I Rejected an Investment Banker’s Marriage Proposal For This Reason

And no, he didn’t ask me to be a trad wife

Photo by Davor Denkovski on Unsplash

In 2023, when I called my grandmother to deliver the news of my rejecting the marriage proposal of the guy she really liked for me — he was an investment banker settled in America — her disappointment was instant and severe.

“Why? He was PERFECT!” she screamed.

“Oh, really. How do you know that?” I questioned her judgment.

My mother quickly reminded me that he had a degree from New York University (NYU), earned a six-figure salary, owned a decent-sized apartment in India, and was saving up to buy another in New York.

And it’s not just my mother who was unhappy with my decision to reject someone who was a “catch” by all outward appearances; my friends and extended family members were livid, too.

Because, you know, desi families get brain orgasms when a marriage prospect is well-educated, holds a good job, earns a substantial amount of money, and has already bought a house before starting his family. It doesn’t matter to them if the guy is a pushover and his family controls him, and it also doesn’t matter if the man is willing to be a man-child for the rest of his life and not stick up for himself and his wife even once.

“It’s his mom after all; who cares if she stands outside your room and listens to your conversations?” a relative legit said this to me when I expressed my concerns over this so-called investment banker’s mother being an overbearing presence in his life.

There were days when she barged into his room while I was there without knocking. When I reminded her that she needed to seek permission before entering, she asked me very rudely: “Kyun (Meaning why in Hindi)?”

One day, she took some fruits out of the refrigerator and asked me to slice them up and feed her son and eat “whatever was left after he was done eating”. When I protested and pointed out that her tone was disrespectful, she glared at me first and then at her son as if I were the bad guy in the relationship.

What got me all riled up was his reaction: He just stood there, hanging his head in shame because he was about to marry a disobedient woman like me.

(Just thinking about this incident makes me want to cuss both of them out.)

I was already growing impatient with this guy’s lack of a spine and continued inability to grow one, but all hell broke loose when the mother said the following to me.

The raja beta syndrome in desi households, and what it does to modern-day relationships

For those who are not in the know, in desi communities, raja beta syndrome (king son syndrome) is a slang term to describe grown-up children, mostly men, who are mollycoddled by their overbearing parents. In such families, the parents genuinely believe that their son can do no harm and that it is their birthright to control every aspect of their son’s life and defend his actions even when he is wrong. And when that same man-child goes on to marry someone, his mother gets confrontational and obsessively tries to control her son’s life even after marriage because she wants to be the main character in her married son’s life and not the wife.

I’ll be honest, at some point, I really liked this investment banker, and no, it wasn’t just because he was doing well in life. Although his success did play a role in my finding him attractive, it was his ferocity in his professional pursuits and devotion to his academic interests that made him all the more appealing to me.

After all, he had:

1) Built his own life away from his home and family in a different country altogether, 2) Powered through some of the most isolating times known to humanity, COVID-19, holed up in a dingy apartment in New York, and 3) Knew what he wanted from life and went for it with absolute passion.

I thought this self-assured persona stretched to other areas of his life, but once the COVID restrictions relaxed a bit and he came back to India and worked from home, something in him flipped. He had suddenly become this easily controlled raja beta to his extremely clingy and overbearing parents, especially his mother.

He couldn’t — or didn’t want to — talk on the phone in front of his parents. Of course, that meant he couldn’t step outside the house for long hours without seeking permission from his folks first. When I asked him why, this was his answer:

“They will not like it that I’m regularly in contact with a girl in a romantic way. They don’t even know we talk.”

When the time came to let his family know that he wanted to be with me, he had to broach the topic via his bossy elder sister, who, I later learned, had also given him the “permission to go ahead and establish contact” with me before we started talking.

“My parents are almost okay with you as long as we stay with them after marriage and include them in our life decisions,” he said.

First, the tone was demeaning.

Second, the unrealistic expectation of staying in a joint-family setting was unsettling to me.

When I tried to reason with him and his family that the two of us would live close by and we could all hang out on weekends without compromising our personal space, the mother apparently cried to her henpecked son that night, saying:

“Beta, yeh ghar todegi (Son, she is going to break our home).”

He said he had protested that statement, but I seriously doubt his claim now.

‘Marriage is no excuse to stop dominating your children’s lives’: Desi families around the world

Among desi parents, the concept of individual freedom and privacy is applicable as long as their married daughter is getting it all at her marital home. But if their daughter-in-law demands those same things, she is a homewrecking vamp straight from hell.

‘How dare she want to live independently?’

‘It is her duty to cook, clean, and take care of our golden boy and us.’

‘What more freedom does she want? She’s already stepping out every day to go to work. Didn’t we allow that without any protests?’

And the classic one that refuses to die down:

‘A woman’s place is in the kitchen, and birthing babies and nurturing them is her duty. She cannot go against what nature has chosen for her.’

And, her money? Oh, honey, after marriage, the son’s money is also his parents’ money, but the daughter-in-law’s money is their family’s money.

Sample this: Since the investment banker I was set to marry came from a financially sound background, I requested him to ask his parents to start paying for their own things after marriage and not take any money from him, as my single mother would also be doing the same. I wanted us to buy an apartment we could call our own, and not live in the house that was bought by his parents, because I feared that they would use it to control our lives.

When his parents heard about my requests, the father was cool, and I think he (sort of) understood where I was coming from, but the mother lost it.

Livid, she called me and screamed at me, saying I lacked the basic understanding of what a loving family looked like.

And then she said the thing that was the final straw and made me break off that relationship immediately:

“What would a fatherless, wayward woman like you know about the importance of living with your parents. You never had that growing up,” said the mother over the phone.

I was stunned, shocked. I couldn’t believe that even in the 21st century, an independent woman’s desire to start a family on her own terms is met with such harsh reactions.

I wanted to scream at her and tell her how she uses money and influence to control and bully her son into doing whatever she wants, but I have a mother who’s taught me some very good manners.

So, instead of showing her the mirror, I cleared my throat and replied:

“True, I do not have a father,” I started nice and slow, and then added, “And I also do not understand why a high-achieving son such as yours needs to share his apartment, and, by extension, his life with his parents after marriage. But I was taught by my single mother how to be strong, independent, make my own money, and never take freebies from people who will treat me like they own me later in life.” I could sense the amazement in her voice.

“You keep your son; I will keep my dignity,” I concluded, and before she could reply with yet another self-serving half-truth about how she’s “made her son’s life and career”, I slammed the phone to her face.

The following day, her son bombarded me with apology texts and called me incessantly.

So, I picked up his call once, thinking common sense had finally prevailed and he had finally grown a spine.

“Hello, can we please meet and talk?” he whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” I asked.

“My parents will lose it if they find out that I am talking to you,” he replied.

I laughed out loud, wished him good luck, and hung up on him, never to answer his calls again. (Oh, he did call a lot.)

I expected people around me to understand why I decided to dump him, especially my family. But no one did. I was told hurtful things instead, such as that I am difficult and a rebel without a cause.

“You’ll not be young forever. Enjoy your pride till it lasts, because you’re about to regret being this proud very soon,” said my maternal aunt.

In my family’s eyes, that investment banker was a well-educated, globe-trotting suitor and the best I could have done, but to me, he was a raja beta who would have never stood up for me in front of his parents, who — and I do not doubt it in my mind — think their son is the trophy and their daughter-in-law, its lucky possessor.

It’s been a couple of years since that incident, and I have moved on with my life, but my grandmother still talks about how he was the one who got away, whereas I see it as good riddance.

Do you think I did the right thing by walking away from this relationship?

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