As desis we feel that the burden of meddlesome parents is uniquely ours. Exhibit A, an email from Yo Dad to Abhi:
Also please try and select life partner before next January !! Good luck !! Love…. Dad… [Link]
How typical, right? How very … African. The text that follows is from a BBC forum on the proper role of parents in childrens’ love lives in Africa:
Should African parents stay out of their children’s love lives? Or should a happy medium be reached between traditional match making and modern dating? … Is a marriage between two people or between two families?… [Link]
<
p>That’s right, it’s not just brown parents that like to … help their children and who view marriage as being a partnership between two families, it’s African families as well. There’s a reason why Bollywood fillums are so popular across Africa.
<
p>Similarly, we feel that pressures to be pragmatic about relationships are uniquely desi. Well, what about these quotes from a first world writer:
What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5’4″ and has an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this dating advice to me in an e-mail:
I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway). [Link]
Marriage isn’t a passion-fest …It’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. [Link]
That’s from a white American woman in the Atlantic monthly, giving exactly the same advice (with the genders reversed) that I got from a married DBD friend when I was 29. He told me that passion and hotness was all nice and good, but passion fades and hotness vanishes, so be sure you’ve got a woman you like to talk to and can get along with because, at the end of the day, everybody becomes an Auntie. [His advice, don’t hurt the messenger!!!]
I’m not saying there are no cultural differences, of course there are. What I’m saying is that even if the mean cultural attitudes are different, there’s a good deal of overlap in the tails, that cultural attitudes towards luuuurve are not distinct and separate, but fairly similar with differences in emphasis.
Whether that’s a good thing or not, I dunno. But like it or not, lots of people sound just like uncles and aunties …
Related posts: White American Christians Emulate Arranged Marriages
Hmmm… and then some love could pro’ly never go brown.
A quick smooch is the new chai?
I’m not saying there are no cultural differences, of course there are. What I’m saying is that even if the mean cultural attitudes are different, there’s a good deal of overlap in the tails, that cultural attitudes towards luuuurve are not distinct and separate, but fairly similar with differences in emphasis.
that’s because love or romantic feeling isn’t a pure function of culture. it’s a biosocial imperative upon which culture operates upon. the tabula rasa model really has gone too far with love and romance…i’ve read stupid things like that the arabs invented love, or that the troubadours invented love. granted, the greeks and romans weren’t a romantic people, but it seems ridiculous to assert that there was no romantic passion in their lives (caesar and servilia anyone?).
as for arranged marriages, of course it isn’t a brown thing. it’s a practical feature of many old world peasant societies. relations with other people are conditioned upon economic parameters when you live on the margins. e.g., who a german in the 1500s married was contingent upon distance, familial compatibility and the ability to work. in places like japan arranged marriage still exists among upper classes who want to consolidate their wealth and status.
Only two reasons to marry. You are madly, passionately in love or your partner-to-be is stinking rich. And sod the rest.
Only two reasons to marry. You are madly, passionately in love or your partner-to-be is stinking rich. And sod the rest.
children? some people think he chubby-ones r kool 2.
Although I am not convinced of the “relevancy” of arranged marriage in today’s modern world, yet this idea of “relevancy” between two partners is something that really struck home to me and caused an “a-ha” moment to take place when I read it.
i think one might ask as to the relevancy of arranged marriage for ABDs; especially if the ABDs are getting an arranged marriage with a DBD based on sub-caste & astrological affinities or something like that. if someone is born and raised in the USA there’s a good chance that friends won’t even know which caste they are, so the only people who will care about these details are their parents. parents matter, but at the end of the day they’ll pass on and you’ll be stuck with this person for the rest of their life….
@razib, comment [deleted] is the infamous troll.
tx. guess i’m being too selective clicking through my rss….
What happened to my post?
I thought it was relevant to the topic!
Speaking of RELAVANCY, which is spelled “relevancy”, please help keep the thread on track and relevant by leaving comments of reasonable length, not rants. If you have that much to say, please do so on your own blog and provide a link here to your post.
Point taken, but perhaps just a deletion of a paragraph or two would have been more relavant.
Your comment sounded as though your voice was SHOUTING to me in your head as you wrote it.
Please practice random acts of kindness to commenters. We have hearts and feelings as well.
