I belong to a conservative Rajput family from a village. After my sister eloped for an inter-caste marriage, I had to leave my village to avoid facing people there, although my parents had to suffer since it was seen as their mistake for allowing my sister to study and have freedom.
Now in Delhi, I got a basic 15-20k job based on my simple graduation but still managed to befriend a girl far beyond my league in terms of academics and career. She was a recent graduate from a top college, had no boyfriend during college, and had lost her father. She was juggling her first job but was still earning three times more than me. She felt comfortable with our friendship and shared her vulnerabilities with me since she felt she couldn’t be weak in front of her family.
I proposed to her, and she said yes. Later, I told her I couldn’t marry due to my sister’s actions and because she was also from a different caste. She asked if I really liked her, and when I said yes, she assured me she wouldn’t force marriage until my parents agreed, believing that time would heal things. I used to tell her that we could marry only when we were very successful in our careers.
Whenever she joked about marriage, she said she wasn’t worried until she reached 30, and time would help convince my parents. She even introduced me to her mother but told me to avoid sharing our problems, or her mother wouldn’t agree to our relationship. She eventually took my marriage condition seriously and advised me to switch careers, as my current one had no growth. But coming from a rural background, I didn’t have much knowledge, and I also needed to earn for my expenses.
So, she came up with the idea of starting a business. She had more knowledge due to her academics and work experience but asked me to handle the front-end operations while she continued her job in case we needed financial support or faced losses. She managed everything on the backend.
Fortunately, within six months, the business gained good traction and clients. She convinced her mother to let us live together since we often worked late nights. However, her mother insisted on marriage first. So, she requested an on-paper marriage-just signing the certificate, with no rituals-solely for her mother’s sake. I agreed on the condition that she never mentioned it to my family.
Everything was going well. When we started earning better, I invited my parents to visit. They stayed for a week, knowing her only as my friend and business partner. Then came the disaster. She lost her temper-probably due to some insulting conversation with my mother about our live-in arrangement-and broke her promise by revealing our marriage.
I was caught in the middle-one side was my mother, the other side was her. I chose to end it and asked her about de-merging the business. She got really mad, started behaving badly, and accused me of thinking only about business while she wanted to discuss personal matters. She immediately stopped managing the business. It was impossible for me to handle everything alone, as she was heavily involved, so I had to quit.
I thought she would also struggle to manage alone, so I waited six months, hoping she might come back. Meanwhile, my father finally agreed to our marriage, seeing me start over in my career. So, I reached out to her again, asking for two years before marriage, but she didn’t agree. I was confused. To my surprise, she said that even if I agreed to marry her, she would never work with me again and didn’t want to mix work and personal life.
I feel like she doesn’t respect me, and after so many arguments, broken promises, and bad memories, it’s no longer right to marry her. It’s been a year, and despite everything being clear from the beginning, she doesn’t even want to see my face.
Question:
Am I wrong to leave her when I had shared my problems from the beginning?
Option 1: I took the right decision to leave her.
Option 2: I lost a loyal, supportive partner.