The “D” Word

Re:sajal#177

Men who hit women are the scum of the earth, real sadistic vermin who should be in jail. They are basically cowards with low self-esteem, who cannot succeed in the outside world. Hence they take out their frustration on women, whom they consider to be weaker. I hope you filed criminal charges and got your ex arrested. My sympathies with you. Hope you can pull yourself together.

As far as your friend is concerned who got her sister hitched to your ex, she must be insane. She has single handedly ruined her sister`s life by pushing her into this living hell. Jeez, what is this world coming to?

Aisha and Farzana !

I applaud you for sharing your life with us.

Farzana,

I have just disclosed my life history on chowk, but I am still perplexed as to what women are in our society. Our parents raise us with dignity and respect and then our husbands take it all away so easily and make us feel worthless. This society tells you to suffer in silence and looks down upon you if u decide to stand up to it. I recently took divorce from my ex too and like you I am finally free. I may not have the married word next to me but i do have my respect with me.
It takes courage to do that and believe me I know and I applaud you for standing up for your rights.
sincerely
sajal

I just want to say to the women :

If you want to change your life you have to take a step to change it. I am new to this site and I don’t know if I am sharing my thoughts appropriately but I do know I speak with sincerity.
I got divorced last year after a long 8 yr marriage . I was unhappy and miserable but didn’t show it because of course I had to suffer in silence as I was brought up to understand divorce was the that should never be in my dictionary. So there goes long, miserable years of my life trying to salvage a failing marriage for the sake of people and society. Then one day when my ex hit me infront of my one and only daughter and I saw her cowering in the corner it hit me what was I trying to save? A daughter who will grow up with no respect and dignity so I moved out with the only clothes on my back. The funny thing is this is America but all the Pakistanis in my city boycotted me because for them physical abuse was not a good enough reason to divorce..not good enough and I was told I am being a selfish woman!!!
hell who were they to judge but they did but did I care, no! because it was a question of my life , my kid and my dignity. I stood up for my rights, fought the ex and the society with no money. I am living my life with peace and for the first time in 9 yrs I know my worth. I am an educated woman so why did I take his crap for all these years because I didn’t want to be called a divorced woman with a little girl as I know well the stigma attached to it.
The kicker is my best friend for 8 yrs in the US took his side and for the life of me I would not understand why as she knew about everything and he even told her yes he was guilty of the above crimes. So 3 months after my divorce my ex tells me well I am getting married to your supposed best friend`s younger sister. and lo and behold! here was the missing link and why ? because of the green card I gave him!!!
she thought her sister would come to the US so even though she knew everything they still married her sister why because she has 6 unmarried sisters in Pakistan and they belong to a lower middle class family.
I wonder after this true life episode what are the women really worth in our society?

Re: # 177

Sajal: I am glad that you are out of the messy relationship. Just to let you know the Working Mother of the Year`s award was granted to a Pakistani American Scientist a few years back. Her story was published in all the leading magazines and she was interviewed on Good Morning America. Her husband walked out on her because she gave birth to a baby girl - he was a pakistani musalman as well. She is a Phd and has secured her own place in the corporate sector in America. By the way, her husband also came to the United States through her. She was a scholarship holder whereas that leech just tagged along. Most of my cousins(both male and female) and friends (female) are far happier in their relationships with people outside of their culture. The ones who have opted for men from the Pakistani Culture are leading an average life with both average and below average chaps.

If a man is not capable of standing on his own two feet on his own then he is not worth a glance - that`s my mantra. Educated and accomplished women have to set some standards.

I have seen a few very close friends go through terrible time in their relationships(both pre and post). Both of them opted to dump the piece of garbage men in the picture and moved on. One went through an ugly divorce within the 1st year of her marraige and her parents asked her to get out of it within the first few months. She prolonged but eventually gave in. She got remarried in the following year and is quite happily married with a 3-4 year old son. She moved to the US and has been pursuing her higher studies and just started her new job. Interestingly, her first marriage was also to someone in the US who was psychologically unstable.

There are several pleasant cases of remarriage. In my opinion, that is only doable, if a woman knows her value and who she is, only then the husband values her identity. In many cases, where women were remarried, the guys were never married before. In my experience, all those marriages were love marriages. None of them were arranged. So, there are some positive episodes as well.

Re: # 187

Sajal and Farzana,

I agree with Zahra; thank you for participating in this discussion in the way you have. These are some ways that other women can see that the issues in marriage and divorce are not unique to individuals.

