Two women from different generations reveal how love, betrayal, domestic violence and social pressure can turn marriage into a place of fear rather than safety.
These are two different case studies, but in many ways they tell the same story.
One woman is around 30–35 years old. She has two teenage children. The second woman is between 55 and 58 years old.
She has one married daughter and two adult sons. There is almost a generation between them, but when I listened to both women, I realised the story was almost the same.
Both women chose to marry for love.
In our society, when a woman chooses her own husband, people immediately give her a label.
“You chose him yourself. Now you have no right to complain.” If the marriage fails, society rarely questions the man’s actions. Instead, it reminds the woman that the choice was hers.
But choosing your own husband does not guarantee loyalty, respect, or a life free from violence.
A marriage, whether arranged or chosen, is still a marriage between two human beings. Character reveals itself over time, not on the wedding day.
These two women prove exactly that. Both husbands gradually became emotionally absent. They stopped spending time with their families. The excuses were always familiar.
I’m busy. I have too much work. I’ll be home late.
These excuses seem ordinary at first, but they often mark the beginning of emotional distance. Over time, that distance was replaced by deception. Both husbands became involved in extra-marital affairs.
Eventually, emotional neglect turned into physical violence.
In both families, the abuse began with the wife. Later, the children also became victims. The only difference was age.
In the younger family, the teenage children were still vulnerable. When they questioned their father or tried to defend their mother, they were beaten as well.
In the older family, the children had grown into adults. The father no longer physically attacked them because he knew they were capable of resisting him.
Instead, everyone lived in separate emotional worlds, often in separate rooms, avoiding conversations that might lead to another conflict. Silence had replaced violence, but the fear remained. Both women tried to save their marriages. Neither immediately thought about divorce or leaving.
Like many women, they first tried to resolve everything privately. They spoke to their husbands and primary families. They remained patient. They hoped things would improve.
Nothing changed.
Instead, every attempt to address the problem was met with another form of abuse. Sometimes it was emotional manipulation. Sometimes it was endless family drama.
Sometimes it was days of complete silence. Sometimes it ended with physical violence, and then the stories would begin.
She slipped on the stairs. She fell by accident.
Society often accepts these explanations without asking another question.
But when you look at her face, you don’t see someone who simply fell. You see hundreds of wounds that cannot be covered by a single excuse.
You see it in her expression, in the silence between her words, and in her eyes that carry years of pain. Control slowly became the centre of the marriage.
One of the first things both husbands controlled was the women’s relationship with their own families. They were told not to invite or visit their parents.
Not to visit any of her relatives or her maika (parental home). Isolation became another form of violence. An abusive man often understands exactly where a woman’s greatest strength lies.
If he cannot control her directly, he isolates her from the people who love her. But it doesn’t stop there. He slowly takes away the things that bring her peace and happiness.
It could be her job, her education, her friendships, a hobby, or anything that gives her a sense of independence or joy.
Whatever makes her feel like herself becomes a threat to his control. The more she loses the things she loves, the weaker he believes her to be.
In one case, the woman’s parents had already passed away. Her brothers and sisters were married and living their own lives.
She had very little emotional support. Her husband understood this completely. He knew she had nowhere to go and no one who could easily intervene.
That knowledge made abusing her easier. He also understood that fear creates obedience. Whenever the children questioned him, they were beaten.
Violence became his way of maintaining control. In this case, there is another painful reality. This woman has already experienced talaq twice.
Under Islamic law, a third talaq would make the divorce final. Her husband knows this. Instead of treating divorce as a serious responsibility, he uses it as another way to control her.
The threat of a third talaq hangs over her life like a constant reminder that her future depends on his decisions.
The second case followed a different path. The children were adults. Years of conflict had taught them that asking questions changed nothing. Everyone simply survived. Each person stayed in their own room, and conversations slowly disappeared.
One of the children told me that even something as ordinary as sitting together for dinner felt uncomfortable. Nobody really talked. Nobody discussed their day.
The only thing on everyone’s mind was, I hope no argument starts today. There was always a fear that one small conversation could turn into another fight.
The food lost its taste because everyone was eating with anxiety instead of peace. The only thought was to finish the meal as quickly as possible and return to the safety of their own room.
I asked them, “Did you and your siblings ever try to help your parents resolve these issues? You are adults now.”
They replied, “Who listens to us?”
