Arranged marriage advice

Hi, I'm really looking for some objective and possibly experienced opinions here. My boyfriend recently left me for an arranged marriage. He is a Muslim, they are a very traditional family living overseas while he is here. Things are over and done, he's getting married in a few days, and will be back in the country in about a month.

Neither of us wanted our relationship to end - it was unexpected on his part and even more so on mine - and we kept seeing each other right up until he left. And he's made it pretty clear that he still wants to be friends when he comes back.

But I have no idea what to do. Thinking about him and her makes me so miserable. And he does like her. But he's a really awesome person and I want him in my life, but I just don't know if it's going to work, and if it's not, is it really going to be worth making the effort?

Please help

This is pretty unfortunate because it looks like you are the victim of culture and there isn't much you can do about it. He did go through with the marriage so he's made his choice. That is something you'll have to eventually learn to accept.

I don't know that you'll be able to stand seeing him so soon after the relationship ends. You may need a period where you don't have any contact so you can move on with your life and heal. If you both start talking right after he gets back either you are going to get hurt when he rejects you, or he's going to start cheating on his brand new wife. Neither is a good situation.

Maybe after some time passes and you start seeing someone else you could try being friends again.

This is pretty unfortunate because it looks like you are the victim of culture and thre isn't much you can do about it. He did go through with the marriage so he's made his choice. That is something you'll have to eventually learn to accept.

I entirely agree with Avman.

There is no future in it, Erin. If he had truly loved you he would have remained with you. Indeed it was wrong of him to get involved with you in the firt instance, because he knew full well what the demands of his culture would be and that he would be making an arranged marriage.

I think we had a thread elsewhere on the board about this same dilemma. A U.K. girl and a Muslim man.

H

I suppose I have to be honest and tell you that yes, he could take you as a second wife, (always assuming his family would not mind). But, but, I don't think you would like that option, would you.

H

Hi, I'm really looking for some objective and possibly experienced opinions here. My boyfriend recently left me for an arranged marriage. He is a Muslim, they are a very traditional family living overseas while he is here. Things are over and done, he's getting married in a few days, and will be back in the country in about a month.

 

Please help

 

If he would have loved you enough, he would have had the courage to make you as a wife rather than take another person as a wife out of family pressure. Believe me, I am from a culture where arranged marriage THE marriage process and still it doesn't make it right for the guy to leave a gf. If he knew his family was so conservative he better should have kept his love to himself. I have been dumped b a guy like that, and I don't think it is a good idea for you to stay together unless, you don't like being the second wifey. I hate people who take culture as the excuse to break up. If culture was the problem, they were sleeping all these time. Didn't thy know culture is going to be problem before hand?

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I keep trying to tell myself this stuff all the time, but it's good to hear it from other people.

Also, if anyone has a link to the other thread (UK girl, Muslim man), please post it if you can, I couldn't find it.

Erin:

You will find it under "Relationship Conflicts" and the poster is "Londoner". The thread was in fact closed, but you can nonetheless view the posts.

BTW I agree with the other posters. He should not have led you on, knowing full well where your relationship was going to end. It was not a nice thing to do.

H

Fortunately for you now you can concentrate on yourself and try to live your life the way you want to. Unfortunate for you, you've been hurt and it takes time to get over someone you care about. Take this time to concentrate on yourself and worry about you. From what I gather you both knew about the arranged marriage, especially since they don't just happen over night. It is his fault for leading you on and yours for continuing to be with this person knowing that he is going to marry someone else. It's not like one day he just woke up and said "Okay, I'm going to marry her". You even knew he liked her.

Someone above suggested being a second wife, I would never ever condone or support that. Personally I think that is a major sign of disrespect for yourself and your own morals. It is also not allowed in your country of residence and it is against the law to be married to two people, legally. I think you can be married in the mosque by an Imam, but it wouldn't be a real legal marriage outside the Islamic faith. Why would you want to be someones second choice anyway?

It will be hard, but you can and will move on. Don't contact him and think of yourself from now on. He decided he wanted to go through with it and it was his decision. If he can leave you and marry someone else, that alone proves he did not love you like you probably deserve. You can't be friends with this person, because you still care about him. I also don't know why you would want to be friends with someone who left you for another person. That alone should make you not want to be friends with him.

