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Summary
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A young woman faces severe family opposition to marrying outside her caste, religion, and state. Restrictions, threats, and distress are affecting her career and leaving her torn between her parents and her own choices.
The response frames the situation as a difficult personal decision involving autonomy, family support, and cultural expectations, rather than promising an easy resolution.
The author acknowledges the limits of his own cultural perspective and emphasizes that the reader must weigh her circumstances, while affirming that this painful crisis does not make her life disposable.
Question
Reader · Identity withheldI am a 22-year-old woman who recently graduated at the top of my class. I am in love with a wonderful man. He is practical, emotionally balanced, and everyone loves him. That is the good part.
\nMy parents are very orthodox and they will not allow a marriage outside of our caste, religion, or state. When I tried to tell my mother about my feelings, she became depressed and even tried to take her own life. Now whenever I try to bring up the topic, even just speaking generally about inter-caste, inter-religion, or inter-state marriages, she goes quiet and suffers sleepless nights. I thought my father might be more understanding but he has been the opposite. He even made plans to have my boyfriend harmed. He threatened me and told me to cut all contact with him. Now, I am usually asked to stay at home and hardly ever go out.
\nRecently I had a nervous breakdown as this situation has affected me a lot. I feel weak, tired, and tense and sometimes I experience shaking spells. Now, I cannot even look at my father and I hate the very sight of him. I cannot stand his presence because it reminds me of the breakdown.
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I want to tell my parents that I cannot think of any other man but my boyfriend and that I will marry no one else. His family is ready and waiting for my parents to agree but I am unable to say or do anything. My career is suffering too. I do not have a job because my parents did not want me to attend interviews. I live under many restrictions which were put in place after my brother left home and went to the United States to study. I have paid the price for his choice all of my life and I was happy to sacrifice, but this once, I want to have a choice of my own and marry my boyfriend.
\nI do not know how to cope and every day I feel like ending my life. There are so many people who congratulate me and praise my parents for having a daughter like me but here is the true me who is broken and lost, thinking about ending her life. Please help me.
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Answer
Ann LandersYou are presented with a far reaching life decision that has no ready made, easy solution. You are asked to choose between your heart on the one hand and your culture and (more importantly) the love of your parents on the other. If you choose in the favor of your heart, you may sacrifice the love of your family, and very likely their continuing support in life (not a trivial things to throw away at age 22 or at any age). If you chose in the favor of your family, you will have chosen to go against your own best judgment, and be guilty of what the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre called mauvaise foi or “bad faith” (in effect you will have sold out your potential and have become an inauthentic person). Either alternative is pretty bad. This is the sort of question that you have to answer for yourself, because you and only you will have the responsibility for suffering the consequences of the decision.
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I don’t think this question you face is about the love you feel for your boyfriend. You’re a young girl, really, and the thing you have with this guy may work out or it may not. It is really besides the point because you can’t control what will happen. The same applies to the career thing. At your age there is plenty of time for a bright woman to make a career for herself. Neither boyfriend or job is relevant to the decision. What the point is to my way of viewing it is that you need to choose the type of pain you want to experience more of as an adult: the lonely freedom of making your own authentic decisions, or the stifling conformity but relative safety of letting the group make decisions for you. I have to admit that if it were me (knowing what I’ve learned about myself over the years) I’d choose the lonely freedom thing over the stifling safety thing. But keep in mind that I’m American, and cultural issues such as the caste system never much applied to my own situation. Direct comparison is not possible. The right answer to this question really is different for different people in different circumstances. You have to make up your own mind, basing your decision on your own temperament, personality and needs. I wish you the straightest and least painful path towards a resolution that will work for you.
\nOne thing is certain. This is totally not worth killing yourself over. This is a crisis, and it will hurt for a while, some days very sharply, but you will resolve it, and life will go on.
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