It’s called falling in love because you can’t fall on purpose. The barriers of religion, caste or gender do not crop up into your mind when you’re busy experiencing butterflies in your stomach.
For love to transcend into a relationship or marriage takes a long road and the journey is riddled with challenges. We have scoured the responses of 10 people who fell in love and married someone from a different faith.
1. “There is still some whining / gossiping from the extended family, but hey, the whole process helped me figure out which one of them to ignore.”– MrJekyll
2. “My mom was apprehensive at first, but it’s all good. the wedding was in the registrar’s office. other relatives (including some cousins) have cut all contact with me, but I never cared much for the ‘big family, happy family’ drama anyway.”
3. “It’s going good – simply because both our parents have no idea that we are married.”
4. “My parents did. Konkanastha Brahmin and Bengali Muslim. They were ditched by both their families. Truckload of troubles in society. Everything turned out fine I guess. My parents are still in love even though they are in late 60s.”
5. “Will be entering an inter-faith marriage in a few years. We are planning on being financially independent and responsible adults before tying the knot. Don’t care much about extended family or society. Hope everything goes as planned.”
6. “Not me but my parents – my mom’s a Malayali Christian, dad’s a Bihari Hindu. My mother’s family is super chilled out about this sort of thing, so they didn’t bat an eyelid. My dad’s family apparently said they were cool with it but were quite nasty towards my mom for ages after they got married, and made quite a fuss when my parents picked a Christian middle name for me. In addition to this when my dad’s parents would visit us they had all these idiotic rules (no non-veg on Tuesday, can’t cook beef at home, etc.) for a while at least, until I think my dad finally had enough of it and told them to chill the fuck out.”
7. “My parents had an interfaith wedding. As for religion, both my parents are moderately religious. I used to visit both temples and monasteries with them but as I grew up I stopped visiting either regularly. Parents were okay with it and they never stressed on following a particular religion god but just God in general. But the cherry on top was when I turned 6 and my parents sent me to a Catholic Boarding Girls School. Both side family threw a tantrum, but like always my parents gave no shits.”
8. “Initially, we faced tremendous opposition from our parents to get married. One of the key issues for his mother was that I should get converted, while I did not want to, and he supported my decision in this. For this, I will forever respect and be grateful to him. We celebrate all festivals together, and I accompany him to Church when he does go.”
9. “I was a strong Catholic and my husband was a strong Sikh when we married. It has been hard in the past but totally ok now. We worked out a longish list of what we wanted to teach children and what we wanted to practice together and separately. The list was done while we were engaged. It really served as a baseline that we referred back to when we ran into difficulties down the road. He was/is way more open minded than me on matters of religion so we usually ended up going my way but I always appreciated him for it and told him lovingly. He liked this.”
10. “A family in our neighbourhood has had an interfaith marriage – the husband is a Muslim and the wife is a Christen. Both are very well educated and nicely employed in responsible positions. They have two beautiful daughters and a son. As we have known them for over two decades, they are a decent happy family.”– Arun Pal
Also read: North Indians Who Married South Indians Share How It Has Been & It’s Not Like The Movies At All