14 Settled Relationship Marriage Stories Remix

5.

“My parents were pressuring me to get married (Indian values) since I was 21. I moved out of the house so I didn’t have to hear about it from my mother, who’d badger me about it every chance she got. I had a friend who came to the US for his masters. He was just a friend, someone who listened whenever I talked — nothing more and nothing less. I was turning 25, and the pressure (along with taunts from my mother) were getting increasingly unbearable. He came to visit his parents and possibly find a girl (his parents thought it was time for him to get married, as he finished his studies and got a stable job in the US). He told me he wanted to marry me — at first I was shocked and said no. But after much convincing from my friends (who were all married), I said yes. I didn’t feel a thing for him except that I loved him as a friend and as human being. I respected him a lot, but I could never develop romantic feelings for him.”

“I always questioned those feelings within myself. I didn’t have anyone who I could talk to about it — I stayed in that marriage for 10 years. Thankfully we never had kids. When I started working, I met so many different people, and it was then I realized that it was not fair on my part to keep us tied down to each other. 

I never thought I wanted kids, but it turned out I never wanted them with him. A small part of me always knew that I didn’t want to be with him, that I didn’t love him that way, and was always afraid that if I did have kids with him, I probably would’ve never left.

When I brought up separation, he was devastated. I told him that we both deserved a chance to be with someone we loved. It’s been almost eight years since we ended it, and I am still struggling to find ‘the one.’ He, on the other hand, is married now and has kids.”

—dreamzhigh