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Hi Warriors, welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, ingrid.
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Today Dr Anisha joins me again.
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In this episode she discusses the Indian culture surrounding relationships and marriages.
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She further details how specific customs may impact abuse victims.
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Drawing from her personal experience, she goes on to examine additional hurdles domestic violence victims specific to the Indian culture may face when seeking help.
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Here is Dr Anisha.
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Hi, dr Anisha, welcome back.
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It's nice to have you again.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm excited to be here again.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm excited to be here again.
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Yes, so one thing that played a role probably in your personal experience with domestic violence, and within a lot of individuals who experience domestic violence, is their cultural background, and you're here today to talk to us a little bit about that.
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Absolutely.
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I think sometimes the cultural piece is often not understood when community members are trying to work with victims of domestic violence and it can be such a big piece in what keeps them trapped.
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So I think it's really important to understand that.
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So the book that I wrote, the Power to Break Free Surviving Domestic Violence the subtitle I wrote in there is with a special reference to abuse in Indian marriages, because there was a lot of things from my Indian cultural background that played into my abuse or made it worse or made it harder for me to walk away from, and so as I was processing my own trauma and trying to come out of my seven-year abusive marriage, I needed to really understand all those subtle cultural nuances and I realized that I wanted to be able to share that information in my own Indian community with other women who were probably trapped for the same reasons or thinking the same things I was thinking, to help them understand how to break free from that cultural conditioning to really be able to be safe and out of their abusive relationships.
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Okay, so you're talking about marriages within the Indian community.
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So how many is there?
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Is it just a straightforward marriage or are there different% of marriages?
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are still arranged marriages in India.
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So, coming from a very ancient culture where typically the parents would arrange the marriages for people, we've seen that kind of evolve with time.
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So in my grandparents' day, when they had arranged marriages, they would not really even see their partner until the day of the wedding.
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Right, and they you like them meet their family.
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The parents might still make the decision of whether you're going to get married or not, but there was a little bit more openness with meeting multiple people and kind of feeling things out.
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Today's generation, I think, even though arranged marriage is there, there's still a lot more freedom to meet many people.
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You know, with all the dating shows that we have on Netflix and online these days, there are actually some Indian matchmaking shows out there that just kind of show the arranged marriage process of it's not just getting to know that person, it's getting to know their whole family.
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And traditionally in India, when a woman gets married, she moves out of her parents' home and moves into her husband's home where he is living with his parents and often multiple generations within one household.
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So that's kind of still the norm in India.
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Living here in America my whole life, I will say that there's another kind of brand of marriage that's been created, or category of marriage which is called introduced marriages.
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That's what I experienced, and so I didn't go through a typical arranged marriage where I was set up with my husband.
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But introduced marriage is kind of the equivalent of like a blind date, where someone is setting you up to meet this person, except instead of dating you just decide okay, we're going to get married.
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So it's a kind of fast paced version.
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You just skip the dating and you go straight to like being introduced and hitting it off and deciding to get married.
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The parents might still have input, but it's really coming from the couples making this decision instead of somebody else deciding you should get married.
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And so, for me, I went into this introduced marriage because I had a lot of faith in my parents' marriage.
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My grandparents, all of my relatives, majority of them had all had arranged marriages, and they were successful marriages in the sense that they had common values, they were dedicated to raising their children, there was no strife apparent, and so I just kind of really trusted in this Indian system, which is how I kind of got into my introduced marriage.
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We were introduced by a family friend.
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We spoke on the phone and hit it off.
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We met two weeks later, I believe, in person, and a week after that we were engaged and then six months later we were married.
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So it was super fast.
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And then the third category of marriage so we have arranged, we have introduced, and then the third category is love marriages.
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So that's kind of what the rest of the world experiences is like you fall in love, you decide to get married, but in India only 5% of marriages are love marriages.
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In the Indian community here in America I would say that it's about 50% introduced marriages and about 50% love marriages.
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So that just kind of gives you a little context in terms of as we look at Indian marriage.
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There's these different categories and then that can make it more challenging to come out of abuse for various reasons that we can get into later.
