Abstract
Personal choice marriages, commonly called love marriages, are a phenomenon that have historically been grounded in individualistic values and Western societies; thus, arranged marriages are still a common practice in non-Western countries such as India. The primary purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to better understand the shared lived experience of Indian couples in love marriages, both those in India and those who have emigrated abroad. Sixteen individuals were interviewed for this study in India (n = 10, representing five heterosexual couples) or the United States (n = 6, representing three heterosexual couples). Through thematic analysis, three themes were found to represent the primary lived experiences of couples residing in India and in the United States. Based upon these themes, specific implications for professional counselors are highlighted.
“Romantic love” and marriage by personal choice are largely Euro-American practices rooted in individualistic values (Fox, 1975; Netting, 2006). Historically, until relatively recently, even in Western countries, the so-called marrying for love was considered a serious threat to social order: “For thousands of years, marriage served so many economic, political, and social functions that the individual needs and wishes of its members (especially women and children) took second place” (Coontz, 2005, p. 306).
Outside of Western countries, marrying by autonomous choice is still an uncommon occurrence (e.g., Tsutsui, 2013). Throughout much of Asia, including India, the practice of arranged marriage (i.e., a marriage primarily brokered by parents and elder members of one’s extended family), where romantic love is typically not a premarital consideration, continues to be dominant in present-day Indian society (Nanda, 2000; Singh, 2010). In India, mate selection is often decided by the family unit rather than the individual in isolation (Myers, Madathil, & Tingle, 2005). This is because marital bonds in India are more usually envisioned as an agreement between two families where the married couple has filial obligations to fulfill that are steeply rooted in familial cultural and religious traditions (Madathil & Benshoff, 2008; Myers et al., 2005; Sonpar, 2005).
However, the last decade has witnessed a rapid increase in mate self-selection among the youngest generation of individuals in India (Fuller & Narasimhan, 2008; Twamley, Pryce, & Kielmann, 2012). Indian couples who self-select each other are frequently facing family and community disownment, discrimination, and violence (Fuller & Narasimhan, 2008; Twamley, 2013; Twamley et al., 2012).
As a result, couples in personal choice (i.e., romantic love) marriages are now approaching counselors (most of who entered into arranged marriages) for assistance in India at unprecedented rates, and Indian counselors are largely unprepared for this (Bedi & Rogers, 2016; Sonpar, 2005). Given this rapid transformation in trends, there is relatively little research on this phenomenon in India to guide professionals. As such, there is a lack of research to guide evidence-based counseling to this quickly growing segment of the Indian population.
The groundbreaking research in India on this topic examined couples who married for romantic love across social caste, thereby conflating caste issues with those specifically related to personal choice marriages in India (Dhar, 2013). Thus, there remains a noticeable gap in knowledge about those who do not violate the custom of endogamy (i.e., marriage within a specific social unit, such as a caste) but still choose a spouse outside of their family’s choosing.
An exploratory qualitative research study was conducted that used a mixed-methods approach grounded in interpretive phenomenography as well as utilized questionnaires, interviews, and rating scales (Gala & Kapadia, 2014). In investigating emerging adults in Baroda, Gujarat, they found sincerity and commitment as key aspects of romantic relationships and concluded that commitment should entail benefits for the individual and everyone else involved (i.e., extended family members). They also found that the absence of romantic love was not considered acceptable to dissolve a marriage by the majority of participants. Interestingly, despite expressing overwhelmingly strong support for the institution of love marriage, when offered with a hypothetical challenge of participating in their own love marriage, only 13% believed they would follow through with the marriage in the face of strong familial adversity.
