Marriage Is Dying in India, And Women Are Glad It Is
Riya Kumari | Jul 07, 2025, 13:21 IST
( Image credit : Unsplash )
Highlight of the story: Let me guess, you blinked, and suddenly every third woman you know is either quietly separating from her husband, living alone with her cat (and thriving), or has sworn off marriage entirely while sipping overpriced coffee and scrolling through Zillow listings for solo apartments. Welcome to 2025, where the shaadi ka laddoo comes with a side of existential dread, and—plot twist, women are finally okay saying “no thanks” to the whole thing.
We’ve been told for generations that marriage is the foundation of society. That it’s sacred, stabilizing, and somehow central to a woman’s worth. But here’s the question we’ve finally started to ask, What happens when that foundation is built on silence? On endurance? On shrinking yourself just enough to fit into a version of love that was never built for you? In India, more and more women are quietly walking away from marriage. Not out of anger. Not because they’re anti-family. But because they’ve reached a place of clarity and can no longer pretend that survival is the same as peace. Let’s stop decorating the idea of marriage and start telling the truth about what happens inside it. Because what’s breaking isn’t the institution, it’s the women inside it.
One of the hardest things to explain is how lonely a woman can feel in a marriage that looks perfectly fine from the outside. She might be sitting next to her husband on the sofa. There might be matching photos on the wall, vacations posted online, festivals celebrated with smiling in-laws. And still—inside, she may be carrying a solitude so dense, she doesn’t remember what being understood feels like.
Because being in the same house is not the same as being seen.
Being provided for is not the same as being respected.
And being married is not the same as being loved.
So when she walks away, it’s not sudden. It’s the result of a hundred moments where her voice was ignored, her dreams diluted, her self slowly dissolved.
One of the most commonly used justifications for staying in a broken marriage is the children. But let’s be honest about what children really see.
They see their mother being dismissed, interrupted, overruled.
They see her do everything and still be told it’s not enough.
They see her cry behind closed doors, then show up at the dinner table with a smile.
And they learn. They learn that love is endurance. That a woman’s pain should be silent. That men don’t need to evolve as long as women keep adjusting.
So the question isn’t: “Will this divorce harm the child?” It’s: “What is this marriage teaching them about what’s normal?” Sometimes the most loving thing a mother can do is to show her child what self-respect looks like, by living it.
Not every woman who walks away has scars on her skin. Some carry different kinds of injuries. the ones that aren’t visible but hurt just the same.
Being made to doubt her memory: “That never happened. You’re imagining things.”
Being mocked for her emotions: “You’re too sensitive.”
Being blamed for everything: “If you weren’t like this, I wouldn’t be like that.”
It’s easy to point to physical violence and say, “That’s wrong.” It’s harder to name the quiet cruelty. The control dressed up as care. The contempt hiding behind tradition. But those things break a person, too. They just do it slowly, quietly, invisibly, until she doesn’t recognize herself anymore.
What traps many women isn’t the obviously terrible marriage. It’s the almost good one. The one where the husband isn’t violent, just emotionally distant. Where he doesn’t insult her, just ignores her. Where the relationship isn’t toxic, just unbearably empty. In these marriages, women are gaslit not just by their partners, but by society:
But peace isn’t just the absence of chaos. And a life without violence is not the same as a life with love. Women are no longer willing to spend decades in the grey zone of “not bad enough to leave, but never good enough to stay.”
No, this isn’t a call to abandon marriage. It’s a call to stop romanticizing it while ignoring the emotional cost it demands from women. If marriage is to survive in a meaningful way, it cannot continue to be a space where:
One partner grows while the other sacrifices.
One voice dominates while the other is pacified.
One person’s identity is centered while the other fades into function.
Marriage has to become a space where two whole people come together, not one person vanishing so the other feels more comfortable. And for that to happen, women must be allowed to leave when the cost is their spirit. And they must be respected—not pitied—when they do.