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But hopefully I explained that.
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Yes, you did.
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That makes sense.
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Is there any pressure in the introduced or the love different kinds of marriages for a timeline Like for introduced?
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Is it like well, really, you should only be meeting like three guys before you decide you want to get married.
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I don't think there's necessarily a timeline like that.
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Sometimes there can be more pressure on the women and for guys there might be kind of an open field of they can meet as many girls as they want to, so that kind of plays out a little bit differently.
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I would say the pressure comes because there is such a strong expectation in Indian culture to get married.
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There's no real wiggle room for women who don't want to get married.
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That's just not a cultural norm and it's just expected that you are going to get married.
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The marriage age is also younger in India, so most people are getting married in their early to mid-20s and then there's a lot of pressure, expectation to soon start your own family, have kids.
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It does seem that there's a different outlook between the men and the women in the Indian culture.
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What are some of the stereotypes of Indian wives?
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So that's a great question.
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I think you know the cultural of indian wives is that you put your husband first, you know.
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So in the western culture we're very individualistic eastern cultures, not just india, but you know all the eastern countries there's a different sentiment.
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That's not against the individual, but everything's about creating harmony for the community, creating harmony for the family structure, trying to create stability with that.
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And so, because of that expectation, indian women, which are kind of the glue I think women are the glue of every family, right.
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But Indian women are considered the ones who have to uphold the whole household, not just take care of their husband, not just take care of the kids, but usually they're living in their husband's family's home.
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They're also expected to take care of his parents, his siblings, multiple generations that you kind of are carrying that weight.
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And so it's very easy for an individual Indian wife to lose herself in that process where her own needs are neglected because she's so busy caring for everyone else.
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And I think we experienced that in the West to the same extent.
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You know, because women are the ones who hold the whole household together, it's very easy to put everybody else first and put yourself last, and that can be challenging for a regular relationship where there's no abuse.
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But then, when you put abuse into the picture, it's even harder for a woman to focus on herself because all the expectations are don't think about yourself, think about everybody else you know.
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And so you're carrying that weight and it becomes a really heavy burden to to carry and to hold that.
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Are the expectations the same in the United States to have like a multi generational household?
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It can definitely be the case.
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It's not always the case because sometimes those of us who've grown up here, our parents are used to having their own home.
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We get married, we live in our own home.
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So it's not always the case, but many of us marry Indian partners whose families from India then come here after the marriage and then live with us.
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So that was my experience.
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I was not expecting to live with my mother-in-law, but one week after the honeymoon she came and stayed with us for like three months and it was a total surprise to me.
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I mean, she had come from India for our wedding in America, but I thought she was going to spend most of the time at her daughter's house and not at her son's house.
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And it just became the situation I was thrown into and I felt like an Indian wife in India, you know, suddenly like living with a mother-in-law, and I just didn't know that was going to happen.
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It was just kind of thrust on me happened.
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It was just kind of thrust on me how prevalent or is abuse prevalent at all in the Indian culture Is it even talked about much.
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It's definitely a taboo topic.
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That's not talked about.
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Even divorce is a taboo topic.
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That's not talked about.
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So in America our statistic is about 50% of marriages end in divorce.
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In India it's 1% of marriages.
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So it doesn't mean 99% of people are just thriving and have great marriages.
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It just means there's such a strong taboo against divorce that people are going to stick with it, even if it's not a good marriage, because they're so conditioned that marriage comes first.
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There's no other option to get out of the marriage.
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And so for myself, even though I grew up in America where I saw plenty of friends coming from divorced households, divorce didn't seem so taboo to me.
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But when it came to my own marriage, I never considered divorce an option.
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Even when I started to go through the abuse, even when I recognized it, when I labeled it, I still thought I have to find a way to fix this marriage and that burden is on me, and I still didn't think of divorce as an option.
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So I'd like to read a passage to you called Becoming the Perfect Wife, and this is from my book the Power to Break Free, and I know for a lot of people trying to understand the cultural nuances can be challenging, but as I read this paragraph, it might help you understand the expectations for me.