Studies such as this which shed light on the lived experience of participating in a romantic love marriage in India are scarce. Gala and Kapadia’s (2014) study in particular was notably limited by their sample demographic—they focused upon emerging adults aged 18–25 from middle to upper socioeconomic status who were also attending college. Gala and Kapadia (2014) did also consult middle adults; however, their criteria for including middle adults were they had to have children who were emerging adults aged 18–25. The authors further did not include immigration status or other cultural identities such as religion as a focal point of the study. Furthermore, the transferability of their results can only be determined by further research in other parts of the country. Consequently, there is further research warranted investigating this phenomenon of love marriages among Indian couples in relation to immigration status, religion, and other cultural identities. In addition to the need to examine experiences of intracaste love marriage in other parts of India, we believe that the thoughts of Indian couples who have recently emigrated out of India, as they reflect back on their experiences in India as well as their experiences in their new host country, may provide unique insights into better understanding the phenomenon and providing strategies as well as implications for counselors, both in India and abroad.
The purpose of the study is to better understand the lived experience of Indian couples in love marriages in India and those who have relocated to the United States (U.S.), including how their experiences impact their ability to remain a couple within the larger cultural environment within which they reside. Such research is not only greatly needed for counselors in India but holds relevance for counseling outside of India as couples in love marriages sometimes emigrate to other countries to avoid persecution and further disruptions to their marriage. Through this examination of love marriage couples’ experiences, we hope to offer practical suggestions for counselors as well as guidance on helping Indian couples navigate the love marriage process.
Method
Participants
Data were collected from a sample of eight Asian Indian heterosexual couples who “married for love” (i.e., a personal choice marriage) instead of being married into an arranged marriage. There was no restriction on age except for being an adult (18 years of age or older). Sixteen individuals participated in this study. Five couples were residing in India at the time of the study and the other three couples immigrated from India and were residing in the U.S. at the time of the study. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 44 (M = 32.13, SD = 6.05 years). Participants filled out a demographic questionnaire regarding their ethnicity and religion. For those residing in Indiawith regard to ethnicity, four reported themselves to be “South Asian,” four as “Indian,” one as “Asian Indian,” and one as “Yadav.” With regard to their religion, seven subscribed to the Hindu religion and three from the Sikh religion. For those three couples residing in the U.S., with regard to ethnicity, one self-identified as “Indian,” three as “Indian-American,” and two as “Asian Indian.” With regard to their religion, two subscribed to the Hindu religion, one as Jain, one as Christian, and two as having no religious affiliation.
Data Collection
Participants were recruited from corresponding Indian and psychology open LISTSERVs, through snowball sampling (which existing participants are invited to identify other suitable participants and ask them to participate) and through word of mouth. Participants provided written consent to participate in the semistructured interview. Participants were offered the option of face-to-face, phone, Skype, or an e-mail interview.
Participants were interviewed (couples were interviewed together) in a semistructured manner separately by the first author following the guidelines established by Rubin and Rubin (2012) for responsive interviews, which promote greater reflection and thoughtfulness to be integrated into each participant’s responses. Open-ended questions were asked of the participants such as “Describe your experience being in a love marriage as opposed to an arranged marriage?”“What are you most proud of in your marriage relationship?” and “What are your concerns for your relationship?” These were each followed by responsive questions seeking additional clarification or expansion of what the participants communicated.
There was no compensation for their participation. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, resulting in paper transcriptions suitable for subsequent thematic analyses. Institutional review board approval was obtained prior to data collection.
Data Analysis
Thematic Analysis (TA; Braun & Clarke, 2006; Crowe, Inder, & Porter, 2015) was chosen for analyzing the transcribed interviews as it would allow us to capture the subjective lived experiences of the participants without evoking an a priori structuring of the data. We elected to analyze the data separately for participants residing in India and the U.S. due to the possibility that unique nationalistic and other contextual factors could differentially affect their experiences. In addition, by analyzing their experiences separately, we could offer preliminary suggestions about what is relatively unique to the love marriage experience for Indian individuals while in India versus those who have relocated abroad, and particularly to the U.S.
Two members of our research team independently coded the data (i.e., reading each transcript and assigning codes to meaningful chunks of speech). After each transcript was coded, these two members of our team reviewed the codes and worked to achieve a consensus of codes for each transcript as well as categories (i.e., higher order codes that could encompass two or more initial codes) that could adequately summarize the codes. Using the agreed upon codes and categories, we then independently developed initial themes (codes that summarize initial codes and categories) for both the India and U.S. participants separately and then met to coalesce our themes through discussion and negotiation and arrive at a consensus for themes used to summarize the key meanings expressed in the interviews. During this process, subthemes were also developed consensually.
