Arranged Marriage means that I have to cope with you – but I cannot bear your Family!

Last week I explained why there were, in my opinion, so many problems in Indian marriages – because they are usually arranged marriages. Young people have their dreams and it is a big disappointment when they get to know their spouse after their wedding and realize that he or she is absolutely not according to their dreams. A lot of problems follow but while they usually arrange themselves with their marriage partner, the biggest fights and arguments take place with other family members – and as it is usually the bride who moves in with the groom and his family, it is she who faces the problems with her husband’s family, most commonly with her mother-in-law.

There is a reason for the fact that the fights are always worse with the rest of the family than with her husband himself. In India, divorce is still something that happens rarely. In most cases both, husband and wife, don’t even think of going separate ways ever in their life again. They accept that they are married and that’s it. In many people’s minds there is no alternative than coping with whoever you got on the marriage market.

This means that a husband will accept the wife’s actions and attitude and the wife will accept her husband’s opinion and what he does as well. If she does something he doesn’t like, he may tell her not to and she will oppose and they will have a fight. In the end, no matter what the outcome of the fight is, they both have to accept that they have different opinions and ideas. If she does it again, or in an altered version, he may just accept it, saying ‘Well, we have to live with each other’. In the same way, if she doesn’t like an opinion he voiced, she will confront him with this and they may fight again. In the end, if he doesn’t change his mind or only slightly, she will accept it and say ‘What can I do? He is my husband after all.’

What about his family though? For them, the situation is different and again, it works both ways. A woman may be able to bear strange behavior and opinions of her husband but she may not be ready to deal with such actions by her in-laws! If her husband says something wrong, she will in the end shrug her shoulders, accepting her fate. If her brother-in-law or her mother-in-law says the same, she won’t agree that easily! Why would she? She is married to him, not to his family! While she may try to avoid bigger confrontations, the anger which she suppresses in this way accumulates until it bursts out.

I said it works both ways and it does. The husband may accept his wife’s funny attitude towards certain topics but his family may not! If she says something bad to him, he may soon forgive her and forget about it but it will hurt his parents and siblings more and they won’t like to forget it as quickly! They remember and keep a grudge. If she then even talks to them in this way, they won’t hold back anymore!

The result is huge fights in homes which can even lead to a breaking of the family – when those tensions get so big that the husband decides it is better to move out than to bear such fights again and again.

Unfortunately this is happening often in today’s joint families and again arranged marriage is to blame. If you love someone and marry him, you care about his feelings and know they are connected with his family, so if you move in with them, you have a very different attitude towards them than if you get arranged and ‘placed’ into the family. For the family members it is the same – if their son or brother loves a woman and brings her home to meet them, they will be happy and more ready to adjust. That all however is only true when there is not the mindset of arranged marriages – and when there is a personal willingness of all persons concerned to create a loving atmosphere at home.