Zahra,

Yes. I could add some stories, but I dont feel comfortable doing so. Lets just say psychological issues and abuse are involved...and the abusive spouse sees/saw no problem whatsoever with his behavior.

hamidm mian #175: “........... what bothered me about your discussion with urstruly is that it was the usual muslim reaction of men throwing the book (books in urstruly`s case) at women ............ the women deserve better than dragging god into their very real issues ..........”

As I said earlier, there are certain people, at whom one should throw the book, and there are others at whom one should throw George Carlin. Urstruly in now (almost) convinced that much of his legitimacy of his arguments may be illegitimate. Malik99 may have had the complete foundations of his religious thought process shaken. In the end, both are at least, convinced that a majority of women aren’t going to hell. Which was my aim of the whole discussion, with them. Throwing George Carlin at them would be about as useless as throwing the book at you……………

“....... you are right about me - of course i am concerned about who my daughters end up marrying, even though it is a few years away ................ .. look, based on my personal experience i don`t have a lot of faith in the desi male”

I am not the dad of adult, or even teenager daughter(s), yet. So I don’t have first hand experience. But I have observed certain things:

I think there is an in-built desire amongst girls/women to get married. It is in their genes. Not just the desire of having a husband, but the desire of marriage and a wedding, itself. This is why, despite all the statistics you have presented, marriages continue to take place, in all societies, at all levels, amongst, ``liberated`` and, ``un-liberated`` women.

I can hardly remember anything about my wedding, valima etc. I don’t recall what I was wearing, what the arrangements were, who laughed and who cried. I can barely remember the name of the hotel, where it took place. Howeever, my wife can recall each and every detail: her clothes, who stitched them, the food, the arrangements, the jewelry, who attended and who did not. I gave away the suits I wore at my wedding years ago, when I went from a size 31 to a size 33. I don’t even remember the color. My wife has each and every single piece of her wedding clothes stored in safekeeping. Even though I could have worn the suits to work and she cannot wear the elaborate desi wedding dress anywhere. Yet we have three full suitcases of clothes occupying precious storage space, where I want to put my newly purchased bicycle. My dad told me he found my wedding ring in his bottom drawer. I had been searching for it for years. My wife has each and every piece of jewelry locked in a bank. She has left the car and house open on occasions, where we could have been robbed, but never once has the jewelry been left unlocked. This is despite the fact that the clothes and jewelry have never been worn in a decade. And the fact that we had an arranged marriage, and obviously didn’t know too much about each other, much less be in love, at the time of marriage.

Whenever new married desi couples come over, the first things they are shown are our wedding pictures; as much as I try hard to make sure they don’t see my pimple-faced early 20s, lack of color-coordinated appearance. And when we make a return visit, the wife on that side, bores us with her wedding pictures; as her husband and I try to sneak away to the local sports bar.

For a long time, I justified this by convincing myself that I am just a great catch and my wife thanks the Lord, once at Fajr and twice at Isha, for placing me in her life. However, over time, I have realized this may not be the case. It is not me, who is the important entity. It is the whole concept of marriage and a wedding that is important. I just happened to have been in the picture. It could well have been anyone else and the pictures would remain just as important.

Surprisingly, this is not only true for desi women. It is true for goris also. I have not seen any wedding magazine, specifically for men, in North America. Yet there are tons of them for women. Some which just have pictures of wedding dresses. Even Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts et al – women who could have an army of men – want to get married. They will get divorced and then immediately want a wedding again. And will talk about their newly minted husband (who makes 1/50th of their salary and maybe living off them) like a college girl talking about her first boyfriend…….again and again and again….

My wife’s old college roommates come and stay with us, now and then. One or two of them are unmarried gori ladies. They have been there and done that: slept with half the guys in San Francisco (and perhaps even some of the girls), partied till they dropped, drugs, climbing the corporate ladder (not to mention also climbing every good-looking guy they can get their hands on). Yet what is it that they admire about us desi simpletons: Not the new CD player that I keep trying to show them. Nor the fact that we can speak two languages better than them. But the fact that we are married, and still married. For all their careers and independence and, ``liberation,`` and what not, her marraige is one thing my wife holds over them as her trump card……..

So, while I try not to comment on family members of repliers on this site, I will make an exception in this case, since you sound like a genuinely concerned desi dad of two growing girls. Girls, at least in my opinion, have this in-built desire to get married, programmed into their DNA. I don’t know why. But it is there. Despite the fact that the dice is loaded against them. Girls want to fall in love in their sparkling wedding dress and be swept off their feet by their Prince Charming. Even the ones in an arranged marriage, who have never met their husbands-to-be, turn their pictures into an imaginary Prince Charming. This includes all the girls from Kasur to Hollywood.

