Chai is looking for chemistry, love and romance, but her Indian mother has a different idea, and feels responsible for finding her a husband. And Varsha Mathur, a dating and relationship coach, speaks with Juleyka about how to help parents understand what you want in romantic relationships.
Featured Expert:
Varsha is a dating & relationship coach and speaker. She is a graduate of Accomplishment Coaching which is accredited by the International Coach Federation and is considered internationally as the world’s finest coach training program. Clients (individuals and couples) work with her to find love with someone who clicks with them, have deeper relationships without pressures, and gain the power to make decisions that best serve their dreams. Varsha also runs a program for parents of adult Indian singles where she helps them “contribute to their [children’s] happiness, communicate effectively (...) and find their inner peace.” As a South Asian who has been through a divorce, dating in her 30’s and getting remarried, Varsha offers her personal stories and perspectives to her clients. Before coaching, Varsha practiced law and mediation and later owned and operated a healthcare management company. These professional transitions, along with her personal ones, have given her a perspective that differs from most lawyers, business owners and coaches. Learn more about her work and setup a discovery call with Varsha here.
If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to Dating While Undocumented and When They Want a Wedding and Grandchildren, But You're Not Ready.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody today, I'm speaking with Chai. For Indian parents, making sure she gets married is essential to how they see their role in her life. Her mom even signed her up for matrimonial match sites, but Chai has a very different idea about how and why she might get married. Let's get into it.
Chai: My name is Chaitanya Baalasubramanyam, I go by Chai. And in my family, we call my mom Amma and my dad Abba. I was born in Columbus, Ohio. They really raised me in a very traditional Hindu household. And they always drilled into me, "Just because you were born in America, it doesn't make you American. You're still Indian at heart. We don't want you being all corrupt, dating and doing all that stuff before marriage."
Funny enough, my mother, we're from a caste within Hinduism, it's called Brahmin. And we're considered the priestly cast so she wanted me to marry a guy that was part of this cast. And as the years have gone on, she's been opening her horizons because at this point she's like, "All right, the big 3-0 is coming up." She's really on the clock right now.
In Indian culture we have something called the matrimonial websites. It's kind of like a dating site that's arranged by your parents. My mom set up a profile for me. She scoped out a few candidates. I'm not going to lie, I didn't like 95% of them, but my mom is just ... Indian parents do a lot of this, emotional blackmail. "Oh, I raised you. I did so much for you. You can't even just go on one date for me." She used a little bit of that ... So I was like, "All right. I'll go on one date for you."
It was a complete bust. It's really interesting, it's something that's very prevalent across Indian culture. The reason why our parents really push, at least my parents really push me to get married, is because marriage is part of the graph of life. You need to do it. They don't see it as an optional thing, as something that you do because you happen to find somebody you fall in love with, it's a duty. And not only is it my duty, it's also their duty as parents to ensure that they find somebody for me.
Chai: So they take it upon themselves, "We're not doing our job if you don't get married. We can't rest, we can't enjoy our retirement years, we can't do anything until we complete this task." Part of me logically understands that this is my decision, this is only about me and my life. But then another part of me feels no, it's not, it affects them too so I need to take their thoughts into consideration.
I am currently actively dating and I use the dating apps and stuff for myself. But then my mom was like, "All right. Well, if you're using the dating apps, you have to also give the matrimonial sites a try." And I'm like, "Okay." I mean, "Fine, whatever. Fair enough." I'll be working. It's 2:00 PM. Got a meeting coming up in 15 minutes and I get a FaceTime call and I'm like, "Amma, what's going on?" And she’s like, "There are these five boys, well educated, from well-to-do families. Please just look at their pictures." I'm like, "All right, I got five minutes. Let's take a look."
The problem that ends up happening is I try to treat these matrimonial sites the same way I treat dating sites, where I'm like, "Hey, if you're cool, let's talk. And we'll meet up, we'll hang out. If things go well, we can date for a couple years." And a lot of the men that are on these sites are straight from India. They're just living here for grad school or they work here or something, but they're from India. There's a cultural gap where a lot of these guys are like, "All right, let's get that wedding started. Let's start planning." And I'm like, "I'm not ready for that." And if I complain to my mom about it, she's like, "Well, yeah, what are you going to do? Wait two years?" And I'm like, "That's exactly what I was trying to do."
She doesn't understand chemistry and ... For example, a guy could technically be into the same hobbies as you, which my mom finds on these profiles. "This guy likes hiking, just like you. You guys are meant to be." She sees all these things and she's like, "Oh my God. That's it." But what she doesn't understand is it's not just about the hobbies on paper. It's having this conversation and it organically flowing to where you feel like, "Man, this is a person that I could be good friends with. This is a person that I can lay down next to and just watch the stars and talk for five hours." That's a concept to my mom that's completely foreign to my mom.
What I have to do is explain to her. If I talk to someone she chooses and I reject him, and she's usually very dejected about it. She's like, "Again? You don't like this guy, what's wrong with him?" I'm showing her my texts, "Okay, do you see how awkward he sounds? Do you see how he's interviewing me? He's not having a conversation. He's just asking me questions like he doesn't have anything to say." And then she's like, "Oh, that'll come after marriage. Who cares?"