After this preliminary analysis and organization of the data, the researchers put the codes and themes aside for 3 months and then asked two questions: (a) “Are these themes truly representative of the participant’s individual voices and experiences” and (b) “Are these themes and subthemes truly separate and independent or are they connected and overlap one another?” Upon rereading the transcripts again and rereviewing the themes and subthemes developed initially, it became apparent a second round of analysis was warranted to better demarcate the themes from each other. Consequently, the same two researchers reworked the themes/subthemes through further discussion and consensus. During this second round of analysis, one theme was removed with its codes subsumed under a different theme, subthemes were removed as it was determined that they were not distinctive enough, and minor wording changes occurred in the phrasing of themes and subthemes.
Upon completing this second round of analysis, and taking another break from analysis for 3 months, the researchers asked “Did we miss anything?” We therefore followed Saldaña’s (2009) recommendation for rigorous qualitative research by reflecting deeper on our qualitative inquiry with additional attention to the codes, categories, and themes from both levels of our TA and conducted a third round of consensual TA. Other than moving one theme into a different preexisting theme (thereby further simplifying the thematic structure of the data), changes made were relatively minor at this point (e.g., minor wording changes to themes), providing us with confidence in the analyses. It seemed these subtle alterations, resulting from the third level of TA, captured the detail and demarcation that we were seeking in our organization of the data. This process of repeatedly reanalyzing the data is referred to as cycle coding with the first two TAs results being referred to as first cycle and second cycle coding (Saldana, 2009).
Qualitative Rigor Analyses
The researchers commissioned an independent research auditor not involved in the research study up to this point. The auditor possessed a master’s degree and was currently enrolled in a doctoral program in counselor education. The auditor did not receive compensation for completing the audit. The auditor has previously received training in conducting research audits of qualitative research and had previous experience doing research audits. The auditor followed a detailed procedure that included reading the research proposal and research ethics application, reading all study-related documents, and reviewing raw data accounts (e.g., transcripts, demographic forms). The auditor suggested a few wording changes to the themes to better reflect the codes, which were adhered to. In the audit report, the auditor concluded, “It was apparent in reviewing the materials that the researchers had been rigorous and systematic in their data collection. Therefore, the conclusions of the study seem warranted after examining the transcripts, documents, and analytic methods.”
The researchers then reached out to all participants via e-mail for member checking (i.e., contacting participants upon interview transcription and extraction of codes from each transcript to confirm that the researchers’ understanding was accurate in representing what they intended to communicate). Participants were given 2 weeks to respond. Participants were informed they could decline performing the member check by not responding within the 2-week timeframe. One of the participants from India responded. It is unclear if this respondent only spoke for them self or consulted with their partner and was speaking for the couple. This individual only made grammatical editing-type changes to the transcript for linguistic accuracy. One of the participants from the U.S. responded to the offer of member checking. It is unclear if this respondent only spoke for them self or consulted with their partner and was speaking for the couple. This individual reported full agreement with the transcript and the themes and suggested no alterations to better capture what was initially communicated.
Findings
The experience of the Indian participants can be summarized through three themes: Family culture—Gender roles, individual and family compatibility, and diversity. The experience of the American participants can be summarized through three themes as well: family culture, communication, and social support. Given the context between couples currently residing in India and couples who had immigrated from India and were residing in the U.S. are vastly different, the TA was performed separately for Indian participants residing in India and Indian participants residing in the U.S., in order to preserve the contextual voices of the participants from each geographic region.