So my guess is that while you are busy trying to run FBI and NAB checks on every boy/guy (desi or otherwise) your daughter(s) may look at. And while you are busy cautioning them about the abusive male (desi or otherwise), from whom they should never be afraid to get a divorce, they will busy thinking about their wedding dresses, their flower arrangements and the details of decorating their new house. And about their Prince Charming or Ranjha/Majnu-to-be, even if there is every indication in your evaluation that he won’t be one……..

This is why the institution of marriage chugs along, in every country, every religion and even amongst atheists, despite all its in-built problems………

Re: # 176

Romair,

Not all people WANT to get married...except for gays and lesbians-and you dont want them to, even tho their marriages are much more successful than het marriages in the Bible Belt. And even then, some of our gay brethren and sistren feel the same way many of us feel...if you want the benefits, you`ve got to play along...

What you might be confusing marriage with is a desire for a soul mate. As some of us are lucky to discover, your spouse may be it-even with years of work and communication-. Most of us find out that our spouses arent or may never be our soul mates....or worse, not even our friends.

Re: # 183

Saminasha: ``Romair,

Not all people WANT to get married...except for gays and lesbians-and you dont want them to, even tho their marriages are much more successful than het marriages in the Bible Belt.``

Yes, I am against gay marriage. Which is why I cannot declare myself to be secular. Actually I am not fully against gay marraige. I don`t mind my neighbors getting into a gay marriage. I just don`t want my son or daughter getting into one.

And I would have no idea what to do if I got an email from dad, that he had left mom, and had decided to move in with Butt Sahib, next door (not that I have anything against Butt Sahib.....he is a nice guy.........but still). Or if my wife, one day, told me that she was going to leave me for her ex-roomate with the big round........eyes.....Not only would she end up taking half my money, but more importantly how in the world would I explain to my friends back home that my wife left me for a girl...........

So I support gay marraige, as long as someone can gaurantee that my immediate family memebers will not get into one.......

Having said that, you may have just hit upon a unique solution for marriages in Pakistan; specifically for women. How about introducing gay marraige in Pakistan. If women are so fed up with Pakistani wolf males, yet still want a relationship and companionship, not to mention two sets of wedding dresses, why don`t they go for a gay marriage.

Look at the benefits: More jewelry, more dresses, someone to grow old with. Two careers. And no threat of violence, of any kind........

This is why I can`t stand the Pakistani secularists. They are on the forefront of Ahmedi rigths and Christain rights and what not. But tell them to protest for gay marriage, and they say its against their religion........

So this is my solution to all the husband-hunting ladies who are fed up with Pakistani guys.......Go for Pakistani girls..........

See if you discuss something long enough, usually a solution pops up......

Re: # 194

Romair:

gay marriages for women?

I have a feeling you were being facetious-but I am not. If a woman is gay and both she and her partner want to be married, why not indeed?

On the other hand, why cant more Pakistani men acknowlege and change their patriarchical roles within their marriages? There are many wonderful men of my grandfather`s, father`s, brother in law`s and brother`s generation who are the equals of their wives-so its not impossible, is it? When a male family member acts inappropriately towards his wife, to what extent do the menfolk support the wife and intervene? Reason and change the husband?

I know this is difficult in cases of emotional and physical abuse because the couple tends to isolate themselves, but the issues being brought up here arent the problem of just women. These are the problems of a community.

Finally, why not a temporary marriage as was/is custom in Iran?

Re: # 176

henry kessinger is the great saviour of all scoundrels for he coined the eternal ``declare victory and get out``.

romair mian,

....... you are right about me - of course i am concerned about who my daughters end up marrying, even though it is a few years away ...........

..... .. look, based on my personal experience i don`t have a lot of faith in the desi male - one out of four weddings i have attended in the last few years have either ended in divorce or i am constantly hearing horror stories about the girls being abused by their husbands and their families (and this is right here, in good old us of a and all the parties involved are ``educated`` professionals) ........ and being a man i fully agree with mrs hamidm`s keen observation that ``aadmi ki zaat ka koi bharosa nahin``..........