So sometimes it's not even so much that there's a communication gap, it's a lack of understanding. A lack of understanding what it means to feel something for somebody, to have a spark, to have all those things. Those are the things that come with romance, that come with love, which is out of scope for a lot of my family members because of the fact that they've all had arranged marriages. And that's really the culture that they grew up in. She's like, "Girl, you're being way too picky."
Chai: And I think a lot of my pickiness comes from the fact that I am independent, and the fact that I support myself and I don't see marriage as an outlet to freedom. I don't see marriage as a way to be able to accomplish things. I see marriage as simply a companionship. By trying to teach my mother what I need in a partner I've been able to learn a lot about myself and what I need. Like, "See, this is what I like. This is what I like. And what you're showing me is not that." It's like, you remind yourself, "Hey, I'm not being picky. I'm not being difficult. I'm just looking for what's right for me." It's kind of funny, when you verbalize your truth, you're able to accept it more. It's like, "This is what it is." So yeah, that's what I've gotten out of this experience.
Lantigua: Chai's willingness to entertain her mother's suggestions made me want to give her a medal. Compared to talking to our parents about what we want in romantic relationships, time travel seems like a breeze. How can we help our parents understand what we're really looking for and why? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Varsha Mathur:
My name is Varsha Mathur. I am a dating and relationship coach. And I work with singles and couples to find love and keep love in that very ideal, healthy, no settling, no compromise kind of way. I am formally a lawyer and a mediator, but I find that this is more up my passion and love, and I get a lot more meaning out of this work.
Lantigua: When you listened to Chai's story, what did you hear?
Mathur: So much. She is exactly who all of my clients are. I work with women just like her, I work with parents like her parents. What I heard right off the bat is that there is just so much pressure from the family. It almost is like a barrier to inviting anyone that's going to be ideal and attractive and what she wants, because she's constantly being given all of these people who don't fit her, that are quite frankly the opposite of what she wants.
I think it's really important in the early stages of dating to be really clear about what you're going to do to put those pressures aside, so they don't actually keep affecting the next person that you're going to date or meet.
Lantigua: Let's talk about this family pressure. One of the things that she said, that I really appreciated, was, she said that her parents feel like they will not have completed their parental duty until she is married. Can you talk a little bit about where that comes from, why it's so important, and whether it's even possible for parents to find any compromise when they have taken this on as a solemn duty?
Mathur: Yeah, absolutely. So definitely comes from traditional Indian families, and I'm going to speak to Indians because that's my background and that's the background she noted. But also I find this to be the case in all families that come from very traditional religious, really old cultures as well. I see that in the Latin American community, Black church-going communities, I see it in Italian families. So it's this understanding that the way that you live your life in this sequential order is the thing that you do because it's tried and true, it's the path that's not the bumpy path. And you do it because, well, why wouldn't you because everyone else did it and it worked for them.
And in Indian culture as well, there's just all of this survival of the fittest mentality, you've got competition. And so there's this need to get it right. And parents feel pressure on themselves. And we can get into all sorts of layers of this, whether it's caste, whether it's education. But the thing for daters is that this is your parents' issue. I find that the work in actually separating yourself from what your parents' needs are, is really important because otherwise all you're doing is carrying the burdens of your family on your shoulders, and it's keeping you from living your own life as you want to live.
And so it's going to be different for everyone on how they recognize this and how they choose to put it aside. But it is essentially going to make you happier when you realize that you can't make everyone happy.
Lantigua: I'm going to push back on that a little bit.
Mathur: Yeah, do it.
Lantigua: Because, in essence you want someone like Chai to be like, "Mom, that sounds like it's your problem." And that's just not going to work.
Mathur: No, no, no, no. What I hear in what you just said is the extreme opposite end of it.
Lantigua: Okay.
Mathur: And what I'm saying is that choosing to not carry the burdens does not have to equal dismissing your family. It really is about cultivating your experience, enrolling your family. And it's going to be different for everyone, because not everyone's parents are going to be open to just the typical way of having these conversations. But disrespecting or dismissing your culture does not have to be the way to feeling free and independent yourself.
Mathur: That's where discovering: “Who do you want to be? What do you want your experience of dating and your life to be? What do you want your experience of your relationship to your parents to be?” And then go from there. Because what I'm finding, there's a lot of just tug-of-war going on and not a lot of meeting of the minds. They said that saying, agree to disagree. Well, that's okay. And there's a lot of ways to do that respectfully by respecting them and respecting yourself.
Lantigua: I think that Chai has been really earnest about trying to compromise with her mom. She does go on some of these arranged dates that her mom wants to send her on and she does bring back feedback. And she does try to explain why that particular person was not a good match for her. But that seems like a bandaid, because ultimately her mother's goal of getting her married hasn't changed, hasn't wavered.