Here’s a story I heard from a long-married mixed couple (desi female/white jewish male), both with traditional (read: conservative) families. Upon hearing about the engagement, the bride’s parents disowned her. Similarly, the groom was disowned by his family.
However, upon hearing of the groom being disowned, the bride’s parents went through this logic: “If he was disowned, he must come from a good family, so we will accept him.”
Upon meeting the groom for the first time in India, the patriarch of the bride’s family placed his hand on the groom’s head and recited a Hebrew verse welcoming a son home.
(They’ve been happily married for many years, kids, etc. I forget whether the groom’s family welcomed him back but for the sake of a good story on a cloudy Monday, let’s say that they did:)
11 · A very releavant Valentino said
Are you serious? It’s widely-known that use of all-caps denotes shouting and yet you did so throughout the rambling diatribe you left which I deleted. I capitalized a mere word.
Yes, commenters do. You, like most trolls, don’t.
It’s not our responsibility to be your editor. It’s a pretty simple rule; if you are so inspired that you have that much to say, do it on your own blog, IT’S THE COURTEOUS THING TO DO.
(They’ve been happily married for many years, kids, etc. I forget whether the groom’s family welcomed him back but for the sake of a good story on a cloudy Monday, let’s say that they did:)
would have been a better story if you were their kid! 😉
A very relevant Valentino, please heed the SM Intern. Feel free to post a brief version of your earlier comment, but very long posts, I’m afraid make it hard for most people to get through the site, and so they are discouraged. And please don’t fight with SMI, who is doing an important public service.
Thanks
But Lisa Gottlieb’s advice was to settle.
Not to find a guy who gets you, even if he isn’t teh hott. Her advice ran closer to “pick a guy, any guy!”
Which — although my mother gave me the “compatibility is more important than looks/charm/etc.” speech too — was never part of my cultural upbringing. No one’s encouraged me yet to “just take whichever guy’s closest and have it done with already,” which is what Gottlieb regrets not having done herself.
On the other hand, I’m still (relatively) young. That bit of advice may be waiting for me in the future…
I guess that’s not how I read it. I read it as saying passion fades but compatibility does not, very auntie-ish. That’s why I used that quote – it’s her thesis paragraph for the whole piece.
I’ve been puzzled by the dominant reaction to the piece, which is to say that she wants women to marry just anybody.
.
Wow! I got one. Here’s the story from the courtship of a mixed couple (desi male/white jewish female). they ended up ‘settling’.
I read this as her thesis:
It’s positioned in the first page of the article, right after the introductory paragraphs, and all the women who got riled about the article probably got riled right there. Then Gottlieb spends the next four paragraphs talking about the unfortunate, disgusting advantages of settling… before she gets around to the sensible advice, the part you quoted.
But by then all of us ladies were already furious. ^__^
She still sounds like an auntie there. Passion fades, but compatibility remains! High expectations ruin a marriage!
i think the author’s message is that you can go for intense passion as a long term objective if it works out for you; but if it doesn’t..don’t worry about it.
if you are young, keep the person you’re with, if they only have a few flaws that can be overlooked; because after all the older you get, the smaller the pool of people to choose from becomes and the flaws tend to magnify.
also implicit in the author’s message is to remember that you are also imperfect, and that your spouse will make compromises to be with you.
i don’t think the author is saying to be with any random person you meet on the streets 😉
i really enjoyed the article btw!
When we were teenagers, our mama told us that there were ‘5 reasons to get married’, which she then ticked off on her long, mahogany fingers:
(1) lowe
(2) friendship
(3) companionship in old age
(4) children
and
(5) sex
My then 14-year-old bro was quick to reply that “We can get all of that outside of marriage…especially the sex.” ~ My problem with the Atlantic article is that it is premised on this myth that marriage will make an unhappy singleton happy.
Apparently (newsflash!) marriage itself doesn’t make people happy, even if it includes a prince, a kingdom of riches and the adoration of millions. Otherwise Princess Diana would be chilling in some drafty palace waiting for QEII to kick it. And we all know how that fairy tale ended.
this is from the article by Lori. She sounds like an auntie – she is one 🙂
But on the whole tis pretty valid advice although I am guilty of not following it.