“If we say anything, we are told, ‘You are just children. Stay out of it’.”
“We understand everything that is happening, but we are never allowed to say anything back. We can’t ask our parents why they don’t resolve their own issues. We can’t tell them what we see or how it affects us.”
It made me realise something important. In many families, children are never included in difficult conversations, no matter how small the issue is.
Their opinions are dismissed simply because they are the children. But they are the ones who grow up witnessing the arguments, the silence, the fear, and the violence.
Adults often think they are protecting their children by keeping them out of these conversations.
In reality, the children already know what is happening; they are just expected to carry that burden silently.
The family continued to exist under one roof, but emotionally it had already fallen apart.
Mother said, “I spent years trying to resolve this situation within the family. When speaking directly to my husband failed, then I reached out to his relatives.”
Sometimes they intervened. Sometimes they convinced him to apologise. Sometimes there was temporary peace.
But by the next day, everything returned to exactly the way it had been before.
Eventually, the relatives stopped trying. Instead, they began talking about HAYA (modesty, honour, and family reputation).
This is one of the greatest contradictions I continue to observe. Children in Kashmir are taught about HAYA from a very young age.
Women are constantly reminded to protect family honour. Yet where is this same sense of shame when a husband repeatedly commits domestic violence in front of family or neighbours?
Where is this shame when he humiliates his wife? Where is this shame when he openly has extramarital affairs?
Why is honour demanded from the victim but rarely from the person causing the harm?
In many cases, no meaningful legal or institutional process ever takes place because the husband has money, social influence, or powerful connections.
Cases are quietly settled behind closed doors. Complaints disappear. Justice is delayed or never arrives at all.
The woman is expected to remain silent while everyone else protects the family’s reputation.
Eventually, this woman made one decision entirely for her daughter. She arranged her daughter’s marriage outside Kashmir.
She feared that if her daughter married within Kashmir, people would discover what kind of man her father really was.
No matter how broken a family may be, many people still refuse to acknowledge these realities publicly.
The same relatives who once refused to support her now speak confidently about morality, family values, and what is right or wrong.
Today, both women know exactly who their husbands are. Their children know the truth too.
When a woman chooses love despite society’s warnings, she often sacrifices everything because she believes in that relationship. She believes,
“He chose me.” “He loves me.” “He will always stand beside me.”
Yet the same man who claims he has no time for his wife somehow finds time for another woman.
Even when a woman discovers that her husband is having an extramarital affair, many times she still stays. Not because she accepts what he has done, but because she already knows what society will do to her if she leaves.
She knows society will not easily accept a divorced woman.
It will not easily accept a single mother.
Instead of asking why the man betrayed his family, society asks why the woman could not save her marriage. Many women stay in abusive relationships because they feel they have no other choice.
They worry about their children’s future. What if my daughter doesn’t receive a good marriage proposal because her parents are divorced? What if people judge my son because of his family?
These fears become another prison. But the man rarely thinks this way.
He is the one having the affair.
He is equally responsible for the children.
He is equally responsible for the future of his family.
Yet how often does he stop and ask himself: How will I face my wife after betraying her? How will I look into the eyes of the woman who trusted me with her entire life?
The woman who left everything for him. The woman who stood beside him. The woman who carried his children, raised the next generation, and kept his family together.
If anyone should feel ashamed, it should be the man who broke that trust. But too often, the burden of shame falls on the woman instead.
People ask, “How did she become so strong?” Strength is rarely born from comfort. It is born from disappointment. It is born from betrayal. It is born from surviving what you never imagined you could survive. Women often respond in two different ways.
Some become silent. Others become fire.
In these two stories, Society praises the silent woman. People call her Patient. Respectful. Dignified. Strong.
But very few ask what happened to make her stop speaking. Silence is often mistaken for peace. It is not. Sometimes silence is simply exhaustion. Sometimes silence is survival.
The second woman refused silence. She fought for herself. She fought for her children.
Every day she chose to continue living rather than surrendering. Because she spoke, many people judged her.
Society often labels women who resist as difficult, emotional, or disrespectful. Some even believe they deserve harsher treatment simply because they refuse to stay quiet.
This contradiction says far more about society than it does about women.
These two stories challenge one of the biggest myths surrounding marriage.
People often compare arranged marriages and love marriages as though one guarantees happiness while the other guarantees failure.
Neither does.