The Experiences of Couples in India
Theme 1: Family culture—gender roles
All study participants in India regarded decisions about marriage as potently influenced by family culture from the very outset of the courting and relationship. In speaking about family culture, the familial expectations and norms around gender roles seemed to be most frequently commented upon by the participants as persuasively influencing their experiences and how they navigated their own expression of gender roles in their marriage. It should be noted that there was no consensus on the ideal gender roles with polar opposite opinions sometimes being expressed between couples. For example, one husband endorsed a more egalitarian gender role division and less hierarchy (G.K., pseudonym) while another stated, “a girl should act like a girl and keep quiet…. If she remains respectful, it will solve everything” (Ibadat, pseudonym). Nevertheless, in call cases, speaking about gender roles in some way was characteristic of the narratives of all the participants from India.
Theme 2: Individual and family compatibility
Several participants reported, even for their love marriage, decisions about whether the partner was the right person to marry were to be directly or indirectly influenced by family members, especially in regard to perceived compatibility. Participants considered both types or forms of compatibility—compatibility between the partners to be married (i.e., individual compatibility) and the compatibility between the families of each of the partners to be married as well as the partner and the other partner’s family (family compatibility).
For the participants in this study, individual compatibility was seen as a dynamic rather than static process and could develop through learning about each other through marital “ups and downs.” Compatibility was typically conceptualized as part of the couple growing together (i.e., the couple grows together in their compatibility). In love marriages with parental approval among the participants, the couples placed higher value in getting to “know one another” for the sake of meshing their needs and expectations and working toward mutual fulfillment in light of sometimes notably different family cultural upbringings (i.e., more time spent building compatibility). Couples in arranged marriages with dissent from parents expressed less value or at least time spent on actively creating greater individual compatibility and focused a lot more on family compatibility postmarriage.
Regardless of whether families were in support of the union or not, the couples’ experiences and judgments of overall compatibility were centered on acceptance (or lack thereof) of the parents, which often boiled down to whether the partner was compatible, not just for the individual but compatible for the family (including whether the families of both spouses were understood to be compatible). Compatibility here meant more than interpersonal compatibility (i.e., getting along well with minimal conflicts, agreement in values, consistency in expectations) and included sociocultural/socioeconomic elements such as religion uniformity, family reputation, and social status.
Because most of the couples lived with the family-of-origin members of the husband (as is traditionally customary in India), family compatibility was also commonly understood to be defined in terms of “agreeableness” (a term used repeatedly across participants) with the household family’s gender and multigenerational expectations. This was a frequent source of conflict between the couples. For example, when conflict between the wife residing in the husband’s family home arose and the husband’s family members around these expectations, for many of the female participants, the in-laws often reminded her that she was not their choice. This actual occurrence or the fear of it being said typically created greater pressure in the female spouse and promoted adherence to more rigid traditional family roles than the women typically wished.
In addition, because of the perception of lack of full family compatibility due to the parents not making the spousal choice for their child, a common attitude toward conflict management in these personal choice marriages was to “solve it on your own.”This was because the couples felt that the parents and other family elders did not make the decision for the couple to marry and thus should not bear the burden of helping the couple resolve marital conflicts. This view was also apparently sometimes expressed directly by the parents themselves. In contrast, in arranged marriages, “parents have a little bit of responsibility…if you have fight you can run to mom and dad” (as stated by one of the female participants in the study). It was acknowledged by many participants that the lack of parental involvement in conflicts between the couples created greater stress and burden for the couple. This following participant statement demonstrates the issue well: In love marriages, probably you need to work a little harder on your relationship…. In a love marriage, guys’ parents feels let down as the girl has not been of their choice and they were forced—they had to accept the girl…. Half of the fights I have with my husband is because of what my in-laws did or did not do…. My father-in law has not spoken to me ever since we got married even though we live in the same house. He has still not accepted me because I wasn’t his choice.