What’s dying in India isn’t love. It isn’t family. It’s the fantasy that women will continue to tolerate marriages that starve them of joy, voice, and dignity, just because they’re afraid to live outside it. The women leaving are not failures. They are the proof that silence is no longer the currency of survival. And that truth, once spoken, doesn’t go back in the box. So yes—marriage is dying in the form we once knew it.
And what’s being born in its place is not chaos, but something far more honest: A life where women get to choose peace over performance, Truth over tradition, And themselves, over everything else that asked them to disappear.
The Loneliness That Lives Inside Togetherness
Bride
( Image credit : Pexels )
One of the hardest things to explain is how lonely a woman can feel in a marriage that looks perfectly fine from the outside. She might be sitting next to her husband on the sofa. There might be matching photos on the wall, vacations posted online, festivals celebrated with smiling in-laws. And still—inside, she may be carrying a solitude so dense, she doesn’t remember what being understood feels like.
Because being in the same house is not the same as being seen.
Being provided for is not the same as being respected.
And being married is not the same as being loved.
So when she walks away, it’s not sudden. It’s the result of a hundred moments where her voice was ignored, her dreams diluted, her self slowly dissolved.
Why “Stay for the Kids” Breaks More Than It Saves
Family
( Image credit : Pexels )
One of the most commonly used justifications for staying in a broken marriage is the children. But let’s be honest about what children really see.
They see their mother being dismissed, interrupted, overruled.
They see her do everything and still be told it’s not enough.
They see her cry behind closed doors, then show up at the dinner table with a smile.
And they learn. They learn that love is endurance. That a woman’s pain should be silent. That men don’t need to evolve as long as women keep adjusting.
So the question isn’t: “Will this divorce harm the child?” It’s: “What is this marriage teaching them about what’s normal?” Sometimes the most loving thing a mother can do is to show her child what self-respect looks like, by living it.
Abuse Doesn’t Always Leave Bruises
Bride
( Image credit : Pexels )
Not every woman who walks away has scars on her skin. Some carry different kinds of injuries. the ones that aren’t visible but hurt just the same.
Being made to doubt her memory: “That never happened. You’re imagining things.”
Being mocked for her emotions: “You’re too sensitive.”
Being blamed for everything: “If you weren’t like this, I wouldn’t be like that.”
It’s easy to point to physical violence and say, “That’s wrong.” It’s harder to name the quiet cruelty. The control dressed up as care. The contempt hiding behind tradition. But those things break a person, too. They just do it slowly, quietly, invisibly, until she doesn’t recognize herself anymore.
The Most Dangerous Kind of Marriage Is the One That Almost Works
Indian Marriage
( Image credit : Pexels )
What traps many women isn’t the obviously terrible marriage. It’s the almost good one. The one where the husband isn’t violent, just emotionally distant. Where he doesn’t insult her, just ignores her. Where the relationship isn’t toxic, just unbearably empty. In these marriages, women are gaslit not just by their partners, but by society:
But peace isn’t just the absence of chaos. And a life without violence is not the same as a life with love. Women are no longer willing to spend decades in the grey zone of “not bad enough to leave, but never good enough to stay.”
So What Now?
Love
( Image credit : Pexels )
No, this isn’t a call to abandon marriage. It’s a call to stop romanticizing it while ignoring the emotional cost it demands from women. If marriage is to survive in a meaningful way, it cannot continue to be a space where:
One partner grows while the other sacrifices.
One voice dominates while the other is pacified.
One person’s identity is centered while the other fades into function.
Marriage has to become a space where two whole people come together, not one person vanishing so the other feels more comfortable. And for that to happen, women must be allowed to leave when the cost is their spirit. And they must be respected—not pitied—when they do.
What’s Dying Isn’t Marriage, It’s the Lie Around It
And what’s being born in its place is not chaos, but something far more honest: A life where women get to choose peace over performance, Truth over tradition, And themselves, over everything else that asked them to disappear.