Dear Risha:

There are a few elements in your story:

1. The age difference: you were 32 when the relationship started, and a woman’s age, like you mentioned yourself, is a sensitive issue in the Muslim culture where a woman is expected to get married in her early twenties. So when you met him you were already passed marrying age. He on the other hand, as a man of 26 at the time was not restricted that way and under no pressure to get married soon.

2. You and him live in India where a person’s marriage is his parents’ business. I read more than a dozen threads in the Relationship Forum here, threads written by women who were not able to marry who they wanted because the man’s parents disapproved of the marriage. (There was only one thread, the most recent, where a man did marry a woman his parents disapproved of, only to allow his parents to mistreat her on a regular, ongoing basis after the marriage).

You wrote in your original post: “during the 2nd year of our relationship he communicated my age to them (his parents) and they were not happy… his mother called me and told me to stop the affair”- and so, early on, you were about 33 then, the relationship was doomed, marriage was not going to take place.

3. Your misunderstanding of #2. You pushed him away and took him back, argued with him and so on, as if the choice to marry you was his. You put your trust in his feelings instead of putting your trust in the reality you live in, that is, a marriage was not going to take place and it had nothing to do with how strongly he loved you, what he told you, none of that. It was about his parents, not about him.

It was never about how much he loved you or how much you loved him. It still isn’t.

Yesterday when I wrote to you about justice, I forgot about the fact that his parents had let you know early on that they disapprove of a marriage between the two of you, and that you continued the relationship in secret because of their disapproval. If his parents mislead you, if he and his parents promised you marriage for seven years and then withdrew, at least in the USA if that happened, you could have filed a civil lawsuit seeking significant financial compensation.

The only justice you can make happen is to educate women regarding getting involved with Indian men, educate them that marrying an Indian man without his parents’ disapproval is almost impossible. You can join efforts with other women who are trying to educate women and prevent them from future heartache and wasted years.

anita