Almost all the marriages in my family have been arranged marriages. My mum’s marriage to my bio dad was an arranged marriage but it ended up in a messy divorce and him completely abandoning us before I was even born. My mum had a love marriage the second time, despite the disapproval of her family, and has been much happier with my stepdad than she probably would have ever been with my bio dad. Because of this, my mum has always been very adamant that she would not try to force us (my siblings and I) into arranged marriages despite what the rest of our family thought.
I’ve been with my fiancé (26M) for 3 years now, we got engaged 2 months ago. He’s met my parents and siblings but as far as the majority of my extended family were concerned, I was single until 2 months ago. Early last year, my fiancé dropped me off home after work one day and my uncle was there. My uncle is the oldest sibling my mum has so he’s seen as the ‘head’ of the family (i.e. he thinks he has a say in what the rest of us do). It was obvious my uncle was pissed, and he ended up grilling my fiancé and I assume he met his standards (a lot of arranged marriages are about what both families can gain from one another (e.g. wealth, influence, etc.)) so he told my mum to get us married quickly (he wanted to make it look like we had an arranged marriage before the rest of our family found out). My mum ignored him and told us to keep dating if it’s what we wanted. Over the past year, he’s mentioned me getting married to my mum every single time he’s spoken to her.
Apparently, my uncle assumed just because he’d given the ‘order’ that we were going to get married soon. He told my cousin (his daughter) that I had agreed to an arranged marriage and because I had and she was older, she should agree to the match he’d found her. My cousin never mentioned this to me, but she did agree to marry the man my uncle found for her. They got married late last year. They haven’t had a good marriage and my cousin is very unhappy. Her husband is incredibly controlling and hardly ever lets her go anywhere without him or a member of his family.
Last week, she was over at my house when my fiancé came over to drop some of the clothes I’d left at his place over. When I told my family about my engagement, they all assumed it was an arranged marriage and I didn’t bother clarifying because it really isn’t anyone’s business. You don’t tend to do sleepovers if you’re having an arranged marriage, so my cousin knew immediately it wasn’t what she assumed. She started asking me questions about my relationship and I answered honestly. She got really angry at me and kept demanding to know why I didn’t tell her about him. The thing is, I’m very close to this cousin but I also know how our family is about dating and I didn’t want my male cousins trying to strongarm my fiancé (they’ve jokingly threatened this before). She pretty much blamed me for her arranged marriage and said she only agreed because she thought I was going to have one too and if I had told her I had a boyfriend, she would have had the courage to stand up to her family. She hasn’t spoken to me since.
I do feel bad for her. I know how unhappy she is but if she had mentioned what my uncle told her earlier, I would have clarified. I don’t want this to be the end of our relationship, but I don’t know what I can do to fix this. Please help.
TL;DR – My cousin agreed to an arranged marriage because she thought I was also going to have one. She’s since realised I’m having a love marriage and is blaming me for letting her agree to an arranged marriage when I had no intentions of having one myself.
Submitted September 29, 2020 at 12:21PM by ThrowRAarrangedlove https://ift.tt/34p77th
No comments:
Post a Comment