Why Indian Women Opt For Arranged Marriages Despite Being Wary Of Them
Huffington Post | ‘Mummy-papa know best’.
There were red flags right from the start. When she attempted casual physical contact with him, he flinched. When she tried to approach him sexually, he implied she was desperate. She married him anyway. It wasn’t long before she found herself at the door of Narendra Kinger, a Mumbai-based clinical psychologist and marriage counsellor. There she told him how she had been advised to test her sexual compatibility with the man her parents had ‘chosen’ for her, and how uncomfortable his rejection had made her feel. Yet, she bought the party line that things were bound to get better after marriage—only they didn’t.
“His behaviour should have set off alarm bells right then, but she ignored it. Thanks to the social conditioning about sex in India, my client assumed he was being gentlemanly,” Kinger told HuffPost India. Also, she couldn’t find the appropriate language to convey what the ‘problem’ was to either her family or the man she was set to marry. Months after her wedding, she is considering divorce.
Young people in India continue to opt for arranged marriages, with more than 1,500 matrimonial websites thriving in the country. However, clinical psychologist Anindita Chowdhury explains that despite the popularity of arranged marriages, many women are wary of such relationships—she has even had clients who’ve hired private investigators to learn more about the prospective groom. While their fears are abated to some extent because they have a greater say than was the norm before, young, educated and financially independent women continue to feel the pull of cultural expectations and rely on the ‘wisdom’ of elders. Here are some reasons why arranged (or ‘semi-arranged’) matches are such a frequent choice for Indian women.
