainstream, although obviously they were shaped by their own culture and I’m sure that had a lot to do with why they stayed together.

I think they prefer what they have to what they/I think their multiply-married friend has, but on the other hand I don’t know anyone who looks at them versus my (wonder-bread white, married for love) in-laws and doesn’t think that my in-laws are way happier. On the other hand, my in-laws have a level of self-awareness that neither my parents nor their friend has, so, you know.

I don’t have those answers. All I know is arranged marriage is not as horrible as the detractors make it out to be, and not as great as the proponents say it is.

[SNIP]

All that being said, I still probably wouldn’t have an arranged marriage.

Yep. Same here. And my mom, I think, would have preferred to choose her own spouse as well, as evidenced by her being really good about trying not to push it on us, even when she was frustrated out of her mind by what she perceived as our inability to use good criteria.

[raspberry_hunter]

@Anaamika

Women are pretty much supposed to remain widows. I can’t think of any woman I know who remarried after her husband’s death. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that it’s extremely uncommon.
On the other hand, when my uncle’s wife died of cancer, it was not even a week before they suggested he remarry. And I knew a man, casually, who lost his wife, two little daughters, and parents in the Panam flight that crashed back in the 80s. When I remarked to my mom how sad that was, she rolled her eyes and said “He’ll just remarry. It’s no big deal.” Even at that age - and I was young - I couldnt understand how it was so easy to replace your entire family. Now I do know that Indian men are often expected just put their grief aside and remarry quickly, especially if there are no male heirs.

Huh, that’s really interesting. My mom never said anything to me about Korean widows (perhaps Hazel can chip in?) but now that I think about it, there has always been kind of an expectation that if my dad died that she wouldn’t remarry (which I always thought was just a function of there being a lot of single old women I know and not many old single men). She has informed me that if she dies, Dad will probably remarry immediately “because that’s the way men are,” but the examples she uses are usually of American white people we know rather than Koreans.

[Angua]

@Anaamika

I’m really glad to hear it, Ascenray. I hope everyone knows the disclaimer “These are only my experiences, YMMV” to be true.

Forget my parents’ generation, my generation has not shown to be very liberal. No one in my extended family has not had some form of an arranged marriage, even if there was some limited dating. No one has married a non-Hindu. No one has come out as gay. I have a huge family. It is hard for me to believe we don’t have even one gay. No one has divorced. No widows have remarried.

Interesting. Anaamika, your experiences are much much closer to mine than Ascenray’s. I suspect that this is because both you and I grew up primarily in “the West” rather than in India (ISTR that Ascenray is from India?), and expat societies are known to fossilize to the social mores relevant to the time that the expat community left “home”. Its really only with my cousins who were born in the UK/USA/Canada that the family at least is liberalizing. We have one cousin that we think is gay, but won’t admit it to anyone, another couple of cousins live with their (European) girlfriends, and I’m marrying out of the community too.

[Acsenray]

@Angua

Interesting. Anaamika, your experiences are much much closer to mine than Ascenray’s. I suspect that this is because both you and I grew up primarily in “the West” rather than in India (ISTR that Ascenray is from India?)

No, I grew up entirely in the United States. Some of the relatives I speak of grew up here and some grew up in India. India is an extraordinarily diverse society. It might just be that my particular community is generally more liberal than others. (As a proud Bengali, I would like to think so.)

[Angua]

@Acsenray

No, I grew up entirely in the United States. Some of the relatives I speak of grew up here and some grew up in India. India is an extraordinarily diverse society. It might just be that my particular community is generally more liberal than others. (As a proud Bengali, I would like to think so.)

Interesting. The times I’ve been back to India, my Indian friends and family have been extraordinarily open minded and liberal, telling me that the attitudes I grew up with was the way that their grandparents were raised. I suspect its down to different expat communities (my community here in the USA is far more open minded and liberal than the community I grew up in, for instance)…

[Acsenray]

It is true that my upbringing in the United States was in some ways more conservative than my cohort cousins’ upbringing in India. But we started from a different point. My dad’s family was already liberalizing in terms of marriage before he left India in the 1950s. And just as individuals, my parents have reasonably liberal attitudes, even if they have generally made conservative choices for themselves.

The principal way in which my upbringing was more conservative was in terms of alcohol use. I was brought up with the idea that only low-class, uncouth, uneducated, and criminal people drink alcohol. So while I am a complete teetotaler, my Indian cousins use alcohol quite freely.

[bldysabba]

@Angua

expat societies are known to fossilize to the social mores relevant to the time that the expat community left “home”.

I think this is relevant. I live in India, and some of Anaamika’s ideas sound a little…ancient, no offence meant. I’m 30, and it’s only in the last year that my closest female friends have started getting married. Not a single one of them has been ‘arranged’. I’m not claiming this to be representative of course, since there’s selection bias involved.
In the wider sample of women I know well enough to have discussed this stuff with - there is pressure from parents and society in general to get married, but parents are almost always more than happy if the girl has found herself a boy. In fact, the only parents I know that kicked up a fuss did so because the boy was Muslim, but were somewhat mollified by his being Ismaili and accepted.