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As an Indian wife and kind of the cultural stereotype that was imposed on me.
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Becoming the perfect wife I took more initiative in trying to fix our marriage.
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Every time an abusive incident occurred, I became the therapist, patiently explaining to him the pattern in which we were trapped.
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I was determined to appeal to his logical, rational side, even though there was no proof it existed.
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Surely if he saw how this incident was similar to the last incident, he would have more clarity right.
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My explanations, however, only triggered his anger more.
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He reprimanded me you are too emotional.
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You're always harping on the past and cannot let things go.
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So I graciously forgave my husband and tried to forget these altercations so he would not accuse me of living in the past.
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I continued to work diligently on myself so we could eventually live an abuse-free life.
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I continued to work diligently on myself so we could eventually live an abuse-free life.
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I strived to eliminate every flaw my husband commented on, so he could not criticize or blame me for his ire.
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I took it upon myself to run the household, prepare a hot Indian meal every night and manage our finances so he would not be inconvenienced.
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I ran errands on weekdays and handled all our moves on my own so he would not waste time packing.
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I devoted my time attending to his needs, caring for his mother whenever she came to live with us for months at a time, and playing the role of an obedient Indian wife.
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I stepped out of the way so mother and son could bond and make up for all the lost years they had not seen each other.
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Even if I felt left out, I distanced myself from my priorities and immersed myself in doing everything I could for his family.
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I forgot what was important to me and neglected my own needs, losing myself completely in this process.
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It was only a matter of time before the inevitable disintegration of my being.
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That explains so much.
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It really gives a good idea of what is going through your head and your day-to-day activities.
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Is it common when there is an intergenerational group of people living in the same household?
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Is it common to have either the abuse just ignored by others or even have abuse from other members of the family?
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Absolutely.
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I think that's a really important part of abuse in Indian culture is that sometimes it's not just the abuser.
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You can start to be experiencing abuse from other family members that start to gang up on you.
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Take the abuser's side, even if they do nothing.
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Just that lack of acknowledgement of what you're experiencing, what you're going through is, can be devastating.
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For the most part, and when my mother-in-law lived with us, my husband's behavior was better in front of her and so we would have more abusive incidences when she wasn't around.
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But as the marriage progressed, as the years went by, he was more enabled.
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The abuse became more extreme.
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There was one incident where he for some reason we were having house guests.
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A lot of incidents would happen before we were having guests coming into our house.
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A lot of on his part he'd be having a lot of insecurity, a lot of anxiety, having to put on this facade of being like this great husband in front of other people, this facade of being like this great husband in front of other people.
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So we'd have a lot of incidences that would happen before people came into our house.
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And there was one incident where we were just like cleaning the kitchen, getting things ready, and he started chasing me around with a broom and it was like not okay.
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And his mother saw it and then after this dinner party, when we talked about it, like she refused to say that was not okay and I'm like this is not normal, this would not be normal in any household.
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It wasn't a playful thing.
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It was him like, trying to come after me with a broomstick, you know, and it was really hard for me to accept that.
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I know a lot of victims are encouraged to like call the cops when you're in danger, but in an Indian household we would never, ever do that.
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It is considered, you know, if I was to complain about my mother-in-law, it would be considered totally disrespectful to do something to an elder person, to criticize them.
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So it just would never have come into my mind and then I would be outnumbered, even if I was to call the cops and say this just happened to me.
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If I have the abuser's family outnumbering me, it doesn't carry any weight what I'm saying, because they're all going to just deny it together or they're going to paint a bad story about me, and so I think that's really kind of tricky for victim Indian victims in particular is it's not just coming from one person.
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It adds so much more complexity.
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When you're in a multi-generational household and the abuse is either denied or amplified by your in-laws, you know, in whatever context, that that might be.
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Is it difficult to reach out to your own family, or is that more?
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You don't want to do that because of the taboo.
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Yeah, I really, because of the taboo, did not want my parents to suspect that there was abuse in our marriage.
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I really had made the misdiagnosis from the very beginning that we can fix this.
