‘I’m scared my parents will get me married.’ No means no, even for Indian parents

Six months into the year, India has already been shaken by a series of disturbing cases tied to marriage and impending marriages, from the alleged dowry death of a model and actress in Bhopal to the Lohagad Fort murder case. One tragedy dominates headlines until the next one arrives. We consume these stories as isolated crimes or evidence of a “changing generation”. Then we move on. Instead of asking what happened inside these relationships, we should ask what happens long before they begin.

During a few consultations, I kept hearing versions of the same sentence: “I’m scared my parents will get me married if I don’t secure a placement.” “My parents said they’ll let me continue studying only if I focus on academics. If I get into a relationship or college romance, they’ll marry me off.” “I don’t have much time. My parents want me married by 25, so I have to settle before then.”

Marriage, in these conversations, wasn’t spoken about as companionship or compatibility. It sounded like a deadline, a consequence, sometimes even a punishment. Less a life event centred around love and compatibility and more another milestone to complete before a prescribed age.

India has built an entire economy around this belief. Marriage bureaus, matrimonial websites, horoscope consultants, family elders, “alliance specialists” and premium matchmaking services promise to find the “right” person who is not necessarily someone you choose, but someone everyone else approves of. The irony becomes almost satirical when celebrity couples who met through reality shows like Bigg Boss after years of dating become brand ambassadors for arranged matchmaking platforms. Romantic choice sells advertisements, while compromise is sold to the rest of us. The problem isn’t arranged marriage itself. Millions of arranged marriages are happy, consensual, and deeply fulfilling. The problem is when choice is systematically replaced with compliance.

In Martin Seligman’s learned helplessness experiments during the late 1960s, animals repeatedly exposed to situations where they had no control eventually stopped trying to escape, even when escape later became possible. They had learned that their actions did not matter. Human beings are infinitely more complex than laboratory experiments. But decades of psychological research have shown similar patterns in people exposed to environments where personal agency is repeatedly undermined. When individuals repeatedly experience situations where saying “no” has no effect, where disagreement is discouraged or treated as disrespect, they may begin to believe that exercising choice is futile.

Many Indian children grow up rehearsing this script. You don’t choose your school. You don’t choose your career. You certainly don’t choose whom you date. You don’t choose when you’re ready for marriage. Every major life decision is framed as a family decision. Obedience is rewarded. Defiance is interpreted as selfishness. The sentence, “Our parents know better”, becomes less a reassurance and more a governing philosophy.

Parents often justify controlling decisions as acts of protection. But protection that consistently denies autonomy comes with a hidden psychological cost. In some cases, the denial of autonomy has cost people their lives. Children who are never allowed to choose rarely become adults who know how to choose well. The freedom to say no, to make decisions for themselves, should be the ultimate proof of good parenting. If children grow into adults who can think critically, set boundaries, and make informed choices, isn’t that evidence that they were raised well? Why then, is hearing a “no” from one’s child increasingly seen as a threat to parenting rather than a reflection of it? Perhaps this is why so many conversations around marriage begin with a familiar sentence, “You’ll understand after you’re married.”

By the time marriage enters the conversation, many young adults have spent two decades practising compliance rather than decision-making. This reminds me of Julian Rotter’s concept of an external locus of control. People with an external locus of control increasingly perceive that important outcomes in life are determined by forces outside themselves — parents, fate, society or luck, rather than by their own decisions. In many Indian households, this worldview is not accidental but carefully cultivated. Children are taught that elders know best, that family honour outweighs personal preference and that difficult decisions are someone else’s responsibility.

Marriage then becomes another box to tick. If the relationship fails, it is fate. If it succeeds, parents choose well. Either way, personal agency was never the central variable. Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory argues that families strive to maintain stability even when that stability is unhealthy. In tightly knit family systems, individual autonomy can be perceived as a threat to the entire unit. A son choosing his own partner or a daughter rejecting an arranged alliance isn’t merely making a personal decision; it disrupts established family expectations, power structures, and social identities.

None of this suggests that love marriages are inherently healthier or arranged marriages inherently abusive. That would be both simplistic and false. The distinction is not between arranged and love marriages. It is between consensual choice and conditioned compliance. Maybe the better question is whether people were ever allowed to understand themselves before they were expected to understand another person. Compatibility isn’t merely finding someone who checks 70 per cent of a list. It is also having spent a lifetime believing that your 30 per cent matters as much.

The writer is empanelled as a consultant psychologist at NIT, Andhra Pradesh