Whether a marriage is arranged or chosen tells us nothing about the character of the person we marry.
Character reveals itself through years of everyday behaviour. Through honesty. Through respect. Through loyalty. Through accountability. Not through the way the marriage began.
These two stories also taught me something beyond marriage. They reminded me how important it is for a woman to be financially independent.
They reminded me why education is not just about getting a degree; it is about having choices.
Education gives confidence.
Financial independence gives a woman the ability to make decisions without feeling trapped.
These stories also made me think about something we value in our weddings.
Many families spend enormous amounts of money on dowries or on feeding hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of guests.
But I often wonder if that money could be spent differently. Instead of a lavish wedding or expensive dowries, what if every family ensured their daughter had one room that truly belonged to her?
A place she could always return to if she no longer wanted to continue in an abusive marriage.
A place where nobody could tell her to leave.
A place where she would know she was safe.
I also believe that when a daughter comes back to her parents’ home, she should not immediately be questioned.
Don’t ask her, “What happened?”
Don’t ask her, “When are you going back?”
Let her speak when she is ready.
Sometimes silence is not because she has nothing to say.
Sometimes silence is because she has survived things she cannot yet put into words.
And please, never make her feel that she has no option except to return to her husband’s house.
You do not know what she has lived through.
You do not know what she has endured behind closed doors.
If, after everything, she decides that she wants to return to her husband, do not immediately assume it is because she is weak.
Leaving an abusive relationship is rarely a single decision. It is often a long, painful, and complicated process.
What parents can do is make sure that decision comes from their daughter’s own choice, not from fear, pressure, or having nowhere else to go.
Parents should make it clear, in front of their son-in-law as well, that their daughter will always have a home with them. That she will never be abandoned. That she will never be forced to stay in a relationship simply because she has nowhere else to go.
Sometimes, knowing that a woman has a safe place to return to changes the balance of power.
A man who knows his wife has support and choices may think twice before using emotional, physical, or financial abuse to control her.
These two women belong to different generations. But both taught me the same lesson.
A woman’s choice of marriage does not determine her future.
The character of the person she marries does.
Love is never a guarantee. Marriage is never a guarantee.
The only guarantee is that time eventually reveals who someone truly is.
Two women from different generations reveal how love, betrayal, domestic violence and social pressure can turn marriage into a place of fear rather than safety.
These are two different case studies, but in many ways they tell the same story.
One woman is around 30–35 years old. She has two teenage children. The second woman is between 55 and 58 years old.
She has one married daughter and two adult sons. There is almost a generation between them, but when I listened to both women, I realised the story was almost the same.
Both women chose to marry for love.
In our society, when a woman chooses her own husband, people immediately give her a label.
“You chose him yourself. Now you have no right to complain.” If the marriage fails, society rarely questions the man’s actions. Instead, it reminds the woman that the choice was hers.
But choosing your own husband does not guarantee loyalty, respect, or a life free from violence.
A marriage, whether arranged or chosen, is still a marriage between two human beings. Character reveals itself over time, not on the wedding day.
These two women prove exactly that. Both husbands gradually became emotionally absent. They stopped spending time with their families. The excuses were always familiar.
I’m busy. I have too much work. I’ll be home late.
These excuses seem ordinary at first, but they often mark the beginning of emotional distance. Over time, that distance was replaced by deception. Both husbands became involved in extra-marital affairs.
Eventually, emotional neglect turned into physical violence.
In both families, the abuse began with the wife. Later, the children also became victims. The only difference was age.
In the younger family, the teenage children were still vulnerable. When they questioned their father or tried to defend their mother, they were beaten as well.
In the older family, the children had grown into adults. The father no longer physically attacked them because he knew they were capable of resisting him.
Instead, everyone lived in separate emotional worlds, often in separate rooms, avoiding conversations that might lead to another conflict. Silence had replaced violence, but the fear remained. Both women tried to save their marriages. Neither immediately thought about divorce or leaving.
Like many women, they first tried to resolve everything privately. They spoke to their husbands and primary families. They remained patient. They hoped things would improve.
Nothing changed.
Instead, every attempt to address the problem was met with another form of abuse. Sometimes it was emotional manipulation. Sometimes it was endless family drama.
Sometimes it was days of complete silence. Sometimes it ended with physical violence, and then the stories would begin.
She slipped on the stairs. She fell by accident.
Society often accepts these explanations without asking another question.
