The Marriage Question

Disclaimer: Those happily married, this isn’t meant for you. You can stop reading here if you are going to get angry.

When I was 5 years old, I entered a fancy dress competition at my school. I was a talkative kid, but not one with a profound imagination. So, I dressed up as a bride. I want to blame popular culture and Hum Aapke Hai Kaun for my choice but that film was still a few years away from release. So, it was my choice. However, why would a child want to dress up as a bride? Because I was being raised in a culture that allowed for these things, in fact, it propagated it.

Should my school have stopped little girls from dressing up as brides? Yes. Was it great that I didn’t win the competition? Also yes. But was it great that the girl who won was dressed as a princess? No.

It is quite tragic that from the very beginning, young girls are told to mould themselves in certain restrictive feminine ways. Young girls as Princesses, from Cinderella to Snow White, or as brides are roles that depend highly on men. They are told to be damsels in distress. They are told not to be smart; if they are smart, they learn to act stupid so men would want to save them. And none of this is taught actively, at least I wasn’t. But it is a lesson one learns through osmosis.

Women in pop culture, for instance, were shown to be rewarded for knowing how to cook, clean, and keep a great house. And those who were independent, financially and otherwise, were tamed by men. The woman belonging inside the kitchen was the recurring theme. We grew up with it, and many quietly accepted it.

Then feminism happened to some of us. We began questioning these societal expectations. And all hell broke loose.

To Marry or Not To Marry

This has never been a question for me.

A week ago, the hospitality chain OYO decided to change its policy in Meerut. Unmarried couples can’t stay at the OYO partner hotels in the city anymore. A couple has to show proof of their relationship to get a room. I wrote about it for The Indian Express and so far the article isn’t behind paywall, so read while you still can.

OYO, not because it wanted to be progressive, but because it saw growth opportunity was open to unmarried couples. But, as a friend pointed out, “You can’t have your brand become the second word for adultery and other forms of societally illicit sex.” Not in India at least. The pivot is OYO’s attempt at rebranding to become more societally acceptable. And therein lies the problem.

Societal acceptability imprisons women more than anyone else. It is the Madonna Vs. The Whore dichotomy that still keeps women trapped. The married woman is the Madonna, who has sex but with a purpose. To procreate and to keep the man happy. It’s part of her role in life. While the ‘whore’ does as she pleases and is chastised for it.

I wonder what is the breaking point of this binary.

The Marital Benefits

In December last year, I was at a cousin’s wedding. My entire extended family had gathered and it was equal parts fun and frown-inducing. Since it was the wedding of a cousin much younger than me, people kept asking me about my plans for marriage. I have to admit that this happened after a very long time. Once you enter the other side of your 30s, people give up on you.

However, since the occasion called for it, I wasn’t spared. Every angle from emotional guilt-tripping about my poor parents and their aspirations to practical things such as “Aren’t you afraid of loneliness?” were brought up. I dodged all questions politely and largely with silence. But I do want to take this traumatic experience as an opportunity to write about what the idea of marriage means to me.

Marriage, as we know by now, is an inherently misogynistic institution. The expectation that women should give up their surnames, their homes, and their families to enter into a marriage has been talked about enough. Some will counter saying how you have the choice to not give up your surname, and everyone now lives away from home. We know that’s not true for most women in India, but these are only minor issues. Surnames, no matter who you get them from, are patriarchal.

The larger problems concerning the institution for me are the tall structures built around it. The OYO policy change is a case in point. Marriage validates the status of a woman, making her more acceptable to society. But why does a woman need this validation? A single woman, at the same time, is a threat to society because she isn’t following the status quo. In a patriarchal society, women are expected to fall in line and perform emotional and domestic labour. While the good modern men “help”.

As a single woman, I encounter numerous obstacles in my daily life that seem absurd. For instance, why is my marital status a prerequisite for renting an apartment in a major city? Renting as a single woman can be incredibly challenging, ask those who have tried. Similarly, my Schengen visa application was recently denied because I lack “strong ties to my home country”.

The authorities seem to believe that my family, friends, career, and community are insignificant unless I am married and have children. This systemic bias undervalues the lives and contributions of single women.

A married couple in India, on the other hand, enjoys socio-economic benefits. While Indian tax laws don’t permit joint filing of taxes, they do offer several benefits to married couples, such as deductions for medical expenses, home loan interest, and investments. However, these benefits are largely unavailable to unmarried couples, even those living together.

For instance, while married individuals can claim deductions for their spouse's medical expenses, unmarried partners cannot. Similarly, deductions for home loan interest are generally restricted to the individual who is the borrower or a joint borrower on the loan. This disparity in tax treatment is a form of prejudice against unmarried couples.

But I want to push the argument forward and outside the traditional definition of coupledom. Why can I not build a family with my friends, adopt kids if I want, buy a home, avail of a home loan and get tax benefits? The definition of family remains tied to the idea of marriage and DNA. There is no room for those who have chosen to go against the grain.