Theme 3: Diversity
Innumerable cultural differences exist within India (Dhar, 2013). Participants noted that remaining within state and within caste within their marriage mitigated couple relationship and familial difficulties as not doing so would compound the stigma already associated with a personal choice marriage and introduce a whole new set of challenges to overcome, if they had an intercaste or interstate marriage. This was because there was huge variability in how family members perceived and would accept marriages that were intercaste, interstate, or interreligion. The couples recognized and generally agreed that if the couple was consistent across variables such as these, there was “higher chances of a successful marriage and blending of two sides of the family” (quoting one of the female participants in the study). Therefore, according to the participants, diversity variables such as caste, religion, state, and socioeconomic status were important considerations, even in personal choice marriages. If couples chose to marry across these variables, participants stated that there was or would be even greater personal and financial responsibility placed upon the couple and greater conflict with family members.
The Experiences of Couples in the United States
Theme 1: Family culture
Among participants in the U.S., family culture was frequently talked about as well and stated to be influential but had much less actual impact on the coupling process and day-to-day functioning of the couple. There was notably much less emphasis on family culture related to gender roles in the narrative of participants, and gender roles were reported to be more fluid, mimicking the more egalitarian norm in the U.S. These participants often mentioned how they were able to transcend family-of-origin culture partly due to the distance from relatives in India.
Couples from the U.S., while still acknowledging respect for the family culture, felt less bound by it. In addition, these couples tended to endorse individual compatibility more and consider family compatibility relatively less important. Moreover, their individual compatibility was less considerate of shared values and beliefs with family culture and more focused on individualistic concerns. In many ways, the Indian couples began to adopt many of the normative U.S. assumptions, customs, and norms of the dominant American culture.
One thing that appeared relatively unique to the experience of the couples interviewed in the U.S. was that participants intentionally withheld information about the dynamics of their relationship from their family members or even about the existence of the marriage at all. Additionally, these participants discussed how their family members, once they knew of the relationship, would not necessarily disclose the existence of the personal choice marriage to extended family members. This experience was facilitated by one contextual factor that tied all the U.S.-residing couples together: All or most of the family members (including extended family members) of the couple still resided in India, which made it easier to hide the marriage and keep this secret from being discovered. For example, one female participant stated, “My brother lied to all his family that I was married, because I eloped [and] my mother specifically didn’t tell anybody we were married…and basically lied to everybody” (Simran, pseudonym).
Another unique experience of some couples expressed by those in the U.S. related to the realization that the familial norm against divorce applied less to a personal choice marriage, especially when it was conducted abroad. The Indian couples in the U.S. appeared more likely to believe that their families would be more accepting of a divorce given the circumstances surrounding the marriage. For example, one female participant relayed, “the thing that my mother said was, ‘well you didn’t get married with us; so, it’s basically fine if you get a divorce.’”
Theme 2: Communication
Communication was discussed by many of the Indian participants residing in the U.S., and it appeared to be quite salient to their experience of being in a love marriage in the U.S. Two aspects of communication were most frequently highlighted by the participants: openness and conflict management. In contrast, communication was mentioned less frequently and less deeply in the narratives of couples interviewed in India, although it was still considered central due to less reliance on family members as a result of a love marriage.
Several participants in the U.S. discussed how openness within their communication with their love marriage partner was important for their relationship and a chief aspect of their experience of being in a love marriage. They elucidated how they, being more independent from family members, have had the flexibility to be more open to each other’s styles of communication as well as being more open and vulnerable with their wants and needs in their communication to each other (this was in contrast to devoting more energy to managing compatibility with the partner’s family). Additionally, in connection with communication, participants related how their ability to autonomously manage conflict (without familial input) within their relationship was an important factor to their experience of being in a love marriage. They frequently talked about the necessity for collaboration and support of one another in conflict because there was no family to intervene. While this was also mentioned as a trend by the love marriage couples in India, their degree of autonomy did not come close to rivaling the Indian couples in the U.S.
Theme 3: Social support
The theme of social support was central to the accounts of the couples in the U.S. Multiple participants expounded upon the support they received or did not receive from both friends and family members in connection to their love marriage relationship. Three key experiences related to support centered on nonfamilial support, emotional versus logistical support, and loss of support.