Do what is best for you. Not him.

Honey, I'm really sorry but he made his choice. In many cultures, arranged marriages are the norm, and 'love' takes a back seat to tradition.

What you need to do is to keep your eye on your own goals and what is important to you. Do you want to be a wife and mother? Do you want your own man who isn't married to someone else?

Some choices preclude others. You have to be careful, because if he can get you to still see him, he will have his wife, have satisfied his family and cultural traditions, AND he gets to have you on the side still loving him and providing him with attention and sexual variety.

But what do you get out of it? Pining for another woman's husband, for a guy who chose to deprive you of the opportunity to be his wife and family and the mother of his children.

So his choice precludes your own happiness, but he may be thinking he stills gets EVERYTHING he wants if you keep seeing him, but at the expense of you getting what you want. This is a very selfish choice on his part, and he has a right to make it, but still seeing you once he made that choice shows he's willing to let you be deprived of what you need in order for him to get everything he wants.

So recognize that his desire to keep you around is very selfish and counter to your own happiness and future goals like being a wife and mother. There's just nothing in your continuing to see him once he comes back, other than heartache and deprivation.

Perhaps you can be friends in the distant future once you've found someone else, BUT you should only be friends with him and his wife, as a couple. Otherwise you are betraying your own needs and interfering with their marriage.

Sadly, the damage is already done.. you can't undo this, and seeing him will just prolong the inevitable, that you have to let go and find another partner who does want to be with you and have a real future with you as his partner. At best all you can be here is the other woman or a mistress.

i'm surprised you're not more angry. i sure as heck would be angry!!!! Why did he not stand up to his family and tell them he would not consent to the arranged marriage? would they have disowned him?

Look, like avman said, i think it's totally inappropriate for you to go back to being his friend as soon as he gets back. he made his choice. he chose to marry another woman. you cannot just stay in his life like that. imagine you just got married, and your new husband goes right back to talking to/hanging out with his last gf. no way!!!! staying friends with him, especially so soon, is just no good. i don't know, maybe 5 years from now you can be friends but now i think it is inappropriate, not good for his marriage, not fair to his new wife, not fair to you. if he chose someone else, he needs to deal with the consequences.

why aren't you angry at him!? i hope the anger comes soon. i would be livid.

Well, he was very depressed for a few months, but I thought it was about his job. Then he just up and says "I'm getting married". And I stuck around because I thought he needed me, and well, I needed him. It wasn't until the week before he left that I found out he'd actually been talking to her and liked her.

He did actually ask me if I wanted to keep sleeping with him when he came back. I was shocked, I didn't think he was that sort of person, and it made me wonder if he was willing to cheat on his wife, what had stopped him cheating on me when we were together?

I have no idea why I'm not angry at him. I have a hard time blaming him, and I wish I could because this might be easier. But a lot of the time I'm just angry at myself for being so foolish about this whole thing. I always keep in mind that we're all responsible for our own actions and choices. I knew as soon as he told me that I should have stopped seeing him then, and it was my decision to keep seeing him afterwards. I really regret it now though.

He did actually ask me if I wanted to keep sleeping with him when he came back. I was shocked, I didn't think he was that sort of person, and it made me wonder if he was willing to cheat on his wife, what had stopped him cheating on me when we were together?

Yeah see this is exactly what I was worried about. It sounds like he has no qualms about being with both you and her. So regardless of the arranged marriage issue, he's not what I would exactly call a catch.

I'd really advise you to cut this guy loose. Find someone else much better who is devoted only to you.

ew, what a scuzball!!! you know what, i think you should just stop talking to him now. that is gross that he has 2 women he allegedly likes/loves and is willing to cheat on both of them with each other. ick. forget that. forget him.

OK, so obviously he doesn't want to be 'just friends', he wants to have you as his mistress. That's not about being 'friends'...

If you see him, he will try to talk you into it... and how terrible that he wants to relegate you to the role of other woman while he gets to have his cake and eat it too...

Just drop this guy entirely... he's NOT a good friend if he is proposing such a scenario to you... he made his choice, and HE should pay for the consequences of that choice, not you!