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You know that if we just communicate better, if we try harder, if we go to a marriage therapist, you know I just kept putting the burden on myself because I'm a fixer um, that I can, can fix this.
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And that was a total misdiagnosis, because no one person can fix a relationship.
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If the relationship is broken, it has to be both people who are coming together to fix it and taking either equal responsibility or, for an abuser, complete responsibility for his actions.
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And when we got to the point where, finally, you know, I was getting really clear and trying to take steps, to take step away, and then he was trying really hard to keep me in the marriage and saying all the right things of I'm sorry, this will never happen again, we'll do better, I'm going to talk to a therapist.
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But it was also insincere.
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It wasn't backed up with real concrete change or action.
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But it was what I had been dying to hear for years.
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So I fell into the trap of oh, he's saying this now for the first time.
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That's different, so maybe there is a possibility of changing.
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So I never told my parents until I was 100% sure this is not going to work and I have to leave.
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And I was really lucky to be blessed with parents who were extremely supportive of me in this process.
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They were definitely shocked, but once they knew what had happened and you know, I told them the whole story they were really clear in supporting me and I don't know if I could have done it without them.
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You know, I think that support system we have is so important.
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I know for other Indian victims who were not as lucky as me.
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I had one Indian victim that I had interviewed because, as I was getting out of my marriage, you know, I had journaled a lot throughout the marriage and so that's why I had such extensive documentation of my abuse.
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And so for me it was very cathartic in my healing process to start to write my book and to put all these things together, and I was trying to read every book I could possibly read to help me feel sane and get clarity.
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The first book I read by Lundy Bancroft was called why Does he Do this, and it was excellent because he described my abuser.
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In a nutshell, you know, without knowing him, without being in our house, and it was like wow, everything that's been happening to me is out of this abuse playbook and he's followed it literally from beginning to end with all of his strategies.
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Like that's what really helped to increase my awareness and get clarity.
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But as I started to read other books, there were just a lot of books by men.
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There were a lot of books by therapists who were on the other side of this.
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I wasn't finding a lot of books by women, for women, victims, survivors.
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I know there's some out there, but there was just not enough.
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I felt all of the books on abuse were just dominated by people who hadn't experienced it.
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And so, out of my own story, I felt like I had so much to process and as I processed and as I put it into writing, it was giving me more clarity.
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And then I thought, if I can do this for myself, I want to do this for other women who are stuck and going through what I went through, so that they can also start to have that clarity.
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But one of the women that I interviewed for this book, who was Indian, she had an arranged marriage, she was living here in America, but her parents were back in India and when she confessed to them that she was in an abusive marriage and that she wanted to get out, her father said to her or let me back up.
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She asked her father don't you want me to be happy?
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And he said no, I want you to be married.
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That's much more important than being happy and that's that cultural conditioning.
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That's there.
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You know, that's frankly.
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What many Indian people believe is that preserving this institution of marriage is far more important than an individual's happiness or even an individual's safety.
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Unfortunately, Well, and I imagine, with that cultural belief, the ability to find therapy or domestic violence agencies that specifically understand the Indian culture plus how to help a domestic violence victim would be difficult to find.
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Did you run into that problem?
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Absolutely.
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I mean, the first place I started is I went to my local domestic violence organization and I just thought they would be full of resources and, you know, I had just labeled myself as a victim Otherwise I wouldn't have even gone to an agency like this and so everything was just so fresh and new and alarming and I was really hoping to go to a place where I could feel safe and I could take some refuge and my local DV center.
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One of the first things they made me do was talk to this Christian minister who really believes in premarital counseling.
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Right, the first thing he did even though I'm not Christian, that's not my background, but I was still open to getting help or advice from someone who knows how to coach victims in these situations the first thing he did was blame me for not doing premarital counseling, even though that's not something I knew about, it's not part of my culture, it's not part of my belief system and it was just really not helpful at all.
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When I had gone to marriage counseling in the last couple months of our relationship together marriage counseling in the last couple months of our relationship together we went and saw this therapist who claimed that she knew about domestic violence.
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But it was really clear she knew nothing about it.
