Marriage

Is your family or community desperate to marry you off?

My family and community are both STRONGLY encouraging me to get married! Their worries are two fold. First, if I wait too long I will have become too old and then finding a match will become even harder. Secondly, the longer I wait the more likely I will find someone who is not in my community. In turn they fear I will stop attending functions and stop being an active member of the community. The worst part of it all is that sometimes I feel like a carry a burden of saving my family’s honor. You see, my sister married outside of the community and since that day I feel like I am my parents last hope of restoring their reputation. It sounds like a Bollywood drama, but it is not. It is a reality that many of us still face.

I cannot just place the blame on everyone else. Since I was a little girl I always looked forward to the day when I would have my own husband and kids. This is a dream that I actually look forward to and anxiously await. I guess it’s a combination of the cultural influence and what I want for myself that makes me think this way…but really, doesn’t everybody wonder who there life partner will be sometime or another? Now that I am at that age I am starting to get nervous. Why has that not happened for me? When will it happen for me? I see all my friends beginning to settle down and I sometimes feel like I am still at square one, alone.

So as much as I wish I could say that it was only my family and community who desperately want to see me married off I cannot because it would be a lie. Their desperation only reinforces my own.

--Anonymous