I am going to stray from the herd here because, really, I think you have two choices, P-C.
Either you talk to them about not being ready to be married right now and stand by it. Or you realize that you will do what they want and go on with their attempts to arrange a marriage and get married and live that life.
But I don't think you get both. You can't follow that cultural/familial expectation and also rebel against it.
Unless you really think that the search for a bride is going to result in you meeting that one person where you will both immediately fall into perfect love-resulting-in-rather-immediate-marriage and then everyone is going to happy.
I mean, in an ideal world, I'd wish that for you. But I don't personally understand how to make it happen.
Or decide you want to start looking for a partner, and then enter in and really be part of the search--with the understanding that this may NOT be the best way for you to go about it but you will give it your very best shot. Because it isn't totally clear that you are not interested, since you keep following up on these matches.
That's basically what my aunt said. To tell them that, hey, I did it your way, now give me a year to do it my way. My mom always assumes my resistance to the process is because I'm dating someone anyway, as if I am even capable of dating after years of brainwashing and emotional trauma.
I just hate all these artificial time constraints. There's too much pressure to make things happen fast and feel things before they can be felt.
Your aunt may be on to something. If only to give you breathing room to figure out what you do want. Do you want to meet someone and fall in love and just hope she's Gujarati and has brothers and will in all ways make your mother happy? Do you want to meet a lot of Gujarati women and hope you fall in love with one? Are you okay with marrying someone you aren't in love with if you at least like each other? Are you willing to let your mother bulldoze you into a marriage you don't want because she wants you married so badly? These are hard questions and if you could have some time to really think about them rather than just reacting to whatever your mother does it might help you to decide how to proceed.
But I just sat through an hour of relationship Therapy that seemed totally useless and beside the point without complaint because, I don't even know why, so there's really no reason to listen to me on this subject.
I have specifically said the sentence, "I don't want to get married for the sake of getting married."
But, see, this is not an absolute statement. You leave enough space for your mom to think, "Well, the solution to that is for you to get married but for the right reason! Therefore the problem is just your attitude! Which I can fix!" Pardon the punctuation. I don't know your mother. She may use fewer exclamation marks.
You need to say, "I don't want to get married." Full stop. Furthermore, you need to say, "I'm not going to get married."
If that's what you mean!
I'm Japanese. We don't have arranged marriages too much these days, but we did. And I definitely have relatives back in the family tree who married people they barely knew and built wonderful loving families from them. (We also have some heretics who romantically married for love not position and were disowned, starting our branch of the family, so there was bucking of the tradition in there, too.) It's possible. But it happened by way of two people slowly getting to know each other and being willing from the upfront to take each other as they come. And it's ugly and dirty and painful and can also be marvelous in the long run. But it doesn't happen through any snapping fingers.
In all honesty, when we get married the Western way we often don't know our spouse in the way we think we do. We have lots of learning and growing and fighting and blood to get through. At 18, and having known him for a month when I accepted his proposal, I definitely didn't know Dave as well as I should have. And we paid a pretty big price for it, in two years of what was pretty much utter hell while we figured out who we were and who the other person was.
But we made a commitment early on about how we were going to handle our marriage and our relationship to each other and we stuck by it. Probably it was sheer stubbornness that got us through those first couple of years, because we'd eloped and wanted to show everyone up who doubted us. It was incredibly difficult work. But it was the most important work we could have possibly done.
You can have a successful and happy arranged marriage. IF YOU WANT TO. And if you're willing to do the extraordinary amount of work it's going to be to make two lives come together that wouldn't otherwise.
Or you can have a successful and happy love marriage. IF YOU WANT TO. And if you're willing to do the extraordinary amount of work it's going to be to make two lives come together that wouldn't otherwise.
Or you can be a successful and happy single. IF YOU WANT TO. If you're willing to do the extraordinary amount of work it's going to be to make your family content with this decision.
Are you getting where I'm going here?
Didn't mean to be ranty. But as an Asian, I understand the depth of your familial and societal pressure. However, you are still you and have the choice to do whatever you damn well please with your life. And then stand by that choice.
We took a lot of heat for eloping, and certainly for it being an interracial marriage. But it was absolutely the best thing I could have ever done (not the best timing, mind you, I regret the *way* we did it, but not *that* we did it.) and Dave is the absolute best person for me in my life right now. We made our call and we stood by it.
And here we are. TMI? Maybe, but this is Bitches after all. Hee.
I'm trying to convince TCG to take a sick day tomorrow. He's obviously sick, and he has a crazy weekend ahead, but he is so stubborn. I did convince him to go to bed early though.
Liese says the things I want to say so much better than I do. (And with a background that I simply don't have.)
::loves Liese::
I hope the rest helps TCG get better quick-like.
::loves Liese unconditionally::
::would elope with Liese, if it weren't for our pre-eloped states::