A few people have gotten divorces in my family(including women). Nobody treats them as exceptional or exceptionally bad. My female first cousin is unmarried at 35 and seems to want to stay that way. My mum gets on her case a little, but I suspect that’s only because she has no hope from me. Two of my uncles have recently remarried, one to a widow.

I know plenty of (some quite flamboyantly) gay people in Delhi, plenty of North-South-East-West Indian weddings, I don’t know of any inter-caste weddings, but that’s because I usually never know anyone’s caste, including my own.

On the other hand, my corner of India is undeniably more socially liberal than most of the country. I only offer it up as evidence of change, which I personally think is accelerating.

[even_sven]

Just throwing this out there, but could gender be a factor in these differing assessments of the current situation? I can see that the experiences recounted in this thread seem pretty split along gender lines.

I know that when I lived in China, which has its own set of gender issues, all of my female expat friends all had clashes with local gender expectations, and all of them came away with pretty negative and pessimistic views of gender equality in China. Between our own experiences and stories told to us by female confidents, all of us had come away with the impression that there was still a lot of gnarly gender stuff going on.

My male expat friends, however, largely came away with the impression that while things were a bit behind, Chinese women were catching up quickly and gender wasn’t really a huge deal any more. They, for the most part, didn’t see particularly large differences between the experience of being female in the US and the experience in China. I think from they outside they saw a lot of confident women, and didn’t really see the whole mess of stuff going on behind all that.

[bldysabba]

@even_sven

Just throwing this out there, but could gender be a factor in these differing assessments of the current situation? I can see that the experiences recounted in this thread seem pretty split along gender lines.

I know that when I lived in China, which has its own set of gender issues, all of my female expat friends all had clashes with local gender expectations, and all of them came away with pretty negative and pessimistic views of gender equality in China. Between our own experiences and stories told to us by female confidents, all of us had come away with the impression that there was still a lot of gnarly gender stuff going on.

My male expat friends, however, largely came away with the impression that while things were a bit behind, Chinese women were catching up quickly and gender wasn’t really a huge deal any more. They, for the most part, didn’t see particularly large differences between the experience of being female in the US and the experience in China. I think from they outside they saw a lot of confident women, and didn’t really see the whole mess of stuff going on behind all that.

Sure it’s a factor. But to clarify, I’m not trying to imply that any of the stuff that’s happening is easy for the women in question, just that they’re able to achieve it. Which counts as progress in my book.

[Acsenray]

There’s no question that Indian women face significant obstacles, but I’m very proud of what my female relatives have been able to accomplish in spite of that.

My grandmother, who died a couple if years ago, said her one wish was to be reborn a man. Back in the '30s and '40s her ambition was to join the fight for independence and she even went so far as to hide explosives for some radicals. (Yep, a wannabe terrorist we’d call her today.) Only her father’s contacts kept her out of trouble, but she was closely watched after that. She also tried to smuggle her country cousin to the big city so she could be free of rural conservative society.

Another one of my female relatives was the Annie Liebowitz of post-independence Calcutta. Another became one of the world’s top researchers in public health statistics. Another came to America and successfully sued her academic advisor and university for sexual harassment (okay, a dubious honor, but she fought and won!).

[Anaamika]

@bldysabba

I think this is relevant. I live in India, and some of Anaamika’s ideas sound a little…ancient, no offence meant. .

I’m not offended, but they’re not exactly my ideas, just the stuff I have been exposed to. And yes, even sven is right. I think there is a gender divide. A vast one. When I talk to my male cousins, I get the same impression - that they’ve literally lived a different life than me. They didn’t have to fight the battles women did - they just saw the results.

My mother disowned me for being with a non-Indian. I think my entire family would have disowned me for being with a Muslim! But then again, my grandparents fled across the border when the Partition happened, so I think it’s still too recent.

[YogSothoth]

What Partition?

[Acsenray]

@YogSosoth

What Partition?

Just in case you’re not joking, the partition of India in 1947, which resulted in the creation of Pakistan as an Islamic state.

[aruvqan]

@Acsenray

Just in case you’re not joking, the partition of India in 1947, which resulted in the creation of Pakistan as an Islamic state.

Why joking? Most Americans learn fuck all about other countries, especially if they are not Britain, France, Germany or Russia.

Hell, only reason I know about it was it came up in a discussion on a different list I hand out with and I looked it up online. About the only things I learned about India in school was that the Mongols raided through and became the Mughuls, there is a huge building called the Taj Mahal that wasn’t a palace but was a tomb, and there are lots of cows that don’t get eaten. It wasn’t until about 11th grade when the school got an exchange student who’s father was a diplomat from India that my contact with anything Indian was something other than a restaurant called Queen of India or a jar of ancient curry powder from a grocery store.:smack:

[Acsenray]

Well they did make a movie about it that won an Oscar.