Allow me to share with you my experience with arranged marriage and take you on a journey of self-discovery. I'll share what I saw growing up and how this framed my view of arranged marriage, together with some of my experiences.
My message today is about connecting to what it is that you really desire. How you can connect more deeply to what it is that you truly desire for yourself, for your life and with your partner.
My awareness of arranged marriage came from my parents and with others of their generation. Generally speaking they would get married when they were quite young – a traditional Indian Hindu wedding, and then and when they had come of age the wife would go and live with her husband. Some of my cousins in Indian were promised to boys of their age, and when they came of age they had the traditional marriage ceremony.
For my parents, as I understand it, they had their Hindu wedding ceremony when they were younger, and then my dad migrated to the UK and my mum followed a year or two afterwards and they had a civil marriage in London.
I don't recall ever really talking about arranged marriages specifically while I was growing up. My siblings and I grew up with our cousins. As we got older, I observed them going through the motions of being introduced to people for an arranged marriage. It was really interesting to witness because it was such an awkward, uncomfortable, new, unusual, uncertain experience for all of them. My cousins usually accepted the proposal of the first person they were introduced to. To be honest, they're in amazingly loving, luscious marriages and have beautiful, amazing kids as well!
What was really strange for me was that expectations didn't seem to be communicated: what you're supposed to do or how it's supposed to happen.
When the two potential partners would meet, the whole family would meet, and then the potential partners would go to a bedroom, shut the door and have a conversation – which I thought was really weird and creepy – whilst the rest of the family sat in the living room talking and verifying the "suit" by way of getting to know the family.
That aside, my concept of arranged marriage is that there is a conversation and an understanding between the families themselves. So this would involve who the families are; what they do; how they’ve grown up; where they were raised; and of course with regards to the groom, what they do for a living.
Something that is not often understood in the west is that in addition to this, there is a matching of the astrological stars and the astrological charts. This is really important because the astrological charts offer so much information about who we are, what it is that we're here for, and whether there is or will be alignment to create a strong future.
This is usually done with the input of a priest. They look at the charts and see whether that relationship will be fruitful, whether it will experience challenges, whether there'll be growth, whether there will be children and essentially, overall, what the level of compatibility might be.
There are various studies that show arranged marriages are often more successful than love marriages.
I feel this is NOT something that can be applied to western culture quite so easily, despite what shows like Married At First Sight would like to have us think. It’s not a part of western culture, and the full spectrum of understanding compatibility is not applied within shows like that. Arranged marriages and introductions are very much part of the culture in many eastern traditions, so it's not unusual for your parents to find you an appropriate match. This is not the case in most modern western cultures.
The show instead focuses more on personalities and the desires of the individuals in terms of what it is they're looking for in a partner. That’s wonderful of course, but not the whole picture of what makes a marriage, or any kind of relationship, successful.
I was about 21, in my third year of university, with a year still to go. One evening I was at a family gathering at my cousin’s house. He ‘cornered me’ while we were in a group conversation and said, “It's going to be a year until you meet somebody and then it’ll be another year before the wedding happens. So it's best to start looking now.” I wanted to stay in university, to continue with studying so that I didn't have to get married. Every opportunity I could find to put off getting married, I was looking for it!
But lo and behold, after a lot of poking, I agreed, and, well, the introductions did NOT come in, very quickly.
I had several introductions throughout my 20s and in the most part these were not suitable. It started with a height thing. Compared to others in my culture, I’m tall, at around 5’8”. Most guys I was being introduced to were about 5’5” or 5’6”, and I wanted to be with a guy who was taller than me. As well as this, for the few who were the same height or a little taller, they had quite different outlooks on life.
One example of an introduction came through my dad. My dad actually warned me that this man wasn't a very outgoing person. He worked as a telecoms tech and was a bit of a homebody: going to work and coming home was his life. My dad told me this because I was a particularly outgoing person. I went to the gym, I studied and hung out with my mates, and he knew that. But I agreed to meet the guy.
I think I was about 24 or 25 and he was a few years older. I was explaining to him on the date that I had been studying and was thinking about going back to university to do my Masters degree. He kept saying, “Oh well, you know, maybe now whilst you're single, but once you're married, you won't be able to.” I replied “Oh well, I've got a friend. She's married and she's just gone back to college to do a counselling diploma.”
This elicited the response, “Oh yeah, well maybe. But you know, once you've got kids and then you really can't do something like that and you need to be with them.” I told him this friend actually had children.
So this really put me off this particular guy. He was not very open to my desire to want to expand myself, to grow in myself, and to make time for the things that were really important to me, which at that point in my life were exercise, study, spending time with friends and family, and of course my career. He found it unfathomable that I was able to make time for all of these things. I told him I made the time because it’s all important to me. In the end I declined to meet him again.
About a week later, my dad asked me what happened. I was a little worried about what he might say, but I told him the guy said I wasn’t allowed to study after I got married. I was so surprised and incredibly relieved with my dad’s response: “Well tell him to fuck off then.”
(Yes, I paraphrased! HAHA!)
This was a wonderful acknowledgement that my dad appreciated what was important to me. I don't think that I'd ever felt that he acknowledged how important my study and my learning was to me until that moment, which was really, really lovely.
This brings us to a really great place for today’s tip: creating and imagining what amazing really looks like and feels like for a relationship, for our partner. It's all about being able to define in as much detail as possible what it is that we desire.
We're so used to articulating in an incredible amount of detail what it is that we dislike and this is where we start. Sit with what it is that we desire to create, in a partner, in a relationship, and of ourselves in that relationship.
So, grab a journal or a notepad and write a list. I started doing this several years ago and my list has grown and morphed and evolved over the years. The more you expand and grow into yourself, your desire and understanding of what it is that you truly desire is going to evolve too.
Go ahead and find yourself a quiet place to sit down and put pen to paper around what this person looks like for you, what they feel like. What being in a relationship with them is like for you; what you're like in the relationship with them. What do they bring to you in the relationship and what do you bring to them in the relationship? Keep writing as much as you can.
Leave yourself space at the end of that list, at the end of that story, so that you can come back to it, and continue to expand it, grow it.
When we can imagine what that looks and feels and smells like, we create that possibility. This is not to say that your possibility is limited by this, because you can always add to your list the invitation to experience ‘this or something better’.
Let me know what you love most about doing this exercise.
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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