Gori Girl

Sorry about the detailed story – the years have passed and things got actually worst and mixed up. Hope s.o. can advice.

He's the desi – though himself highly educated comes from rural central India – and I'm the gori girl who had a great passion and fairly good knowledge of India beforehand. We met abroad, fell in love, got very rapidly into a live-in relationship, stayed a while in India and moved thereafter to a third country because he got a great job opportunity. By that time no word to any of his friends or family members. I became pregnant and my then boyfriend got the guts to tell his family about me and my belly after 5 months of increasingly insisting request from my side.

I've always thought the birth of their first grandchild would somehow help but it didn't bring us closer. After his birth, my partner went to India to clear the things up and almost came back without showing the picture of his new-born baby. That's how interested they were. Officially they didn't have anything against me or a white girl but our relationship would affect the chance of marrying of the younger sister in the family … and of course the shame afflicted by the neighbours if…. I've complied with full comprehension – and the least I wanted was to affect their and others life.

The topic became such a taboo that our son actually had never heard of his grandparents or from the place his father grew up. My partner also refrained all my moves towards the Indian culture: I had stopped studying hindi, meeting NRIs, going yearly to India, visiting the mandir like I used to do even before meeting him!

Two years had passed and I still had never talked to them in person nor on the phone. So I took the initiative and the organisatory responsability of inviting his younger siblings to our home. Though some obvious difficulties at start ("would you had married an Indian housewife, you wouldn't have to do anything at home bhai"), I felt we had bounded in a way so that we could continue building on – for the sake of our son.

Inbetween we got married without anyone by our side as I had given up the hope of some kind of family reunion. I had to change job in order to keep our small family going, backing my husband's professional priorities. Another couple of yrs passed, so I suggested a get-to-know-each-other-vacation for everyone in a nice and neutral location in India. Every party had previously agreed to meet so I finalized all the travelling details. Once we got there, they didn't seem to be ready to spend more than a couple of days with us – and the father had some work to do so he simply didn't show up. AND the mother did not know her grandson's name! My husband did not behave as I expected him: to be a kind of mediator, linguistically, culturally, a unifier…

That's when the strong disagreements started … ASA we got home and on our feet as my husband+son had been ill, they requested him to travel back to India immediately to meet a potential groom for his sis. The conflict btw us sharpened and I felt I had to set some limits to preserve our family life here. I also then realised that I had compromised way too much – on many respects – in this relationship and that I was really getting depressed as a consequence of many years with intense stress. I had also lost my father no long after the birth of our son. Somehow we had a deal and were ready to give our relationship a new start where there should be a distinct plan in starting/maintaining regular communication with my in-laws for our son's sake, and for us to refocus on other more classic couple issues.

The opposite then happened – never heard of them again directly. I could then just guess from my husband's face that they had been blackmailing him to again make the trip to India. He even told them that we were quarrelling because of them – to which they regained in insistance. So at the most inconvenient moment for us – both emotionnaly and practically, my husband left his job and his fam. responsabilities a couple of days ago to represent the authority figure in some mariage negociations. It implies of course that no word will be told about his real situation here and that the deal will last forever as the lies are getting bigger and bigger. I see here that there was a crossroad: either take this opportunity of a marriage in the family to straighten things up, or dig even deeper in hypocricy. And he chose the latter…

I would have never talked in such words of bitterness a couple of months ago. But our relationship has deteriorated so much. We have just been yelling at each other before his departure. I don't want to be anywhere near him anymore. I feel too many promises have been broken from his side. And I'm terrified at the idea of a break-up and its effects on our child's life.

Videshi, I am sorry to hear your plight. It does sound complicated. However, the basic premise does not seem to have changed.

You mention very early on that the family has nothing against you but think this will impact the chances of getting their daughter married.

In effect your husband will lie about his circumstance to get his younger sister married.

This is similar to the deception advised by members of this forum in the 'Family Divorce' thread.

The overall point being that once the marriage is in place, this 'shameful' circumstance can be explained away.

In any case, my advice is to support your husband through what seems to be the gating event in his family equation. My guess is that once the daughter of the family is married away, you and your husband can act on the deal you made to strengthen relationships with his parents.

Also, do understand that there are a score of people that want 'less' involvement from their in-laws who are pushy and meddlesome and would love to trade places with you!