Marriage Isn’t Dying. Control Is: Why Indian Women Are Finally Saying No
Riya Kumari | Aug 08, 2025, 07:01 IST
( Image credit : Timeslife )
You’ll cook, clean, smile, nod, and still be told you’re “too emotional.” You’ll give up your surname, your Sunday naps, and slowly, your entire identity. And if you dare to complain? “But your grandmother did it without fuss!” Exactly. She also churned butter by hand and never heard of therapy. Maybe we stop using her trauma as a benchmark?
Not all heartbreaks come with slamming doors and tear-streaked goodbyes. Some come with silence. With swallowed opinions. With dinners served to people who never once asked how your day went. Some come dressed as routine, as responsibility, as “this is just how it is.” And for generations, women accepted it. Not because they lacked courage, but because they were told love requires endurance. That to be a “good woman” is to be agreeable, patient, flexible, endlessly forgiving. But something is changing. Women aren’t rejecting marriage. They’re rejecting the quiet erasure that often comes with it.
The Price We’ve Been Paying
Marriage, in many Indian homes, isn’t just a relationship between two people. It’s a system. And for women, this system often comes with invisible costs. Not just the obvious ones, changing your name, moving cities, adjusting to new people. But deeper ones. Like giving up your voice in small, daily doses. Like realising that your worth is being measured by how much peace you can maintain in someone else’s chaos.
We don’t talk enough about how marriage can feel like a job, except there’s no salary, no off days, and you’re expected to smile through the burnout. You cook, clean, care. You manage relationships, remember birthdays, soothe egos, and sometimes, even fund parts of the household. And yet, your ambitions are treated like hobbies. Your exhaustion is dismissed as mood swings. And your silence? That becomes your default setting.
It's Not About Ego. It’s About Existence
People mistake this shift as ego. “Women today have too many expectations,” they say. No, we just stopped calling bare minimums "dreams." Wanting partnership instead of hierarchy is not ego. Wanting mutual respect is not rebellion. Wanting space to grow, not just as someone’s wife or mother, but as a full person, is not selfish. Marriage isn’t supposed to shrink you. If anything, it should be the safest place for you to expand. But for too many women, it becomes the place where they disappear.
Not all at once. But slowly. Through each compromise that doesn’t get reciprocated. Through each day you’re told you're being "too sensitive" for simply expressing a need. Through every moment your boundaries are treated like inconveniences.
Love Isn’t The Problem. Power Is
Here’s the thing: most women still want love. Intimacy. Companionship. That’s not what they’re walking away from. What they’re rejecting is the power imbalance dressed up as culture. They’re saying no to being expected to leave their job because "the children need you." They’re saying no to being guilted for asking for space, time, money, or even respect.
They’re saying no to being told “this is how all women live”, when in truth, it’s how all women were taught to tolerate. This isn’t a war against men. It’s a wake-up call against roles that were never fair to begin with.
We Saw Our Mothers. We Chose Differently.
Most of us grew up watching women give everything, their time, their health, their dreams, in the name of holding a family together. And we saw what it cost them. We saw their rage tucked into folded laundry. Their heartbreak buried beneath polite smiles. Their intelligence wasted at dining tables where no one asked for their opinion.
So we chose differently. Not out of rebellion. But out of reverence. Because we realised the most respectful thing we can do for the women before us is not to repeat their silences.
A Marriage That Honors, Not Owns
We’re not against marriage. But we want a new kind, one that isn’t built on silent sacrifice. A marriage where both people ask, “What do you need to thrive?” and then actually listen. Where emotional labor is shared, not assumed. Where love isn’t conditional on how much you bend. We’re not asking for too much. We’re asking for what marriage was always meant to be: a place of refuge, not resentment.
Control is dying and that’s uncomfortable for those who benefited from it. But for women, it feels like oxygen. This shift isn’t loud. You won’t always see it on social media. Sometimes, it happens quietly, in a kitchen where a woman says “no” for the first time. In a therapist’s office. In a courtroom. Or in the quiet clarity of a woman who packs her things and leaves not because she’s angry, but because she’s finally awake. Marriage isn’t the enemy. But it must evolve. Because women are no longer interested in being praised for enduring. They’re ready to be loved for being. And that should never have been negotiable.
The Price We’ve Been Paying
We don’t talk enough about how marriage can feel like a job, except there’s no salary, no off days, and you’re expected to smile through the burnout. You cook, clean, care. You manage relationships, remember birthdays, soothe egos, and sometimes, even fund parts of the household. And yet, your ambitions are treated like hobbies. Your exhaustion is dismissed as mood swings. And your silence? That becomes your default setting.
It's Not About Ego. It’s About Existence
Not all at once. But slowly. Through each compromise that doesn’t get reciprocated. Through each day you’re told you're being "too sensitive" for simply expressing a need. Through every moment your boundaries are treated like inconveniences.
Love Isn’t The Problem. Power Is
They’re saying no to being told “this is how all women live”, when in truth, it’s how all women were taught to tolerate. This isn’t a war against men. It’s a wake-up call against roles that were never fair to begin with.
We Saw Our Mothers. We Chose Differently.
So we chose differently. Not out of rebellion. But out of reverence. Because we realised the most respectful thing we can do for the women before us is not to repeat their silences.
A Marriage That Honors, Not Owns
Control is dying and that’s uncomfortable for those who benefited from it. But for women, it feels like oxygen. This shift isn’t loud. You won’t always see it on social media. Sometimes, it happens quietly, in a kitchen where a woman says “no” for the first time. In a therapist’s office. In a courtroom. Or in the quiet clarity of a woman who packs her things and leaves not because she’s angry, but because she’s finally awake. Marriage isn’t the enemy. But it must evolve. Because women are no longer interested in being praised for enduring. They’re ready to be loved for being. And that should never have been negotiable.