In being away from all or the majority of family members, as their families of origin still resided in India, the couples in the U.S. needed support from alternative sources. Therefore, they sought the acceptance of their relationship and encouragement from nonfamily members. One female participant provided a poignant example when she stated: My best friend…. she really made it a point to arrange more times for me and my partner and her and her husband to get together so that everyone gets to know each other more…that was a really big support.
Two primary types of support received were identified across participants—the logistical support of being able to provide assistance pragmatically in assisting in meeting one’s life needs and then the emotional support of being able to be vulnerable with one’s own thoughts and emotions through conversation. Both types of support are meaningful and important to their experience of maintaining their love marriage. More often friends (rather than family members) would provide one or both types of this support.
Another common experience related to social support among the participants was the acute awareness of a loss of support from family members. This loss of support involved both types of support discussed previously—the logistical and emotional. The range of social support losses of these participants ranged from acceptance but limited support due to distance (families of origin residing in India) to exclusion or disownment from the family, explicit rejection from the family of the choice marriage, and the refusal to engage in conversation with the spouse. One female participant stated, “so my entire family disowned me and stopped talking to me for you know at least a year.” Another female participant, whose parents were in the U.S. stated: “They showed up to my apartment…took everything that they were paying for at the time, which included my car, my cell phone…”
In summary, Indian participants residing in the U.S. highlighted their experiences and the themes of family culture, communication, and social support emerged from the analysis of their experiences. Family culture was stated to be influential but had much less impact on the coupling process and day-to-day functioning of the couple. Communication was emphasized, especially in connection to openness and conflict management. Social support was discussed in forms of needing to be supplemented with nonfamilial support, due to either their families’ of origin rejection of their love marriage or being limited due to the families of origin still residing in India.
Discussion
The purpose of the study was to better understand the experience of Asian Indian couples in love marriages in India and the U.S. after migrating from India, including their possible similarities and differences. Such understanding is not only needed for counselors in India but also for counselors abroad as couples in love marriages sometimes relocate in other countries to avoid persecution (Gupta, 1976). The results supported the initial decision to analyze the data separately for participants residing in India and the U.S. as there were differences found that appeared due to a different national context and the outcome of relocating away from one’s home country.
The experience of the India-residing participants was summarized through three themes: family culture—gender roles, individual and family compatibility, and diversity. The experience of the participants who had immigrated to the U.S. was also summarized through three themes: family culture, communication, and social support. India-residing couples may choose to relate their marital discussion around these three important themes.
With regard to family culture, the effect of gender norms from families of origin was quite influential in the ongoing functioning of the couples in India. Members of the couple were either actively conforming to these traditional gender norms within marriages or were actively working hard not to reproduce them—either way, they were central to the autobiographical shared narratives. This could be related to the stronger influence of patriarchy in India and the less porous separations between male and female gender norms in India (Ruback & Pandley, 1996). We would expect that the situation would be different among those couples now residing in the U.S., which was found to be the case. The couples from the U.S. were better able to transcend traditional Indian gender roles and divisions of labor and reproduce the more egalitarian gendered nature of American society.
Despite gender roles, unlike in the U.S., where compatibility between couples is commonly seen as an interaction between relatively stable, preexisting characteristics (Huston, & Houts, 1998), the couples in this study saw individual compatibility as something more dynamic and malleable. They expected to grow in compatibility through the typical trials and tribulations of any marriage. Consequently, their compatibility was not stagnant—it indeed could change over time and their compatibility could even increase, making the couple more suitable for one another. This perspective stands in stark contrast to the sentiment behind the term “irreconcilable differences,” implying permanent incompatibility between couples.