But when you look at her face, you don’t see someone who simply fell. You see hundreds of wounds that cannot be covered by a single excuse.
You see it in her expression, in the silence between her words, and in her eyes that carry years of pain. Control slowly became the centre of the marriage.
One of the first things both husbands controlled was the women’s relationship with their own families. They were told not to invite or visit their parents.
Not to visit any of her relatives or her maika (parental home). Isolation became another form of violence. An abusive man often understands exactly where a woman’s greatest strength lies.
If he cannot control her directly, he isolates her from the people who love her. But it doesn’t stop there. He slowly takes away the things that bring her peace and happiness.
It could be her job, her education, her friendships, a hobby, or anything that gives her a sense of independence or joy.
Whatever makes her feel like herself becomes a threat to his control. The more she loses the things she loves, the weaker he believes her to be.
In one case, the woman’s parents had already passed away. Her brothers and sisters were married and living their own lives.
She had very little emotional support. Her husband understood this completely. He knew she had nowhere to go and no one who could easily intervene.
That knowledge made abusing her easier. He also understood that fear creates obedience. Whenever the children questioned him, they were beaten.
Violence became his way of maintaining control. In this case, there is another painful reality. This woman has already experienced talaq twice.
Under Islamic law, a third talaq would make the divorce final. Her husband knows this. Instead of treating divorce as a serious responsibility, he uses it as another way to control her.
The threat of a third talaq hangs over her life like a constant reminder that her future depends on his decisions.
The second case followed a different path. The children were adults. Years of conflict had taught them that asking questions changed nothing. Everyone simply survived. Each person stayed in their own room, and conversations slowly disappeared.
One of the children told me that even something as ordinary as sitting together for dinner felt uncomfortable. Nobody really talked. Nobody discussed their day.
The only thing on everyone’s mind was, I hope no argument starts today. There was always a fear that one small conversation could turn into another fight.
The food lost its taste because everyone was eating with anxiety instead of peace. The only thought was to finish the meal as quickly as possible and return to the safety of their own room.
I asked them, “Did you and your siblings ever try to help your parents resolve these issues? You are adults now.”
They replied, “Who listens to us?”
“If we say anything, we are told, ‘You are just children. Stay out of it’.”
“We understand everything that is happening, but we are never allowed to say anything back. We can’t ask our parents why they don’t resolve their own issues. We can’t tell them what we see or how it affects us.”
It made me realise something important. In many families, children are never included in difficult conversations, no matter how small the issue is.
Their opinions are dismissed simply because they are the children. But they are the ones who grow up witnessing the arguments, the silence, the fear, and the violence.
Adults often think they are protecting their children by keeping them out of these conversations.
In reality, the children already know what is happening; they are just expected to carry that burden silently.
The family continued to exist under one roof, but emotionally it had already fallen apart.
Mother said, “I spent years trying to resolve this situation within the family. When speaking directly to my husband failed, then I reached out to his relatives.”
Sometimes they intervened. Sometimes they convinced him to apologise. Sometimes there was temporary peace.
But by the next day, everything returned to exactly the way it had been before.
Eventually, the relatives stopped trying. Instead, they began talking about HAYA (modesty, honour, and family reputation).
This is one of the greatest contradictions I continue to observe. Children in Kashmir are taught about HAYA from a very young age.
Women are constantly reminded to protect family honour. Yet where is this same sense of shame when a husband repeatedly commits domestic violence in front of family or neighbours?
Where is this shame when he humiliates his wife? Where is this shame when he openly has extramarital affairs?
Why is honour demanded from the victim but rarely from the person causing the harm?
In many cases, no meaningful legal or institutional process ever takes place because the husband has money, social influence, or powerful connections.
Cases are quietly settled behind closed doors. Complaints disappear. Justice is delayed or never arrives at all.
The woman is expected to remain silent while everyone else protects the family’s reputation.
Eventually, this woman made one decision entirely for her daughter. She arranged her daughter’s marriage outside Kashmir.
She feared that if her daughter married within Kashmir, people would discover what kind of man her father really was.
No matter how broken a family may be, many people still refuse to acknowledge these realities publicly.
The same relatives who once refused to support her now speak confidently about morality, family values, and what is right or wrong.
Today, both women know exactly who their husbands are. Their children know the truth too.
