The Price of a Vow: A Psychological View on Why Indian Marriages Are Bleeding to Death
When families invest everything in the wedding and nothing in the marriage, the casualties are not just statistical — they are Twisha, Deepika, and the next bride no one will name in time.
By Aastha Dhingra / NEWSARC OPINION & ANALYSIS
Two Headlines, One Truth
Last month, Twisha Sharma’s family performed her last rites. Across town, Deepika Nagar’s parents waited for an autopsy report.
Two young women. Two newlywed brides. Two deaths wrapped in dowry demands, family silences, and a society that trains everyone to look away until it is too late.
But these are not just crime reports. They are case studies of a deeper pathology — one that does not begin with murder but with a question no one dares to ask aloud:
Why are we investing so much in the wedding while investing so little in the marriage?
When Marriage Becomes a Ledger
I sit across from a young groom in my clinic. He is 28, educated, employed at a multinational firm. His marriage was arranged eighteen months ago. Today, his wife has stopped speaking to him.
“She wanted a destination wedding,” he tells me. “Gold. A car. A house deposit. My parents took a loan. I liquidated my fixed deposit. Now she says I am not ’emotionally available.'”
I ask him a simple question: What did you invest in your marriage, besides money?
He stares at me. No one has asked him that before.
Here is the uncomfortable truth I see every day: Indian families treat marriage as a financial product. Parents save for decades — fixed deposits, gold bonds, real estate — all for “the wedding.” The ceremony becomes a status display. The dowry becomes a transaction. The reception becomes a balance sheet.
But no one saves for the marriage itself.
No fixed deposit is broken to pay for couples’ therapy. No savings account is labelled “emotional literacy.” No family sits down before the wedding and asks: What patterns are we bringing into this house? What wounds are we expecting our children to heal?
We plan for the party. We never plan for the partnership. And then we wonder why the marriage collapses.
The Greed That Wears a Family Face
When a mother-in-law demands more money — a larger flat, a newer car, a third gold chain — the media calls it greed. And it is.
But as a clinical psychologist, I see something else beneath the surface.
Greed is rarely just greed. It is a symptom of untreated family wounds.
In many Indian families, the older generation never processed their own deprivation. They married young, lived with limited resources, suppressed their desires, and called it sacrifice. But those desires do not disappear. They fester. And when a son brings home a daughter-in-law — with her own family’s money, her own education, her own potential — something ugly awakens.
It is not only greed. It is jealousy.
Why should she have what I never got? Why should her parents spend when mine could not? Why should she be happy when I was taught to endure?
This is the intergenerational wound speaking. And it speaks through demands, through taunts, through silent treatment and midnight fights. The daughter-in-law becomes a target not because she has done anything wrong, but because she represents everything the family secretly resents: comfort, opportunity, love without conditions.
The demand for a bigger car is not about the car. It is about control. It is about the unspoken sentence: You will suffer as I suffered.
And when the girl breaks — when she stops eating, stops sleeping, stops speaking — the family calls her “weak.” When she dies, they call it “unexpected.”
But it was never unexpected. It was predictable. It was written in every family dinner, every whispered complaint, every silence masquerading as peace.
A Global Lens — What the World Knows That India Refuses to See
India is not alone in its marital crisis. But it is uniquely silent about it.
In Sweden, premarital cohabitation is the norm. Couples live together, test compatibility, and only marry if the partnership works. Marriage failure rates are lower because marriage is not entered blindly.
In Japan, the government funds “marriage education” programmes — workshops on communication, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution. Divorce rates have stabilised.
In Germany, couples can access state-subsidised counselling before marriage. The law recognises that prevention is cheaper than litigation.
In the United States, research from the Gottman Institute — spanning 50 years — shows that couples wait an average of six years from the onset of serious problems before seeking help. By then, contempt and stonewalling are entrenched. Recovery is rare.
India does none of this. We do not test compatibility. We do not fund education. We do not normalise therapy. We do not even talk about emotional needs without embarrassment.
Instead, we invest everything in the wedding — and nothing in the marriage. And then we call the resulting collapse a “family matter.”
The Quiet Crisis of Men
There is a provocation circulating in recent journalism: Why are Indian men glad that marriages are failing? Let me answer that as a clinician.
Many men I treat are not glad about failure. They are exhausted. And exhaustion, when unnamed, can look like relief.
Here is what men tell me behind closed doors:
“I work fourteen hours a day. Then I come home to more demands.”
“My wife expects me to read her mind. My mother expects me to take her side. I have no side left.”
“If the marriage ends, I lose my house, my savings, my access to my children. I am not a husband. I am an ATM with a court date.”
These are not the voices of misogyny. These are the voices of human beings who were never taught how to share vulnerability, how to negotiate emotional labour, how to say “I am drowning” without being called weak.
Indian men are socialised to be unshakable pillars. But pillars crack when the weight is uneven. The wife feels abandoned. The mother feels disrespected. The marriage enters free fall.
And somewhere inside, the man thinks: If it ends, at least the silence will stop. That is not gladness. That is clinical despair.
The Story We Must Rewrite — Solutions That Work
I do not write this column to despair. I write to diagnose. And every diagnosis must end with a prescription.
1. Break the Cycle of Wedding-First Thinking Start saving for the marriage, not just the wedding. Set aside money for couples’ counselling, premarital education, and emergency mental health support. Treat these as non-negotiable expenses — like a child’s school fees or a parent’s health insurance.
2. Name the Family Wounds Before a wedding, families should sit with a counsellor and answer hard questions: What patterns are we repeating? Where does our jealousy come from? Why does money feel like love to us? This is uncomfortable. It is also the only way to stop intergenerational trauma from claiming another bride.
3. Legal Reform with Psychological Sense Alimony, custody, and property laws must be restructured to reduce fear on both sides. Transparent prenuptial agreements — currently underutilised in India — can turn marriage from a financial gamble into a deliberate contract. This is not unromantic. It is adult.
4. Normalise Male Vulnerability Workplaces, families, and media must actively dismantle the myth that men do not need support. Men’s support groups, fatherhood workshops, and mental health campaigns targeted at men are not optional. They are as urgent as any women’s safety initiative.
5. Make Premarital Education a Norm Not religious instruction — but practical, evidence-based education on communication, conflict resolution, financial planning, and emotional labour. Schools can introduce it. States can mandate it for court marriages. Employers can offer it as a benefit.
Stop Waiting for the Funeral
Twisha Sharma did not die because of one bad day. She died because a thousand small cruelties — demands, dismissals, silences — were normalised over months and years.
Deepika Nagar did not die because of one greedy relative. She died because a family system that confused control with care found no external check, no intervention, no voice saying: This is not okay.
Stop saving only for the wedding. Start investing in the marriage. Stop calling family wounds “tradition.” Start calling them what they are — untreated trauma demanding a new victim. Stop expecting men to be pillars. Start teaching them to be partners. Stop telling young women that adjustment is a virtue. Start telling them that survival is not the same as living.
A marriage is not a fixed deposit. It is not a status symbol. It is not a financial product or a family merger. It is two people, agreeing to be human together.
Let us stop building marriages that look beautiful on paper and bleed in private. Let us build something that actually lasts.
(Aastha Dhingra is Principal Consultant & Co-Founder of AD Executive Training & Coaching Pvt. Ltd., Clinical Psychologist at Polaris Hospital, and Editor at the International Journal of Indian Psychology. )