At least within my limited friend circle, several women have rejected the notion of marriage. The women I know are rejecting marriage because it makes little sense. We are financially independent. We rely on each other for emotional comfort and we don’t need marriage for sex. Marriage, we understand, is not about love. Nor is it about companionship. In a country where dowry is still prevalent, marriage is about money and property, ease of living in a society, and tax benefits, among others, but it isn’t about love.

Embracing the Whore

In the age of Tik-Tok and Instagram Reels, there has been a sudden movement towards the emergence of the “Trad Wife”. A trad wife or a traditional wife is a woman who stays at home, cooks and cleans and does everything for her husband and her kids, usually two or more. Her cooking involves making everything from scratch, including sugar and flour and who knows even salt.

The trad-wife has a loving husband and a manicured existence. This is a curated experience with perfect aesthetics. but we don’t know what happens behind the camera. It becomes a problem because it glorifies the thankless labour that women have put up for centuries. It is putting women back into the kitchen, a very anti-suffragette move, if you ask me. However, I am not worried, yet, about this becoming a real-world trend because being a traditional wife is only possible in an immensely privileged home.

The possible implications of such videos might be the adherence to gender roles gets solidified. And that has the potential to reverse the progressive wheel.

We already know that a majority of the time, women stop working after marriage. The reasons range from maternity to child-rearing to taking care of a sick family member to just the overwhelming load of managing a house and children along with the job. Men, who have traditionally been taught to be the breadwinners have limited their roles to providing material benefits. While these roles are shifting, they haven’t changed entirely.

Consider this peppy little nugget, for instance. Research suggests that men possess the capacity for empathy equal to women, but their demonstration of it may be contingent on external motivation. One study revealed that men performed poorly in assessing others' emotions when evaluated on their empathy but lacked explicit incentives. However, when offered financial rewards for accurate emotional interpretations, their performance matched that of women.

We have for decades been talking about the emotional growth of men. But it is interesting to see that it isn’t that they aren’t capable, it’s just that they aren’t being rewarded for it. This in many ways also explains the sudden rise of the “wife guys” on social media, where men were seen fawning over their wives, and were rewarded by the internet for, you know, just loving their partners.

M for Marriage, M for Misogyny

A common thing one gets to hear within the Indian wedding market is about how the girl’s in-laws are happy with her working, they have allowed it. This, they say, is progress. But as Farhan Akhtar, bless his woke heart, informed us in Dil Dhadakne Do, when you give someone permission you put yourself in a position of authority.

But the institution was never meant to be about equality. In ancient societies, marriage primarily served as a means to form alliances between families. Marriage often involved the transfer of property and ensured the inheritance of land and resources.

Throughout history, women have been used as political pawns. Royal marriages were often strategic, with daughters of powerful rulers given in marriage to solidify alliances between kingdoms. In times of war, the wives and daughters of defeated rulers were often taken as spoils of war. This practice served to humiliate the conquered and assert the dominance of the victor.

And those wives and daughters, many times, as glorified in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavat, committed the act of Sati and self-immolated. The two options women had were between forceful surrender that accompanied rape and other forms of violence, and agonising death. Even today, a lot of women lose their lives to marriage. In 2024 alone, there were 6,400 dowry-related deaths.

Marriage, historically and even today, hasn't primarily prioritised women's well-being. Despite this, women are often pressured into believing that marriage is essential for personal fulfilment.

Sociological research consistently reveals that men reap significant benefits from marriage: increased lifespan, improved health, and enhanced economic opportunities. In contrast, studies indicate that married women, on average, have shorter lifespans. Furthermore, marital happiness itself is not a guarantee of happiness for women. Their happiness is contingent upon the quality of their marriage – a happy marriage contributes to a woman's happiness, but marriage itself does not inherently ensure happiness.

My problem isn’t that men are benefitted, my problem is that women aren’t. Despite the overwhelming data and historical facts highlighting the potential disadvantages of marriage, many women find themselves drawn into the $130 billion wedding industry. This powerful and pervasive industry’s strong influence almost feels like Stockholm Syndrome.

All great things in life are free, billion-dollar industries, it would seem.

In one of my favourite white noise shows, Gilmore Girls, when Lorelai is about to get married to the lovely Max Madina, she picks a peculiar quote to be put on her wedding invitation.

“We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.”
—Benito Mussolini

This marriage never happens because Lorelai isn’t in love. And, of course, this quote is used as a joke. But if you think about it, Lorelai was really on to something. Using a quote that starkly declares the suppression of individual freedoms under a fascist regime on a wedding invitation is strangely fitting. That is what marriage has been for many many women.

My Baba, who wants me to get married, often tries to understand my point of view and my discomfort with the institution. Yesterday, he pointed out how women in Japan are choosing not to marry because of how regressive that society is despite the country being part of NATO. I added that a similar trend is being seen in South Korea, and we may soon find similar trends rising in India.

I know that marriage as an institution cannot go away, at least in my lifetime. But, is it possible to imagine alternative family structures, cultivate supportive communities, and live fulfilling lives without facing socio-economic ostracism or penalties for making different choices? Can we imagine a world that is open, inclusive, and equal? Where women don’t need to rely on marital privileges to get by in the world? Where their personhood is valued beyond their marital status?

And more importantly, can we stop asking women about their wedding plans?