When a woman chooses love despite society’s warnings, she often sacrifices everything because she believes in that relationship. She believes,
“He chose me.” “He loves me.” “He will always stand beside me.”
Yet the same man who claims he has no time for his wife somehow finds time for another woman.
Even when a woman discovers that her husband is having an extramarital affair, many times she still stays. Not because she accepts what he has done, but because she already knows what society will do to her if she leaves.
She knows society will not easily accept a divorced woman.
It will not easily accept a single mother.
Instead of asking why the man betrayed his family, society asks why the woman could not save her marriage. Many women stay in abusive relationships because they feel they have no other choice.
They worry about their children’s future. What if my daughter doesn’t receive a good marriage proposal because her parents are divorced? What if people judge my son because of his family?
These fears become another prison. But the man rarely thinks this way.
He is the one having the affair.
He is equally responsible for the children.
He is equally responsible for the future of his family.
Yet how often does he stop and ask himself: How will I face my wife after betraying her? How will I look into the eyes of the woman who trusted me with her entire life?
The woman who left everything for him. The woman who stood beside him. The woman who carried his children, raised the next generation, and kept his family together.
If anyone should feel ashamed, it should be the man who broke that trust. But too often, the burden of shame falls on the woman instead.
People ask, “How did she become so strong?” Strength is rarely born from comfort. It is born from disappointment. It is born from betrayal. It is born from surviving what you never imagined you could survive. Women often respond in two different ways.
Some become silent. Others become fire.
In these two stories, Society praises the silent woman. People call her Patient. Respectful. Dignified. Strong.
But very few ask what happened to make her stop speaking. Silence is often mistaken for peace. It is not. Sometimes silence is simply exhaustion. Sometimes silence is survival.
The second woman refused silence. She fought for herself. She fought for her children.
Every day she chose to continue living rather than surrendering. Because she spoke, many people judged her.
Society often labels women who resist as difficult, emotional, or disrespectful. Some even believe they deserve harsher treatment simply because they refuse to stay quiet.
This contradiction says far more about society than it does about women.
These two stories challenge one of the biggest myths surrounding marriage.
People often compare arranged marriages and love marriages as though one guarantees happiness while the other guarantees failure.
Neither does.
Whether a marriage is arranged or chosen tells us nothing about the character of the person we marry.
Character reveals itself through years of everyday behaviour. Through honesty. Through respect. Through loyalty. Through accountability. Not through the way the marriage began.
These two stories also taught me something beyond marriage. They reminded me how important it is for a woman to be financially independent.
They reminded me why education is not just about getting a degree; it is about having choices.
Education gives confidence.
Financial independence gives a woman the ability to make decisions without feeling trapped.
These stories also made me think about something we value in our weddings.
Many families spend enormous amounts of money on dowries or on feeding hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of guests.
But I often wonder if that money could be spent differently. Instead of a lavish wedding or expensive dowries, what if every family ensured their daughter had one room that truly belonged to her?
A place she could always return to if she no longer wanted to continue in an abusive marriage.
A place where nobody could tell her to leave.
A place where she would know she was safe.
I also believe that when a daughter comes back to her parents’ home, she should not immediately be questioned.
Don’t ask her, “What happened?”
Don’t ask her, “When are you going back?”
Let her speak when she is ready.
Sometimes silence is not because she has nothing to say.
Sometimes silence is because she has survived things she cannot yet put into words.
And please, never make her feel that she has no option except to return to her husband’s house.
You do not know what she has lived through.
You do not know what she has endured behind closed doors.
If, after everything, she decides that she wants to return to her husband, do not immediately assume it is because she is weak.
Leaving an abusive relationship is rarely a single decision. It is often a long, painful, and complicated process.
What parents can do is make sure that decision comes from their daughter’s own choice, not from fear, pressure, or having nowhere else to go.
Parents should make it clear, in front of their son-in-law as well, that their daughter will always have a home with them. That she will never be abandoned. That she will never be forced to stay in a relationship simply because she has nowhere else to go.
Sometimes, knowing that a woman has a safe place to return to changes the balance of power.
A man who knows his wife has support and choices may think twice before using emotional, physical, or financial abuse to control her.
These two women belong to different generations. But both taught me the same lesson.
A woman’s choice of marriage does not determine her future.
The character of the person she marries does.
Love is never a guarantee. Marriage is never a guarantee.
The only guarantee is that time eventually reveals who someone truly is.
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