The couples residing in the U.S. appeared less concerned with how well their partner and the partner’s family meshed with their own family of origin’s values, beliefs, status, and so on. This was in stark contrast to whose couples who selected partners of their own choosing and remained in India. Family compatibility was still a significant consideration in selecting their spouse. By family compatibility, they meant how the couple’s families are well matched across both interpersonal variables (e.g., agreement in values, consistency in expectations) and sociocultural variables (e.g., caste, religion, family reputation, and social status). In line with this, the couples in India were quite cognizant that the love marriage was way more likely to encounter substantial resistance and greater familial conflict if the love marriage was across caste, religion, state, and so on and took this into consideration before electing to pursue a love marriage (this was not expressed by those Indian couples in the U.S.). Considerable energy was often devoted by the couples in India to addressing and trying to overcome familial compatibility issues and this sometimes required the female spouse to adhere more rigidly to traditional Indian divisions of labor and gender roles. In contrast, because the couples in the U.S. could, and often did, hide their marriages from many members of the family or extended family network, there was less need to consider family compatibility in selecting a spouse. One covert benefit of this secrecy, coupled with the absence of family selection of the spouse, was that the couples in the U.S. believed that their family members were more accepting of a divorce should it happen, as the family did not choose the partner; while divorce was still seen as less acceptable among the couples engaged in love marriages and residing in India.
A similarity between both the couples in the U.S. and India was the greater reliance required on the couple partnership (vs. a historical greater reliance on family members for communication assistance and conflict management) due to choosing their own partner, although this was magnified considerably among the U.S. couples due to the additional factor of being in a different country from most of their family. In a sense, by selecting a traditionally Western type of marriage (love marriage) grounded in individualistic values, emphasizing the individual’s choice in marriage rather than the family’s choice (Barber, 2004), the couple then seem compelled to adopt more of a more individualistic (vs. collectivistic) stance to marital communication and conflict management. When compounded by the physical separation from those who could judge and stigmatize, this afforded the U.S. couples greater opportunity for responding to each other’s needs and desires and to focus on the couple itself versus larger familial considerations. However, one downfall of being in a love marriage was generally less family support. For the couples in the U.S., the participants stated they could compensate for this by relying on friends for things that they would have relied on from their family members if back in India. This was not characteristic of the love marriage couples interviewed in India, as the participants reported they generally felt more alone. It may not have been as culturally appropriate to replace support usually received from family with friends (because family was still around), as was more common with those couples who lived abroad from families.
Like all research, our study has some limitations which should be addressed in future research. For example, despite the in-depth analyses, our study was limited due to participant demographics and geographical regions, which certainly restrict the transferability of the findings. Therefore, similar studies should be conducted with different participants in order to triangulate findings. In addition, most participants did not provide a member check verifying the themes representing their lived experience, so it is possible that some misunderstandings could have occurred in transcription or developing underlying meanings from participant interviews.
Implications for Couples Counseling
The findings could be useful for couples, either residing in India or the U.S., to discuss in order to better understand their collective experience and develop insights. The findings could also serve as normalization for marital conflicts that are occurring and provide guidance for how better to conceptualize and overcome the couples concerns and conflicts.
Based on the results of this study, some tentative considerations are provided for couples/family counselors working with couples in personal choice marriages either in India or the U.S.: It appears that, regardless of their residency, couples in choice marriages are typically able to rely less on family support so it is expected that time may need to be devoted to developing alternative sources of social support, especially from those fully supportive of the union. This may especially be of importance to those couples in India who expressed more loneliness. By virtue of entering into a choice marriage, regardless of whether in India or the U.S., counselors need to be aware that the couple may be less collectivistic in their thinking and decision-making and to not make assumptions about the couple’s values. Therefore, it is important to leave room for more individualistic values and counselors should be careful not to assume that Indian couples in counseling are necessarily always or even often working from strong collectivistic understandings, even if residing in India. Also, even if they are in a love marriage, it is important to note they may not have rejected any collectivist values either; consequently, counselors need to check their biases and avoid assumptions. When counseling couples in India who have selected a choice marriage, a counselor should be aware that issues of family compatibility likely still played a role in selecting a spouse and likely continue to exert notable influence in the couples’ interactions and conflicts. Therefore, this information should be queried if it could be relevant to the presenting concern. When counseling couples in India who have selected a choice marriage, it could be that the couple may be less likely to endorse a position of “irreconcilable differences” leading to marital dissolution. Therefore, they may continue to work through such apparently incommensurable differences based on the belief that they will grow in compatibility. Therefore, more patience may be required the counselor as the couple may attempt to resolve differences that perhaps some more Westernized individuals would be less likely to try to substantially work through. When counseling Asian Indian couples in the U.S., the counselor should ask about any possible secrecy of the marriage from family members, which does not appear to be a standard question asked of couples in the U.S. Another possibly important but relatively unique question is to ask about how much of the family of origin and extended family still live in India. These two dynamics appear quite important to contextualizing and conceptualizing Indian love marriage couples’ concerns. It is a common assumption that marriage is highly sacred in India and that divorce should try to be avoided at all costs (Gupta, 1976). When counseling Asian Indian couples in the U.S., it would be important to not necessarily assume that divorce would be as frowned upon or highly stigmatized, especially in the case of couples who married while abroad. In fact, family members in India may not consider it a true marriage and could welcome or hope for its dissolution so that the family can play a role in selecting a new spouse.