........... what bothered me about your discussion with urstruly is that it was the usual muslim reaction of men throwing the book (books in urstruly`s case) at women ............ the women deserve better than dragging god into their very real issues ..........

romair mian (and you can call me mian if you want to ),

...... marriage is a man-made institution and there is really nothing sacred about it ...... people in scandinavian countries and other parts of europe seem to be doing just fine - actually, since their crime rate is really low, the kids seem to be okay inspite of being bast@rds.........sure it is a traumatic experience for people when they split, but they do seem to get over it rather quickly, especially if young children are not involved ...............

....... in our grandfather`s generation women also put up with multiple wives (both my grandfathers had two apiece) but can you imagine your wife putting up with it ? .........

...........if you look into it, i am sure you will find that most pakistani women who initiate divorce are those who can take care of themselves financially and do not fear being ostracized by society ......... the rest of them don`t really have a choice and will suffer all kinds of abuse in silence ............ of course if you wait long enough things can change - after years and years of abusive behavior some men do have a change of heart or the mother-in-law simply passes away ............... but is it really worth the wait ?

hamdim mian/ZahraJ mian: I am going to go out on a limb on comment on something personal, which I think maybe on both of yours mind. Considering the fact that both of you have commented on areas, people or groups that I am a part of, in same manner, I think I can take such liberty, also...........

My guess is that both of you are in a stage where something related to women`s marriage is on your respective minds. This is why you are both quite defensive and just seeing the worse in desi males.

I would say, ZahraJ is in her twenties and single, and maybe looking for a husband. And she keeps getting disappointed with all the one`s that are prospects. In addition, she has heard horror stories about what desi husbands do to their wives. So she is letting loose on desi guys, for not coming up to her standard of being an eligible suitor, i.e she wants to (or may want to) get married, but she just wishes the desi males would fix themsleves up, so that they can be considered eligible......

Hamidm mian, I would say, has daughter(s) whom he knows are getting close to the marriage age. If not close, then at least where he (or they) has to start thinking about that. He, being a desi male, knows the thought process of desi males, and how they treat their wives. But now he is a dad. And he does not, obviously like all fathers, want his daughters to end up like that in a marriage where they are not treated well.

So he is now shifted from being a desi husband to being a desi dad. And wants to ensure that a mechanism is in place, where daughters can get out of a marriage quite comfortably if they have to. Hence he is pushing a mechanism in which divorce is normal, common and easy..........

I think, women, Western and Eastern, for whatever reason, despite all the marriage horror stories they discuss, do want to get married. I don`t know why. But they do. They will complain about men (desi or otherwise) but they want one as a husband. They just get frustrated when they cannot find the right one, or end up with the wrong one.

Men, on the other hand, are not as frustrated by not finding the right woman. Nor do they want to get married as much as women do. However, when the become dads of daughter, they become holier than the pope and start worrying about, ``the right guy,`` even more than their daughters do. This is specially true for desi men........

#170 Romair
Divorce is a psychologically traumatic experience besides death? Where are you getting that from? Losing a job is traumatic, living in the street is traumatic, falling ill is traumatic. How did you do your ranking?

Re: # 172

soysauce mian: ``Romair.......Divorce is a psychologically traumatic experience besides death? Where are you getting that from? Losing a job is traumatic, living in the street is traumatic, falling ill is traumatic. How did you do your ranking?``

This has been ranked by eminent psychologists (of which I am not one). Following is a ranking from the University of Texas Medical Branch website, which ranks the most stressful life events, based on a social readjustment scale, from most stressful to least. Following are the top ten:

``Holmes Social Readjustment Rating Scale

Rank Life Event LCU Value

1 Death of spouse 100
2 Divorce 73
3 Marital separation 65
4 Jail term 63
5 Death of close family member 63
6 Personal injury or illness 53
7 Marriage 50
8 Fired from job 47
9 Marital reconciliation 45
10 Retirement 45``

https://www.utmb.edu/psychology/holmes_social_readjustment_ratin.htm

As you can see, the top three are all related to marriage. An unwanted separation (death of a spouse) is the the most stressful. Followed by a voluntary divorce and separation. They are more stressful than going to jail or even death of some other family member. And mind you, this is for goras, whom everyone considers independent, liberated etc. For desis, it is bound to be higher.

Ironically, getting married is 7th most stressful. And marital reconciliaiton is 9th. 5 out of the top ten most stressful events are related to marriage!!

This is why I say, if you are not sure about getting married and/or are already planning to get a divorce, even before you have gotten married, then don`t get married to begin with. Not getting married would be better, for such a person, than getting married and then going through a divorce.....

Why is divorce any more shocking than breaking up with a bf/gf if there are no kids involved? Traditional marriage is a relatively recent idea that is falling by the wayside.