Alex was hard to convince when it came to marriage, i'm embarrassed to say. I realise now, if you have to convince someone to marry you, you probably shouldn't be getting married at all. But at the time, being naive, I thought everything would work out. I was so in love with him, I was too scared to think about what it would mean if I lost him, that I didn't face up to the fact that if he didn't want to marry me, then we should break up.
It's all down to the situation with my family, they were so inside my head with their demands and expectations, it scared me that if I broke up with Alex, what would I have? There'd be no support for me, there'd just be them, telling me, "so it didn't work out with the gora, did it?" Which is exactly what they've said to me now, three years later. And at the time, I just wasn't strong enough to lose Alex.
Alex, having seen how
inflexible my parents were in their beliefs and customs, didn't want to be pressured into getting married because of my family. He also didn't believe in marriage, for his own reasons. I'd always known this, but like the stupid female I was, and like countless others before me, thought we'd manage to reach some kind of compromise.
I promised him after
marriage things would be better, my sisters at least would see he'd done the
right thing by me and i'd have some of that ever elusive family approval which was so important to me. I also hoped i'd find it easier to live with my guilt, as
if he converted to Islam and we had an Islamic marriage we'd be doing the
right thing in the eyes of God at least.
Despite cultural
beliefs and interpretations, Islam dictates Muslims can marry other Muslims
regardless of race. So although I was hurting my
parents I comforted myself that Islamicaly what we were doing was acceptable.
I needed to believe I was justified in doing what I was doing, and looked for
the acceptance I couldn’t get from my parents from my religion instead. That's a typical behavioural pattern for me, looking for acceptance.
But I
underestimated how hard the process of getting married would be. My sisters,
who'd wanted to see commitment in my relationship were now horrified by the
implications of our marriage. They kept saying, but what about Mum and Dad,
what will people say?
My family has
always been more concerned with what other people would think, instead of what was important for themselves. It’s very
common, an obsession with reputation and appearances. It doesn’t matter if the
whole family is miserable, in unhappy or violent marriages, as long as to everyone on the outside it looks as if the right thing is being done.
So what I
wanted, or what would make me happy was of no importance. This is what I find
the hardest, my parents were more concerned about what other people thought
than if I was happy. If they'd only have stood up to these people, said
this is what their daughter had decided and was acceptable in Islam, no-one
could argue on religious grounds and surely that was most important?
But my parents
couldn’t let go of their beliefs, so began again an endless cycle of phone
calls from Pakistan telling me I was killing them, i'd betrayed their trust
in me.
My sisters went back and forth between themselves, my parents and
myself, repeating the same things, what would the family say, what would happen
to my sisters who were married to first cousins, would it make things worse for
them, what would their in-laws say? My eldest sister, the more accepting of the
two, was torn between her loyalty to my parents and myself, should she come to
the wedding or not? My brother, with whom I had never had a good relationship
with, what would he say? And what would each of them say to each other?