It is further important to examine the results in the lens of the Multicultural and Social Justice Counselor Competencies (MSJCC), developed by Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, and McCullough (2016). The MSJCC emphasize four developmental domains in sequence: counselor self-awareness, client worldview, the counseling relationship, and counseling and advocacy interventions (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2016). Consequently, within the framework of the MSJCC, we offer the following additional recommendations to counselors: Explore and understand your own assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs surrounding Asian Indians, love marriages, and arranged marriages in order to identify potential biases that need to be overcome. It is important that counselors learn about and recognize aspects of the Asian Indian and Indian-American worldviews and how they influence the presenting concern. For examples, for each client–couple relationship, the counselor should assess and consider the levels of acculturation to Western norms, particularly the degree of individualism versus collectivism influencing their decisions, and the extent of familial influence on their decision-making. Like for all counseling relationships, the counselor needs to be attentive to the interaction of the counselor’s many identities with that of the client’s and couple’s many identities in order to best develop and nurture an effective therapeutic relationship. For Asian Indian couples in particular, especially those who have immigrated abroad, they may possess additional identities (e.g., immigrant, social outcast) and additional contextual variables (e.g., acculturation, disownment by family) that influence the therapeutic relationship than the “typical” couple presenting for couples counseling. The MSJCC emphasizes the integration of social justice into counseling practice and the responsibility to advocate for clients and use culturally sensitive and inclusive interventions (American Counseling Association, 2014, Ratts et al., 2016). In order to do so, first, it is important to determine how marginalized or privileged Indian individuals may be in the particular community where services are being sought and other contextual factors that commonly would affect marginalization for this ethnic group (e.g., socioeconomic status, number of Indians in the region) and therefore couple functioning. In other words, counselors should be mindful of the intersectionality between the clients’ marginalized and mainstream identities in context of the current social and national environment. It may be possible that a particular identity may be mainstream in one environment (e.g., U.S.) and marginalized in another (e.g., India) or be considered marginalizing by one subset of the couple’s contacts and celebrated by another subset. Recognition of this mutability is essential for engaging in oppression and social justice dialogues and related interventions. Second, the counselor is aware of culturally congruent counseling and social justice interventions and one way of doing so is to integrate South Asian Indian traditional healing practices directly into the work or draw upon their assumptions and understandings in devising new interventions (see Bedi, 2018). In conclusion, working with couples in love marriages who have migrated from India or who are residing in India is unique and entails several implications for counselors. Counselors need to be aware of and integrate the MSJCC into their practice in order to ensure ethical and effective counseling services when working with this unique population. Indeed, the experiences of couples are certainly different, depending upon if they are residing in the U.S. or in India, it is important that counselors are aware of these differences. Further, couples counselors need to be cautious of making assumptions about the couple values or experiences. We encourage couples counselors to gain understanding of the unique cultural implications as well as the identity intersections between the counselor and each partner’s identities within the couple. Lastly, couples counselors need to be aware of the family of origin dynamics in connection to the couple’s love marriage, dismissing these issues may risk causing harm and rending unethical practice.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
Special thanks to Lauren Elizabeth Ireland for completing the audit for this study.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