You can do much better than that. Be glad to know how he is and move on with your life.

yeah, a true 'friend' would never ask you to degrade yourself by having an affair with a married man. a real friend would want you to be in a serious, loving relationship. not the side dish or the other woman.

Someone above suggested being a second wife

Petite:

I never suggested ANYTHING of the SORT. This is what I wrote.

I suppose I have to be honest and tell you that yes, he could take you as a second wife, (always assuming his family would not mind). But, but, I don't think you would like that option, would you?.

H

Hello Erin:

But a lot of the time I'm just angry at myself for being so foolish about this whole thing. I always keep in mind that we're all responsible for our own actions and choices. I knew as soon as he told me that I should have stopped seeing him then, and it was my decision to keep seeing him afterwards

We are indeed responsible for our own choices and decisions. You seem a level-headed woman, and not given to hysterics, and I think you will get through this.

The way things are and are done in certain cultures, and the way we westerners THINK they should be, are, well, very much at odds. It doesn't mean the folks in those different cultures are "bad".

H

Certainly, as I have repeated above in another post, he should not have led you on, knowing that he was at the end going to stick to the rules of his culture and religion.

But you are honest, and recognise your own part in all this:

But a lot of the time I'm just angry at myself for being so foolish about this whole thing. I always keep in mind that we're all responsible for our own actions and choices. I knew as soon as he told me that I should have stopped seeing him then, and it was my decision to keep seeing him afterwards

Just for the record. And again I am NOT saying this is what Erin should do.

Ministers have decided that, even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, polygamous marriages can be recognised formally by the state - provided they took place overseas, in countries where they are legal.

 

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife.

 

Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.

link removed

More:

Under Muslim law a man is allowed up to four wives but he must be able to show that he can treat each woman equally and provide a separate home for each one. At present it's believed there are 300 polygamous families living in the UK.

 

If polygamous marriages are recognised under British law, polyandry – where women can have more than one husband – could also become law under our equal rights legislation.

 

Nushaba Hussein, chair of the Human Rights Action Committee of the Muslim Parliament says recognising polygamy would give legal recourse to women should their husband die intestate or if the relationship fails

link removed

Lets not turn this into a religious debate please.

Definitely not, Avman.

Just that it is important to point out that cultures are different (not necessarily "bad"). It is how they are. I am not interested in religion or religious debate.

Western culture is not too perfect either LOL

H

To me, I don't even see the cultural significance. The bottom line is that he is getting married to someone else. He made his choice so now he has to deal with the consequences.

She can't ignore that fact that he had the ability to choose any woman on the planet to marry first, and he chose someone else, not her.

So he obviously places his own family's feelings about marriage as more important than her own feelings about wanting to be his partner. What kind of husband would that make for her? A bad one in my book, that he has already shown her her feelings don't matter or are less important than those of his parents. And he is a willing participant in that marriage, even admits he likes his wife!

Every one of those is a slap in her face, and she can't ignore it. This man was just using her as a temporary partner until he reached a point where his family insisted he marry (or he wanted to marry), and then he married someone else. He's proven very clearly that her feelings or life don't matter to him, but his own and his family's feelings do matter. That makes her a second class citizen from the get go, and who needs that kind of bad treatment?

She needs a man who loves her and is willing to honor her by marrying her, not relegate her to 'mistress' status because his parents choose someone else for him.

Someone above suggested being a second wife

 

Petite:

 

I never suggested ANYTHING of the SORT. This is what I wrote.

 

 

 

H

I wasn't in the mood for quoting or checking the user-names, I meant no harm, but simply thought it was inappropriate, because it did come of as a suggestions (in my opinion). Again, if I offended you, It wasn't my intention.

On a side note, Polygamous marriages are prohibited in Australia, as is the practice of polygamy in the country. However, much like the situation in the United Kingdom, polygamous marriages conducted in jurisdictions that legally recognize and perform such unions may be valid in Australia. However, my whole point was that it couldn't be done in Australia and that if it was to be done by an Imam in Australia, it wouldn't be legal. In Australia I am sure there are Imams that do perform such ceremonies, but they are rare, because they are illegal.

Anyway, lets not turn this into what is right and what is wrong. Everyone has their own beliefs.

As for the OP, the last bit of advice lavenderdove gave you is great, read it and re-read it, because if you do listen to what she says it will help you.