In this new series on modern marriages, young couples from across India discuss how they deal with differences of opinion, lifestyle preferences and personal choices.
For Mumbai-based *Priya, arranged marriage was not a personal choice.
The obligation slowly led to unprotected sex, followed by a baby and years of suppressed emotions, leaving her trapped in a marriage she remains in for the sake of her son.
Here, the 39 year old tells Rediff's Divya Nair how financial independence and the love for travel allowed her to taste freedom and make her own decisions.
I was 24 when I got married.
It was an arranged marriage and my consent wasn't important to anyone.
It was always my dad's wish to get me, his eldest daughter, married 'on time'.
I was 19 when my mother passed away due to cancer.
My dad married within the next year because he wanted company and someone to take care of my younger brother.
I missed my mom and I couldn't entirely accept my stepmother.
I had no time to grieve. I had no time for a romantic relationship either.
I had to study well and get a good job.
After completing my post-graduation, I secured a job through campus placement.
My dad immediately created my profile on a matrimony platform and within a year I was getting proposals from 'Malayali bachelors' who were 10 to 15 years older than me.
In 2011, Dad introduced me to *Vighnesh who was an MBA earning a six-figure salary in Mumbai.
He had just bought a house and ticked all the boxes of potential husband material my father was looking for.
He was 33, nine years elder than I.
My friends called him 'Uncle' because he looked shorter than me and didn't fit the typical 'Jiju' image they had in mind.
I should have listened to them but I was too naive. And none of my friends were married so they did not have the experience to give me the right kind of advice.
After the first meeting, his parents insisted that we get married within three months of our engagement. I didn't have enough time to date or understand my future husband.
Our marriage ceremony was a blur.
We had unprotected sex on the night of our wedding.
It was very quick. No foreplay, no small talk. No discussions before or after intercourse.
The worst part? He didn't even ask if I was comfortable.
My husband was elder to me and I didn't have the courage to speak my mind.
Besides, I was too embarrassed to discuss it with anyone including my friends. I thought they would make fun of me.
To be honest, I believed this is how it works.
Even when we went on our honeymoon, he behaved like a typical husband.
I was young and wanted to have fun but he didn't want to try out anything that was not listed by our travel guide. So we didn't.
Once we were back home, reality kicked in.
I was expected to take care of him, ask him if he wanted tea, pack his bags, serve him food and clean up after -- things I never did for my own father or any guy for that matter.
I grew up with working parents who were quite independent and took care of their own stuff.
Since I was studying, I never had the chance to enter the kitchen and learn.
After mom passed away, I was busy with college so no one really taught me anything. Honestly, I had never learned to make anything beyond chai and Maggi.
Within the first year of our marriage, I was expected to cook, clean and take care of the household chores.
While I was making the effort to learn the basics, I was constantly criticised for being a bad housewife, how my parents never 'taught me anything useful'...
I also became pregnant. When my gynaecologist tried to reason that it was too early for me, my husband insisted we should keep the baby because he was getting old.
At 25, I delivered a son I wasn't prepared for and went through post-partum depression.
There was no intimacy, respect or love between my husband and I. He would come to me only if he wanted sex and we never used protection.
I would take emergency post-coitus pills until I had to stop due to health reasons.
Even if we fought or argued, he always thought it was my duty as a wife to take care of him, his mother and my son.
I even considered the idea of a legal separation but delayed the decision so we could co-parent our only son.
During those years, I was not able to do well in my career because there was no one to take care of my son back home.
When my son turned 10, he encouraged me to travel. Initially, it was difficult to leave him behind so sometimes he would tag along.
Soon, I stopped feeling guilty about travelling alone for work or pleasure.
For the first time, I realised what freedom felt like.
My travel friends encouraged me to love myself. And slowly something shifted inside of me.
All these years I had depended on my parents, my family, my husband to keep me happy. Now, I decided to work on myself.
Two years ago, I signed up for an executive MBA programme at a leading business school which helped me secured a promotion at work.
Today, I am financially independent and I can make my own decisions.
I realised that my happiness does not depend on how my husband or my in-laws treat me.
It depends on what I choose to spend my time and energy on. Today, I choose to spend it on my career, my son and my travel.
In the last five years, I have travelled to 12 cities within India and three countries including a trip to the Europe. It has changed the way I feel.
I want to travel the world, fund my son's higher education and be an inspiration to him.
*Names changed to protect privacy.
Dear Reader, would you like to share your relationship challenges with us?
How is your marriage is different from your parents' marriage?
What are the challenges that you are facing that they never did? And how do you deal with them?
We hope this series will help other readers navigate their relationships.
Write to us at getahead@rediff.co.in (subjecT: Modern relationships).
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