I meant that I am not settling – the column was targetted towards women
please forgive the typos during my impassioned rage 🙂
22 Kavita
i must strongly disagree. the author is saying it is her belief that it is better to be less than perfectly happy and married, than to be single at an older age. she is not saying marriage solves all of life’s problems nor that it is tantamount to happiness.
also, how can you use princess diana’s marriage as an example? why should she have been happy when charles was a total prick who cheated on her all the time, only dreamt of camilla, and did nothing to make his family accept her because she was not of royal blood?
also, if your premise is that marriage doesn’t make anyone 100% happy, i think most people might agree with that, even those who are very happily married, albeit for a multitude of reasons.
The interview makes her sound even more like an Auntie:
She’s the cautionary whale!
Gottlieb is the farthest thing from an Auntie in my mind; she documented her rigorous selection process for choosing a sperm donor (and what it was like to be inseminated) a few years ago. She’s a deliberately single Mother who decided not to wait for a child while she was looking for love.
And I think she once performed “The Penis Diaries”. But maybe Aunties are doing such things now. 😉
And yet listen to her talk … doesn’t she sound like an Auntie now? [Her first book was about being anorexic at 11 in Beverley Hills so she didn’t start life sounding Auntie-ish]
My problem with the “compatibility over looks/charm” logic is related to my status anxiety, vis-a-vis where I fit in in the American class system. I’ve found that when I’m with someone of high looks/charm, I am more successful in interacting at “high-class” social events. Maybe that says more about me (!) than about the pro-compatibility logic, but my married brother has commented on numerous occasions that his wife’s looks/charm have helped him build a practice with a wealthier clientele, in large part by making him seem more to have “made” it. I know that sounds horribly retrograde, but I think it’s not irrelevant if one cares about class issues in a traditional “climbing” sort of way. . . .
28 · Ennis said
She does and I love it. w00t for not being predictable.
beautiful women marry up. It is harder to find beauty at the lower end of the class spectrum.
22 kavita said
Kavita, it might not be quite that easy to get hitched to Rob Lowe (given that he is currently married), but we do have another Rob among the commenters here if you’re looking… Just kidding.
Emails from dad are still ok. How about those (now cheap) ISD calls from India that you get when are in lab and disturbs you from work (browsing sepia or facebook)telling you to call that girl in bangalore/bhatinda. My rants, which I wrote earlier this morning unbeknownst to coverage on this blog was this:
Indian Parents and Marriage I guess one clear difference I see between Indian parents and Western parents when it comes to pestering their 30-something children to “marry and get settled down”, is in the approach and decision making freedom. Western parents (or more often aunts) might try to set you up with someone on a date and ask you to call them, talk to them and spend time with them. Indian parents, first match horoscopes, then decide that the “family is good”, they are respected and respectable people etc, all the aunts/uncles get familiarized with each other and then as some afterthought, ask the prospective bride and groom to be (note that they are already considered groom/bride) to talk to each other. So this places undue pressure and yet some dads keep repeating the statement, “just because you talk does not mean you are committing, don’t be afraid and blah blah blah”.
Of course, if you are decidedly ruthless (which I hope to be), then you need not worry about all the aunts and uncles and you can and should be ready to walk away from all this when you feel like. I think, what Indian parents need to do is to see more fairly tales and movies like Enchanted and DDLJ and other quintessential love stories instead of trying to be practical and organize this arranged marriage scenarios.
Enough said. Back to work now.
But how do you make peace with calling off the search forever? Wasn’t this the whole premise of the brilliant opening/disappointing execution of Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna: “I love him…just not the way I thought I would. What happens if I meet that person after I marry this one?” Still 23 and stubborn, but I’d rather opt out of the contentment of consciously having “settled” than regret having set the benchmark too low. But I do think it’s worth it to be deliberate about what criteria [should] “count” for you in a long-term sense.
dang! foiled.
Ennis: Let me assure you that I am not one of those “Uncle” who would put any sort of “Burden of Meddlesome” on anyone, much less Abhi. Marriage is like one of those bullet – which eventually one bites – there are no sure things in life of ours. As Kavita’s 14 year old brother said, you can get all of that outside of marriage. The point is, will you be happy by going that route, or will you be happy following the traditional way? Who knows? To each the path of salvation is different. The hard wired brain of ours which we have inherited from our ancestors – like it or not – will somehow find a way to get all those things which Kavita’s mom was talking about. Hang on folks – it’s a matter of time, before you know it – you may be labeled Uncle Ennis or even Anna Aunty! Just kidding !