00:25:26.061 --> 00:25:35.477
The abuser just made her sympathize with him and I was kind of shocked at her response.
00:25:35.477 --> 00:25:50.224
And so at the end of our session she told me that I had undermined him in his household, I had made him feel bad and that it was important that he felt like the king of his home.
00:25:50.224 --> 00:25:54.371
And I did everything I could to support that.
00:25:55.031 --> 00:25:57.615
And the exercise she gave is for a week.
00:25:57.615 --> 00:26:07.528
I would do that and be this subservient, obedient wife making him feel like the king of the castle, and I would not complain about anything.
00:26:07.528 --> 00:26:15.612
And I left that counseling session thinking, if she's telling me this and I'm so clear I am a victim.
00:26:15.612 --> 00:26:19.006
What is she doing to other people?
00:26:19.006 --> 00:26:21.611
Let's just keeping women trapped.
00:26:21.611 --> 00:26:33.134
And it just made my husband so enabled after that that he was not willing to compromise, to listen to me.
00:26:33.134 --> 00:26:39.502
It just gave him permission to continue to be an arrogant abuser, which was shocking to me.
00:26:40.084 --> 00:26:48.712
Oh my gosh, I can't imagine the danger that that would put other individuals in that you know would take what she said and believe it.
00:26:49.721 --> 00:26:54.021
Well, I think that's the hard part, because everyone says why doesn't the victim just walk away?
00:26:54.021 --> 00:27:26.933
But then when she gets to that point where she's ready, there's so many things from not her abuser, but now the community that keeps her trapped, that blames her, that judges her, and it's like the victim has to work twice as hard to ignore her abuser's conditioning, to now ignore all these cultural stereotypes and perceptions and everything that society puts on the victim now that makes it so much harder.
00:27:26.933 --> 00:27:44.297
So for myself, after these two bad experiences, after my local domestic violence organization where I didn't really feel like I got much support, I started looking online to see are there Indian women's organizations that I can turn to?
00:27:44.297 --> 00:27:46.963
And there wasn't one in my city.
00:27:46.963 --> 00:27:54.326
But the closest organization I found was like a four-hour drive away from me and I just decided I'm going to do this.
00:27:54.326 --> 00:28:00.207
I have got to find like my own people, my own culture, see if I can get more support.
00:28:00.207 --> 00:28:02.010
So I drove four hours.
00:28:02.010 --> 00:28:02.692
I went to this.
00:28:02.692 --> 00:28:06.525
They had an afternoon where they had a presenter.
00:28:06.525 --> 00:28:14.372
There were maybe 150 people in the audience or so and it was a great presentation.
00:28:14.974 --> 00:28:33.628
And then afterwards I wanted to meet with the organizers of this Indian women's organization and start to open up and tell my story, and I was actually really shocked at their responses and it seemed like it was the first time they were meeting someone like me who was Indian but who had grown up in America.
00:28:33.628 --> 00:28:50.884
And they said well, you speak perfect English, you're not like our immigrant clients that don't have a visa or don't know if they can stay in this country or can't communicate well, I had another person say oh well, you had an introduced marriage.
00:28:50.884 --> 00:28:54.192
It's not the same as being in an arranged marriage.
00:28:54.192 --> 00:29:02.773
Marriage it's not the same as being in an arranged marriage, and they had this stereotype about what that meant, and so I was really so shocked at this pushback that I was getting.
00:29:02.773 --> 00:29:11.567
I was once again looking for support from people in my community and I just found that none of them understood me, none of them could relate to me.
00:29:11.607 --> 00:29:36.380
This is a while ago now, and I think these organizations have evolved since then because there's a lot more women like me that aren't immigrants but are growing up in these Indian marriages grown up in America, been in Indian marriages, are going through these cultural issues, and I think there's a lot more awareness and recognition of that now, which there wasn't back when I went through my divorce in 2008.
00:29:36.801 --> 00:30:08.387
You know, it was a long, long time ago, and so I think, for people who are working at domestic violence organizations, I think it's so important for them to recognize all the different cultures that are coming into their door and that they have to figure out how can we tailor our support to what this person is going through and if they can understand that, it just helps them be in a position to be supportive.