Mathur: When Chai is interacting with her mom and when her mom is interacting with her, in my opinion, so far what I've heard is that there's no willingness to work together on understanding what it is that the parent is actually saying, or that the child is actually saying, adult child granted. But yeah, so it's like, what I often suggest is to educate one another on why you want those things for them. Because there might be a little bit of assumptions going on. Chai I might think her mom wants this because this, this and this, one, two and three. And the mom thinks Chai wants it because of three, four, five, she's watched too much Bollywood, whatever it is.
And that's usually not actually the case. And so what I offer parents is actually sit your child down and explain to them why it's worked for you the way that you did it. Because they actually jump over the stories about, "Hey, your dad and I had intimate moments sometimes when we met at first. We actually struggled financially, and these are the ways that we learned to get along together, even though we hadn't met before." And the same thing goes for Chai. She can actually sit them down and say, "This is what it means to date on an app. And when I say I'm going out, it is not like an arranged marriage, sitting together and going out." And I think there's a huge gap in just understanding some of the definitions, stories and backgrounds. And there's just a lot of this surface conversation.
Lantigua: Okay. So talk to the parents. Tell me what you say to your clients when you are trying to get them to shift their perspective on this.
Mathur: Well, I can't get them to shift their perspective. There really has to be a willingness to look at what they're doing and be willing to see it a different way. Just like it is with the kids. The parents are asking them to see it a different way, parents have to be willing to see it a different way as well. And if there is a willingness, then we can have a conversation around trusting and loving your children. Because at the end of the day, everything they're doing is almost a convincing game, an approving game. Because what's happening is that they are doing all the things they think are going to show their kids they love them, but they're not actually trusting and loving in the way that the kids need to be trusted and loved.
Mathur: What I really suggest to parents is to take a look at what is it that you really want for them, and how is it even possible that they could have that outside of the vision that you thought they would have it in. And to just experiment with what life could look like outside of the way you know it to be.
Lantigua: All right. My final question to you is a little bit broader. I'm also a first gen. I don't come from a culture where arranged marriages are common. But one of the things that I hear a lot when I talk to first-gens on the show is that they experience, like me, a lot of parenting that was born in fear. Our parents come from other places, from other countries, from other cultures, and there are so many unknowns and so many variables, that so much of what they inculcate in us comes from their fears about what could happen to us. Can you talk a little bit about how fear shows up when it comes to marriage and dating, and the context of these two generations?
Mathur: The fear itself with the parents, for example, is really stemming from ... I hate to say it this way, but I don't know if it's the right terminology, but survival of the fittest. Immigrant parents were kicking butt, showing up every day to get where they are today, and that is no small feat. And the fear that their children then will not get more or better than what they had, is hard. It's hard to think about that.
And it's also troubling because as the world changes, it's yet another thing that they need to learn. You come from this culture, you learn all these new things, you make something of yourself. And now 20, 30 years have passed and the culture is totally different again, so now we have to learn yet another new culture. That next level of uncertainty is really hard to be with. Because you are thinking, "Oh, my kid was going to get married and have kids. And I was going to retire and, done. And now my kid's 35 and there are no grandkids. What went wrong?"
And that's okay, that's normal. And so what I often say is that, first of all, let's acknowledge ourselves as parents, as families, for how far you've come. Too often the next, the next, the next thing that is supposed to be achieved or accomplished is the focus instead of celebrating where you are. Immigrant families have achieved a ridiculous amount. And I know I sound like a broken record and everybody ... Whatever, it's never going to be enough to say that.
And then the other thing is to allow the fear. Because when you are so driven, when you're a doer, you're an immigrant, hard-working person and you've raised your children to be the same, the feelings almost seem like they weigh you down. But it is a counterintuitive thing to actually allow yourself to be scared, to actually be okay with the emotion that comes with uncertainty. It's totally, totally okay for you to be like, "I don't know what's going on with my child, with my future, with their future."
And then, really understanding that at the core of the issue everybody wants the same thing. And this is where the work comes in, is to actually put down these automatic behaviors of go, go, go, fight, fight, fight, climb the ladder, and touch down to love, trust belief, possibilities for your family in a different way, and restructuring that picture.
Lantigua: I love that. That was such a great note to end on. Thank you so much.
Mathur: Oh, I'm so glad.
Lantigua: All right, let's recap what we learn from Varsha:
Release the burden. Separate yourself from your parents' needs, respectfully. You don't need to reject your background or your culture to address your needs, to express them and to have them met.
Spell things out, avoid making assumptions. Just explain the words that you're using, the terminology. Share specific stories to illustrate your points, and speak clearly and with confidence about why things are important to you. Then ask your loved ones to do this same.
And remember, pause to celebrate. Share a moment with your loved ones, where you simply take stock and celebrate just how much you and your family have already achieved.
Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to Mamí and Papí About Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer. Jen Chien is our executive editor. Jimmy Gutierrez is our managing editor. I'm the creator, Juleyka Lantigua.
On Twitter and Instagram we're at talktomamipapi. Please follow us and rate us on Apple podcast, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye everybody, same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Arranged Marriage, No Thanks Mom.”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything,
LWC Studios., September 27, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.