Rejecting an Arranged Marriage: The Price of My Freedom

I boarded a plane at 19 with one suitcase — and a marriage contract waiting for me back at home. My extended family believed I was going to the United States for school. In reality, I was running from the life of a “good daughter” they had scripted for me. The man I was supposed to marry was someone I had known since childhood — five years older, from a wealthy Sikh family, my sister’s classmate, living on the 14th floor of our high-rise building in Mumbai. He was my first crush. When I was 12, with oily braids and Coke-bottle glasses, I thought he was handsome and charming. I spent hours imagining what it would be like if he chose me. By the time I was 17, the fantasy had cracked. I was the studious, obedient girl, staying up late to prepare for exams. From my window on the second floor, I could see his car pull into the garage at 3 a.m., night after night, with a different girl in the passenger seat. Advertisement While his parents were away at their hill station retreat, he was encouraged to “get his experience.” I, meanwhile, was expected to safeguard my virginity and reputation. The double standard was a cage I began to feel closing in around me. By the time my parents told me they had arranged my marriage to him, my girlhood crush had given way to the sharp clarity that this was not the man — or the life — that I wanted. My parents supported me going to the U.S. because my husband-to-be was headed to Harvard Business School. They thought it would give us a chance to “get to know each other.” Their plan was clear: I would study, he would take responsibility for me, and within a few months, he would propose and I would return home to India to be married to him. Advertisement Two years. That was the deal. It was stamped in black ink on my visa — and stamped even harder into my future. Just a couple of months into grad school, I flew to Boston to see him. He proposed in his Cambridge apartment — Porsche parked downstairs, Clapton playing, two engagement rings laid out, one for me to wear during the day and one to wear at night. By all appearances, it was a dream. But it wasn’t mine. I said no. The phone tree lit up instantly. He called his mother. His mother called mine. Within hours, I was told to leave Boston. I had flown first class from Los Angeles to Boston to see him. Now I was broke and carrying my bag onto a Greyhound bus to take a long ride back to California. Advertisement That was the first time I felt the cost of my choice. Back in Claremont, I was renting a room from an American couple who fought loudly every night as their marriage dissolved. Their arguments became my soundtrack: who would keep the couch, who forgot the groceries, who failed whom. In Mumbai, my nights had been filled with palm trees swaying outside my window and my cousins’ laughter. Now, in between the couple’s arguments, silence pressed against me. Advertisement Meanwhile, the silence at home grew too. Phone calls with my parents became brief and brittle. Invitations to weddings stopped. Funerals happened without me. At one wedding I wasn’t invited to, an uncle referred to me as a “slut.” I had dishonored the family name. That’s what it feels like to be exiled: alive, but erased. All the while, the two-year countdown clock ticked on. I cried in the shower so no one would hear me. I filled out forms that asked for an “emergency contact” and left them blank. I was 19 years old and already felt homeless in two countries. Advertisement On my first day of classes, I had walked in late and saw him sitting at the far end of a long seminar table. He was beautiful — white skin, blondish-red hair, nothing like I had ever seen before. He wasn’t untouchable in the way my Boston fiancé seemed, but in a way that made me pause. A couple of months later, this young man and I were both working at the Economics department of our school. I was sitting in the department office, stuffing envelopes for prospective students, when he noticed my once-white-but-now-pink-tinged tube socks peeking out of my pants. He smiled awkwardly and asked me if I needed help with laundry. I laughed. It was the first time an American man had offered to help me with something as ordinary as laundry. For the first time, I thought, This is what love could look like. Not control. Not duty. Just kindness. Advertisement He knew about the arranged marriage, but he was blissfully naïve about what it meant. When my family asked for his birth time to make an astrological chart, he politely declined, not realizing how bold that refusal was. Our love grew quietly: late-night takeout, study sessions, small moments of being chosen and choosing back. Advertisement The two years passed. With a recession underway, jobs were scarce. Sponsorships to stay in the country even more scarce. I left Los Angeles for Indianapolis — the only place I could find a job. My bosses there promised to sponsor my paperwork. For months, I believed them. I worked harder, stayed later, and said yes to everything. Then I realized they had been lying. No paperwork had ever been filed. I learned the American way the hard way: rent checks bouncing, stretching one packet of ramen across three meals, calculating whether I could afford gas to get to work. I watched my friends graduate while I was left behind. Advertisement Eventually, I applied to a new company and they kept their word. They sponsored my work permit, which led to a green card, which led to residency. For the first time in years, I felt the ground under my feet. I married the sweet boy from the Economics department. I mailed photos home. I don’t know if my parents looked at them, or if they shoved them in a drawer. They never told me. For 10 years, we were estranged. No calls. No visits. I had become the daughter who ran away and I was erased from family gatherings. Advertisement Then, after I had three children, something shifted. My parents realized I “wasn’t going to get divorced.” They came to visit my family in Indianapolis. Our reconciliation was slow and cautious, but it was real. My kids met their grandparents. For a while, it felt like maybe we had bridged the impossible gap. Then tragedy shifted everything again. My parents died within months of each other, and with them went the fragile bridge we had begun to rebuild. The wound remains, tender and unfinished. Today, India is not quite home and not quite gone. It’s a place I return to as both daughter and stranger, carrying love and loss in equal measure. Advertisement Decades later, my life looks shiny from the outside. A career. A husband I chose. Three wonderful children. However, I still keep a ledger of what it all cost: My mother’s grief. My father’s disappointment. The uncle who called me names. The cousins whose weddings I missed. People want the Hollywood version of my story: the daring escape, the triumphant reinvention. And yes, there were moments that felt like that. But there were also nights I fell asleep wondering if belonging might have been easier than freedom. Advertisement Here’s what I’ve learned: You can love your family and still refuse the life they chose for you. You can be proud of your resilience and still ache for the birthdays you missed. You can build a home and still get homesick when you smell a dish that smells like your mother’s cooking. I didn’t just walk away from a man I once crushed on. I walked away from the script written for me: the Porsche, the rings, the paperwork battles, the silence, the belonging that came with a price tag I couldn’t pay. That’s a price I’d pay again. Sona Jepsen is a writer and C-suite executive who walked away from an arranged marriage at 19 and rebuilt her life from scratch in the U.S. She writes about courage, caregiving and transformation, weaving personal stories with universal truths. Her debut book, “Pink Dragon: Breathe Fire Into Your Life and Leadership,” is available now. Learn more at sonajepsen.com. Advertisement Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.