00:30:08.387 --> 00:30:41.826
I didn't expect someone from a regular DV organization to understand all the cultural implications of an Indian marriage, but I did expect that they would be open to just hearing my story and not judging me and giving me a space to feel safe, because that's essentially what every victim is looking for, that's coming out of an abusive situation, is they want to turn to people that are going to help them feel safe, and that should be our society's role.
00:30:41.826 --> 00:30:50.777
You know that should be a DV organization's role know that should be a DV organization's role.
00:30:50.797 --> 00:31:13.903
I completely agree because one it's difficult enough to be a domestic violence victim or survivor looking for help, and then you find your own cultural stigmas and then in your case there's like stereotypes within the stereotypes, and how difficult you drove four hours and you still couldn't find a place where you were actually really understood.
00:31:13.903 --> 00:31:33.604
And I think that is so incredibly important, like you mentioned with domestic violence agencies, is to take that into consideration and if they personally are not able to offer that to have, like you mentioned, personally are not able to offer that to have, like you mentioned, an open mind to learn about it or find somebody somewhere that could help a little bit more.
00:31:35.467 --> 00:31:47.407
Absolutely, because I think that's what victims are looking for is for you to take that step out of your abusive situation where you feel like you're losing your sanity.
00:31:47.407 --> 00:31:52.000
It's crazy making you're not supported, you are not validated.
00:31:52.000 --> 00:32:01.207
You need to find that somewhere else to encourage you and build that support and make you feel more confident.
00:32:01.207 --> 00:32:08.346
So I think there's a lot of cultural, or I should say, societal, blame on victims.
00:32:08.346 --> 00:32:10.058
Why are they staying?
00:32:10.058 --> 00:32:11.825
Why are they not leaving?
00:32:11.825 --> 00:32:30.663
And I think there's just so much that's not understood about what other people in society are doing that keeps shaming victims, that keeps blaming victims, and so I think we're just asking some of the wrong questions there where we need to really reframe it.
00:32:31.164 --> 00:32:41.936
I have a whole chapter in my book on community support and community involvement where I kind of break down the things that we need to do as a society to support somebody.
00:32:41.936 --> 00:32:54.845
Um, I know, as I started to open up to people, even to neighbors or friends or acquaintances, it was really shocking to me people's responses.
00:32:54.845 --> 00:33:15.368
There were people who I barely knew because at the time I initiated my divorce, I had just moved to this one city and had been there like six months, so I didn't know a lot of people and I was amazed at some of these acquaintances I had just met who just were ready to support me a hundred percent what do you need?
00:33:15.368 --> 00:33:16.196
What can I do?
00:33:16.196 --> 00:33:17.759
Like they were just ready to step in.
00:33:17.759 --> 00:33:43.803
And then I was also surprised equally by longtime friends of mine who had no idea what to do or what to say or how to support me, and I was just kind of shocked at some of their responses or their reactions that you know they didn't have bad intentions, but they were just not well-versed in what does the victim need to hear.
00:33:43.803 --> 00:33:48.269
And you know, what can I do to support you?
00:33:48.809 --> 00:34:07.202
I know for me, when I encounter victims now you know outside of my practice, but just you know everyday people where I might encounter someone who's sharing this story my first response is always I'm so sorry for what you've been through and what can I do to support you.
00:34:07.202 --> 00:34:11.221
And I think if just people understood, it's really that simple.
00:34:11.221 --> 00:34:18.766
Don't give the victim all these suggestions of what you think they should do, because once again you kind of sound like their abuser.
00:34:18.766 --> 00:34:32.896
You make it sound like you know better, and a lot of family members fall into this trap when they're coaching victims as well as they are like oh, you should do this, you should do that, or they get upset with you if you didn't follow their advice.
00:34:32.896 --> 00:34:45.338
But really you want to have a victim feel empowered, that she can make choices, she can make her own decisions, because she hasn't had that permission and she hasn't felt safe to do that in her abusive relationship.