I think this depends on your parents 🙂
Sorry, I used you as an example. It was just too good to pass up … no hard feelings? [I was uncled at age 14 by some 5 year olds; the burden of the beard]
Uncle Ennis: Hard Feelings ? Of course not……. There are uncles and there are “uncles”….
Every parent meddles to some extent. One day my mother says to me, “I gave your phone number to a young man who came into my shop today.” What?!!…”Oh, wait ’til you see him, he’s so cute and so musical!”
The guy was walking around downtown playing a piccolo! I’ve got nothing against musical types but I desperately hate the piccolo.
I don’t come from a culture that arranges marriages (thankfully, you see my mother’s prime pick!) but the more I learn about arranged marriage the more I think it makes sense. The parents do all the work, you get to meet several potentials (a chance to see if the chemistry is right), you get all the details about the potential mate: education, health history, astrology!, family history and as I understand it, you get the final say. And, most importantly, the families are there to help the couple through any rough patches that always come up in a marriage. Every member of the family plays a role in the success of your marriage. That’s some sound stuff.
As a DBA I can write about the situation in India reg arranged marriages. I have many cousins in India who are unmarried and getting on in age, their parents at this point have given up on arranged marriage and just want suitable boys. Some of these uncles and aunts used to be super strict but are facing reality and are more open to matches they wouldn’t have considered before. Also horoscopes are not matched as strictly anymore as long as no major problem(Manglik!!)is found.
Some items I noticed, on this article:
“It’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business.†Plus, she says, couples with kids don’t spend that much time together anyway. [Link]
“often boring”?!This, from someone who is not married? That doesn’t seem to carry much weight!
She says, elsewhere, that “Our culture has this view that you should just know if someone’s right for you….. ….And so often you’ll hear in fiction or film or TV, or even at people’s weddings, these accounts of “We knew from the very first date, or after two weeks, that we would end up together.â€
–this sounds like an arranged marriage to me, where you are expected to “just know”, on the first meeting, if someone is right for you.
I was so focused on true love that I hadn’t appreciated the purely practical benefits of having a husband. Not only does he contribute financially, help with the dishes, and share in the child care, but as his wife, if you want some companionship or physical intimacy, you don’t have to shave your legs, blow-dry your hair, find a puke-free outfit, apply lipstick, drive to a restaurant and sit through a tedious two-hour meal for the mere possibility of some heavy petting while the babysitter meter is ticking away. You don’t have to follow up with flirtatious e-mails or engage in time-consuming courtship rituals. You don’t even have to make conversation if you don’t feel like it.
She seems to be focused not on “true love” as she claims, but whether he man is “hot”, whether he is passionate…her focus is primarily on sex.
One does not speak of the “practical benefits of having a husband” as if a husband is like…say a refrigerator! Or was she trying to be funny and am I missing the humor?!
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Interesting thread… Relevant story from Int’l Herald Tribune that may be of interest
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/19/asia/divorce.php http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2008/02/19/asia/DIVORCE.php
I have some experience with arranged marraige.
It was a practice prevelant in ISKCON during the 1970s and 1980s with tragic (and often dangerous results). Then later when I went to India I was exposed to the phenomena there.
People argue that it works in India but not in ISKCON because of cultural reasons. That is partly true, but then their concept of what “works” could be questioned as well.
In ISKCON marriages were often arranged by temple authorities and gurus who would match people up according to their capacites to collect donations and funds for the organization.
The founder of ISKCON, Swami Prabhupada, arranged some disciples marriages in the beginning, but seeing their divorce rate, stopped. I think only one or two couples he arranged are still married today. The rest, as well as those arranged by temple authorities and later gurus are 99% no longer as well.
Suffice it to say that ISKCON does not specialize in the arranged marriage biz anymore.
SM Intern = ANNA. Has anyone else noticed she’s the only moderator who deliberately fights with commentators? Probably for the same reason that she signs off as ANNA and not Anna – never-ending ego issues.