Let me tell you what life after death looks like. My parents and siblings declared me dead. I was trapped in my marriage for 15 years before I managed to escape with my two daughters. Let me tell you what betrayal looks like. The only way I could escape was if my family took me back. Let me tell you what being forced to stay in an abusive arranged marriage in America looks like. While he first threatened to kill me, only days later. Let me tell you what discovering that your new husband is violent looks like.įor me, it meant cowering in terrified silence while he punched his fist through the wall for the first time, in a blind rage, one week after our wedding. I walked down the aisle to my execution wearing a big smile and what was perhaps the world’s ugliest gown. I went along with my marriage at age 19 willingly, even happily. It meant enduring a humiliating (and, I later learned, entirely unreliable) physical exam to confirm my virginity. It meant I had a matter of hours, over a period of a few weeks, to decide yes or no.

It meant going on a limited number of so-called “dates” with my match, during which we were never allowed to be alone together or to have any physical contact. It meant I was told I had the choice of whom to marry – but the so-called “choice” was limited to the potential matches the matchmaker brought to my family. It meant I had no choice about whether to marry (that was a definite yes) or when to marry (that was going to happen as soon as possible after I finished grade 12). The men in that community make a blessing every morning thanking god for not making them a non-Jew. It meant understanding my value as a girl. It meant receiving a limited education that focused on religious studies and homemaker duties. I was trapped in my marriage for 15 years before I managed to escape with my two daughtersįor me, in the insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York City where I was raised, it meant being groomed from when I was a toddler to become a wife and a mother.

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Arranged marriage in the us