A friend is dating an Indian Man. A woman from LA who has become a New Yorker. Vibrant, exciting, attractive, smart, good looking...and the list goes on. Did I mention successful? Everything that we typically qualify as "potential" in a match.
And she is failing the test when it comes to understanding what is happening with the man she is trying to date.
For starters, she rarely seems him. Not surprising. He grew up in India. His parents most likely have an arranged marriage. What does this translate to? A man who is accustom to the idea of meeting someone briefly and then deciding ah well, this is a match or its not. And also a man who is used to the idea of MANY, MANY matches being available based on what I know of his background.
This man, whom I have never met, has expressed discomfort in receiving text messages that are intimate.
"He never responds" she said. "He doesn't feel comfortable.
I change the subject, knowing that people in India displaying public affection are shunned and its considered inappropriate and not tolerated. Just last year Richard Gere (yes you can click here to see the kiss) was all over the press when he jokingly kissed an actress at a fund-raiser. And just to be clear the press was covering the BURNING OF PICTURES OF THE ACTRESS that was kissed on the cheek.
And we are back again to the same topic.
"He wants me to meet his friends who are a love match" she says this afternoon.
"Is she white" I wondered aloud?
"No. But he turned down a dowry of a million to be with her."
This conversation got me thinking about a "love match" and what that really means to an Indian who grew up in India.
Does it mean LOVE and PASSION in the way that an American thinks about a "love match?"
Rapaille has coded the idea of LOVE in American to mean "False Expectations" "an exciting dream that rarely reaches fulfillment."
What he means is our ideas of love, like the rest of American culture are juvenile, filled with fantasy around perfection that is most likely unattainable. We are doomed to fail. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment. Mr or Ms Right is expected to fill every single need ....leading to us falling hard with over 50% of our marriages ending in divorce.
With this in mind, we must be careful on how we approach the idea of a love match in the Indian context. The idea that you are struck with love, literally, like the incident in the Godfather where the son (Michael) is spell bound by a woman he sees across the field who later of course dies through bullets in a gang war, is not really the best way to approach understanding the differences between a arranged marriage and a love match.
Rather, its much more likely that an India runs into someone that was not purposefully matched by their parents. I am using the word purposefully on purpose, excuse the pun. Instead of being arranged to be linked with someone from the same social group that has the same values and experiences, they meet someone that is deemed by them to be a good match on their own. Does this go over well with Indian parents? Everyone is different and it really doesn't matter for this discussion. What is more important is the context in which the Indian is looking. It is much different than our set of glasses.
Arranged marriages LAST. Presumably because they are built on a common foundation inside a society with little interest for pursuing passion who's flame inevitably dies out. It is with this same point of reference that Indians seek out future partners. The idea of a "love match" may not really mean love in the same way we use it. It may mean "not arranged" depending on the situation. Its also very important to remember that most "love matches" happen inside social contexts that parents have constructed such as universities they send their children to in the US which are likely chosen based on experiences inside their community. Thus the word purposefully used above.
So. Don't set expectations so high for the LOVE in "love match." And don't send your new Indian boyfriend sexy text messages cause that's just embarrassing.
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