This is the situation I’m in:
I’m 30F, from a traditional Indian background where marriage is very important and time-sensitive, especially for women. My family has been putting a lot of pressure on me to get married, and it’s causing me significant stress and anxiety.
I’ve been in a relationship with my 33M German boyfriend for 3 years. He’s kind and loving, and I genuinely care for him. However, he is still a medical student and hasn’t been able to finish due to repeatedly failing the final oral exam. He’s already failed twice, and the upcoming exam is his final attempt.
In May, his father passed away from cancer. Since then, he has been grieving and overwhelmed with legal and family responsibilities related to the inheritance. As a result, he has not been able to prepare for the exam. He now feels unlikely to attempt it this September, which means the next opportunity would be March 2026, so more waiting.
I’ve tried to raise the topic of our future, but I’ve avoided being too firm or direct because I don’t want to seem insensitive while he is grieving. At the same time, I feel stuck in limbo. My mother is extremely upset and urging me to consider arranged marriage options. I’ve started therapy to deal with my anxiety, but I still feel overwhelmed.
These are the people involved:
1. Me (30F): Feeling pressure to move forward with life, have a family, and meet cultural expectations.
2. My boyfriend (33M): Grieving, overwhelmed, and still academically stuck.
3. My family: Actively pressuring me to marry soon, losing patience.
4. My therapist: Recently started working with them.
What should I do to move forward with my life and find clarity, either within this relationship or beyond it?
TL;DR:
30F Indian woman under family pressure to marry. In a 3-year relationship with 33M German boyfriend who has not completed his medical studies and is grieving his father’s death. Next exam attempt delayed until March 2026. I love him but feel stuck, anxious, and unsure how to move forward.
Required outcome: I want clarity and a realistic way to move forward with my life, either with him or by choosing a different path.
Comments
What do YOU want? In this whole post you haven’t mentioned anything about what you would like.
Marriage is a lifelong commitment (or that’s the goal anyway) and shouldn’t be rushed because of anyone, let alone someone outside of the two people actually getting married. If it matters more to you that you’re married than it does the person you’re married to, and it’s more important to you to make your parents happy than yourself, then yeah I’d say just break it off and go with the arranged marriage.
However if you actually love and care about this guy and it’s important to you that he’s in your life and hopefully the one you build a future with, then I’d say you’re being kind of a bad partner right now. He’s likely still grieving a lot, not to mention immense added stress of dealing with the legal and family stuff, and on top of that I’m sure he’s feeling like a failure for not passing the exam multiple times now, and you’re piling on because your mom’s upset.
Three years isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to not be married by, and that’s for two people who don’t have a ton of shit going on keeping them from it (like he does). You need to decide if you’re going to live for your parents and your/their culture or if you’re going to live for yourself and hopefully put down some boundaries with your family.
This will be a tough one to get answered because I think many people (including myself) who aren’t Indian don’t understand the context of Indian families or marriages. They’ll suggest hard boundaries, cutting your family off, etc. But those suggestions aren’t really helpful or realistic in this context.
What I would do is first talk with your boyfriend. Yes, he is grieving, but one thing I do understand painfully well is that even when your parent dies, life continues. It should be a compassionate discussion that takes into account his grieving, but that doesn’t allow the grief to prevent progress towards understanding each other better.
Do you even know for sure he wants to marry you? If you do, then what are the barriers in place to being engaged now, with the assumption of a wedding after his third attempt?
If he isn’t in a place where he can even have that conversation, you need to accept that he isn’t marrying you anytime soon, and proceed accordingly by either finding someone else on the same timeline as you, or shutting your family pressure down.
Work with your therapist on getting your family to back off. Try and create a script that basically says, “I hear your concern and the more I hear it the worse it makes the situation. You are actively impeding a resolution and if you want me married, backing off will help make that happen.”
But overall at some point you will have to become stronger to withstand the competing forces and pressures around you. Your therapist can help with that too.
What it comes down to, is that it’s YOUR life. Not your parents’. If they don’t have leverage over you other than being angry and disappointed, I would focus on what makes you happiest. You being in a happy relationship for the rest of your life, rather than one of convenience, is more important than your parents getting a sense of satisfaction one time. They’ll get over it, especially if you have kids at some point.
The situation with our boyfriend is really rough though. What awful timing. What I will suggest is, what is the backup plan if he fails his final attempt? Does that life look like something you find acceptable/agreeable? Is it better to just take the pressure of the exam off his shoulders and take that backup plan as the new path forward?