I almost married into a family that looked modern, progressive and perfect on paper. The reality was completely different. 🚩
I’m writing this because I wish someone had written something like this before I entered my arranged marriage setup.
This isn’t a post to destroy anyone’s reputation or identify the family. It is an awareness post because I genuinely believe that families like this still exist, and sometimes they are very good at hiding behind a polished, modern image.
I met this family through an arranged marriage setup. I’m Jain, and they were also a Jain family living in Dubai. When the biodatas were exchanged, everything looked great. Educated family, successful business, Dubai, nice pictures, modern lifestyle. Nothing immediately screamed “toxic.”
In fact, quite the opposite.
They were extremely welcoming in the beginning.
And that is exactly what made it difficult to recognize what was happening.
From the outside, you would probably look at their family pictures and think, “What a modern, happy, progressive family.”
The reality behind closed doors was very different.
It slowly started feeling like one of those Ekta Kapoor serials where everything looks perfect in the first few episodes and then suddenly you realize everyone is controlling everyone. 😭
I come from a Digambar Jain family, but religion was never imposed on me. My parents gave me the freedom to understand Jainism at my own pace and practice it according to my own spiritual beliefs. We eat onion, garlic and potatoes at home. There was never this constant policing of what I could or couldn’t eat.
The family I was marrying into was also Digambar Jain and Gujarati-speaking. At home, they followed a strict Jain diet. Outside the house, they were more flexible.
The interesting part was that the mother was extremely religious, while the rest of the family wasn’t nearly as religious in the same way.
But religion became one of the ways in which control was gradually introduced.
Looking back, there were red flags from the very beginning that I ignored because I genuinely wanted to give the relationship a fair chance.
Here are some of them.
🚩 1. “I only want to meet you. No one else.”
The guy’s mother came from Dubai to India to meet me.
She specifically insisted that she wanted to meet only me and nobody else from my family.
I agreed and met her alone.
At the time, I thought maybe she just wanted some one-on-one time with me.
Looking back, I wonder if it was actually about establishing the dynamic from the beginning: she was going to assess me, not get to know me.
🚩 2. She asked me to remove my sandals to check my height.
During that meeting, she asked me to remove my sandals because she wanted to confirm my actual height.
I remember feeling extremely uncomfortable.
But I did it.
At the time, I told myself, “Maybe this is just an awkward arranged-marriage thing.”
It wasn’t the incident itself that mattered as much as the mindset behind it.
I was already being evaluated like a candidate.
🚩 3. We were invited to Dubai, but again, only under their terms.
They invited my parents and me to Dubai.
But they specifically said they only wanted to meet us and didn’t want other relatives to come.
At that point, I still hadn’t met the guy in person.
We had barely spoken and had only had one video call.
Yet somehow we were already travelling internationally to meet his family.
Again, I ignored the discomfort.
I thought maybe this was just how their family operated.
The guy himself was also extremely inconsistent in communication.
He would deliberately take a long time to reply, and I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“Maybe he’s busy.”
“Maybe he’s awkward.”
“Maybe this is just how arranged marriages work.”
Looking back, I realize I was constantly making excuses for behavior that made me uncomfortable.
🚩 4. Conditions started appearing once the relationship became serious.
This is where things really started changing.
His mother began giving me conditions.
Some of them, on the surface, sounded reasonable.
I had to learn Gujarati.
Okay. I’m not Gujarati-speaking, but I thought, “Why not? I can learn.”
I had to learn certain Jain prayers and rituals.
Again, I didn’t see an issue with learning more about my own religion.
But then came something called PIYAS.
This was my “something is seriously wrong here” moment.
I was expected to go to a naturopathy centre that his mother strongly believed in.
I was uncomfortable with it, but I still went.
I even went with my father.
I didn’t personally experience any benefit from the treatment, and I ended up getting rashes from the oil therapy because it didn’t suit my skin.
But the bigger issue wasn’t the centre itself.
It was the expectation that I should comply with things that I wasn’t comfortable with simply because his family believed they were right for me.
And that pattern kept repeating.
What I initially thought were small compromises slowly became a system.
A system where I was expected to adjust.
To learn.
To change.
To prove myself.
To fit into their definition of what a “good wife” should be.
And whenever I felt uncomfortable, somehow I became the problem.
The family dynamic was extremely hierarchical.
His mother controlled a lot.
His father was very good at keeping score — remembering what they had done for you, what you hadn’t done, what you should be grateful for, what you supposedly owed them.
And the guy?
He was caught in the middle but ultimately always chose his parents.
He would sometimes understand my perspective privately, but when it came to actually standing up for me, he couldn’t.
Because challenging his parents came with consequences for him too.
And that taught me something very important:
You cannot marry someone’s potential.
You cannot marry the version of someone that you hope will emerge once you’re married.
You have to look at who they are TODAY and, more importantly, how they behave when their family disagrees with you.
Because if someone cannot protect your dignity before marriage, marriage is unlikely to magically give them a backbone.
The most dangerous part of this entire experience was that nobody behaved horribly on day one.
It happened gradually.
A comment here.
A condition there.
A judgment.
A demand.
A guilt trip.
A “we are only saying this because we want to make you a better person.”
A “this is how our family does things.”
A “you need to adjust.”
And slowly, you start shrinking.
You start questioning yourself.
You start wondering whether you’re being unreasonable.
You start thinking maybe you’re the difficult one.
That’s how control works.
It doesn’t always arrive screaming.
Sometimes it arrives wearing a smile and saying, “We are only doing this because we love you.”
Eventually, the relationship became so unhealthy that I had to walk away.
And honestly?
I am incredibly grateful that I did.
I am grateful that we didn’t get married.
Because looking back, I can see that I would probably have spent years trying to earn approval from people who had already decided that I needed to change.
This experience taught me something I really wish more people understood about arranged marriages:
DON’T JUST ASSESS THE PERSON YOU ARE MARRYING.
ASSESS THE FAMILY DYNAMIC.
Ask yourself:
• How does the person behave when their parents disagree with them?
• Can they say no to their parents?
• Do they protect their partner when their family crosses a boundary?
• Are you being welcomed, or are you being evaluated?
• Are compromises mutual, or are you the only one expected to adjust?
• Are their “family values” actually values, or are they tools for control?
• Are you allowed to remain yourself after marriage?
• Do they respect your boundaries even when they don’t agree with them?
And most importantly:
🚩 Don’t ignore how your body feels around someone.
There were several moments when I felt an internal “NO” but convinced myself to continue because everything looked so good on paper.
The biodata looked good.
The family looked good.
The lifestyle looked good.
Dubai looked good.
The pictures looked good.
But a marriage isn’t a biodata.
And a family isn’t their Instagram pictures.
Sometimes the most important red flags are the ones you desperately want to explain away because you want the relationship to work.
I’m sharing this because I got out before it was too late.
There is more to this story — MANY more red flags and things that happened later — but this post is already long enough, so I’ll probably write a Part 2.
If you’re currently in an arranged marriage process and something feels wrong, please don’t silence that feeling just because everyone around you is saying, “But the family is so good.”
You are not marrying a family photograph.
You are marrying into a family system.
And make sure that system has room for YOU.