Romantic Relationships Are Neither Dirty nor Sinful
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Society, Relationships, Self, Culture, Love

South Asians shun the word “relationship”.

In my culture, there is a refusal to acknowledge that two people can have a fully legitimate romantic bond, which they willfully act upon, that isn’t marriage.

They don’t believe that romantic relationships have a rightful place in society. Of course, it gets even worse if you’re not in a heterosexual relationship. LGBTQ individuals face the added weight of conforming to heteronormativity.

While South Asian society is no monolith, this is still a relevant and widespread issue in our social framework. Even those of us who were raised in the West learned early on the necessity of developing personas that met our parents’ approval.

When two people do have a culturally sanctioned connection, South Asians choose to call it an “understanding.” If what’s going on between a woman and a man is acceptable to their respective families, that’s how it will be described to nosy neighbors.

An understanding is a temporary seal of approval that will quell community gossip until the couple is rushed to enter a marriage, which is the only real romantic relationship. When I have heard a relationship get labeled as an understanding, it sounds to me that the couple understands what’s going on, along with everyone else, but no one wants to say the word relationship.

We don’t need to protect bad ideas.

Things can get even messier.

If an unsanctioned relationship gets exposed, then it receives the salacious indictment of an “affair.” Remove the family approval, and that’s the label your personal relationship will receive. That couple is going to meet resistance if they try to be accepted within the community’s fold.

Of course, that’s not what an affair means.

Neither party is already married. There is no victim of cheating. Calling it an affair is simply an attempt to describe a couple’s relationship in derogatory terms. People outside of the relationship want it to have a dirty reputation.

There are reasons the idea of a relationship triggers conservative members of the South Asian community.

It doesn’t require anyone’s approval. Two people can lay claim to their independence by deciding to be together. This shows that they don’t defer to anyone else’s thoughts on the matter.

This show of autonomy won’t sit well with community members who feel that they should have a say in something that doesn’t concern them.

In a shame-based society, calling him my partner would be an invitation for others to judge us and belittle our relationship by defining it as an affair.

The infantilizing of adults is rampant.

We’re talking about a society that still distinguishes between an “arranged marriage” and a “love marriage.” In love marriages, the couple chooses each other. Often, there’s an implied backstory in which the obstacle of family disapproval had to be overcome.

I understand the purpose of arranged marriages, and I find it deeply disturbing. These customs perpetuate the infantilization of grown adults. They normalize the oppression of individuals by making it a tradition.

If two people are making a commitment to spend their lives together, shouldn’t they love each other? Shouldn’t they get to choose?

If you’re adult enough to enter something as serious as a marriage, you’re adult enough to make that decision for yourself.

This is where cultural relativists traipse in and remind the room that “it’s a different culture and we really don’t know what’s going on here, so let’s not get involved.”

They’re wrong, of course.

Human rights are everyone's business.

I am also involved in an “understanding.”

When I first told my mother about my partner, she described him to our extended family as my friend with whom I had an understanding. Apparently, calling him anything other than that was too disrespectful to the sexually repressive culture our elders hope to propagate through us.

In a shame-based society, calling him my partner would be an invitation for others to judge us and belittle our relationship by defining it as an affair.

I won’t stand for it.

Calling our relationship an affair is out of the question. Settling for an understanding won’t suffice. We are adults, to the dismay of those around us, and we aren’t going to play these stupid games.

We will probably get married, although the motivation is largely for legal benefits and the opportunity to throw a big party. It may even mark a happy milestone in our journey together, but it won’t replace the relationship that is already being built.

This cultural aversion to independence must end.

Refusing to acknowledge that people have romantic relationships deprives them of their right to grow their bond out in the open. Instead, they have to stay within predefined limits of propriety to which they never agreed.

It is disempowering, and it injects a lot of shame into the relationship dynamic.

What rule-abiding South Asians fail to understand is that the relationship component is the meaningful part of any formal title a couple can strive for. I have seen plenty of South Asian marriages where the husband and wife are not in a relationship with each other, and it doesn’t look good. The disconnect is palpable.

In truth, the realness of relationships is not dependent on whether or not South Asian society accepts it.

Our community often paint the issue as if it’s our culture versus Western culture. It isn’t. We don’t need to protect bad ideas. Individuals, and especially adults, are within their rights to choose their partners without following some twisted guidelines.

And you know what?

People don’t always end up with the first person they date. They grow from that experience and move forward. If the culture keeps shaming individuals for being in relationships, it is effectively prohibiting our growth.

There is nothing shameful about consensual relationships. However, there is something frightening and toxic about assuming an authoritarian role in your grown child’s life.

We won’t be culture traitors (whatever that means) if we change our community model to be empowering. Culture is not fixed. It can and should evolve. Individuals should feel free to express themselves and to pursue personal development.

They shouldn’t have to live on the margins of society to embrace those rights either.