The pleasure and pain of mixed marriages
The pleasure and pain of mixed marriages
By Mehru Jaffer
JAKARTA (JP): If it works it is like a house on fire. However
if it does not work then the fire is for real and soon there is
nothing left to call a house. The reference here is to mixed
marriages between Indonesians and people from other parts of the
world. Some are found to work and some others seem not to. And
the reasons why that happens are a million and one.
Boris, 41 and Frida, 32, are lucky that even after five years
of knowing each other they still get along like the proverbial
house on fire.
"Most of my relatives and friends tell me that ours is a
unique relationship," said Frida, a marketing and communications
consultant.
She met Boris, her Yugoslav husband at work when she was 26
years old. Eventually she decided to marry him simply because she
discovered that she could talk to him so easily.
Frida even has a great relationship with her mother-in-law,
who lives with them here in Jakarta, and they too have a lot to
say to each other.
"We even argue, but we never get personal," said Frida, as she
fed her six-month-old daughter Ena, who at the moment is the
center of attraction of the entire household.
Although film-maker Boris misses most of all the mountains and
skiing, and all the friends he has left behind in Belgrade, home
for him at the moment is Jakarta. Frida adds that even in the
future she can't imagine staying away from Asia for any great
length of time.
Many modern day Indonesian women complain that men from their
own country are difficult to talk to; that men here prefer to see
their women, but do not bother to listen to them, often turning
matrimony into a union of meanness and martyrdom. It is felt that
menfolk from western cultures treat women with far more respect
and seriousness. They are also more willing to make an effort to
communicate.
However many men from abroad, especially middle-aged ones with
high dollar salaries, are also responsible for having brought
ill-repute to their kind by their numerous dalliances with local
women who are often very young and in dire economic need. Some
people spoken to feel that it is a chicken-and-egg situation,
where it is difficult to say who is the real culprit in this
mockery of the man-woman relationship: the aging but affluent
expatriate men, or the youthful, ever-willing native women, often
from a depressed economic background.
"In the end, marriages like my own work only if each side is
respectful of the other," said Ries, who married an Englishman 27
years ago.
When she first met him as a young receptionist at Hotel
Indonesia, her first thought was not what nationality he was.
Instead she recalls going through that unbearable lightness of
being feeling, perhaps known as love.
Her very conservative Muslim family from Minangkabau in west
Sumatra was totally against the match. But when Ries refused to
see reason where love was concerned, and it was discovered that
Stephen had already converted to Islam, the wedding took place in
all its regalia.
As a mother of three daughters and a son, Ries recalls that
the most trying times were those spent in the U.S. She had to
make sure that the children kept in touch with their religion and
culture. She was relieved when a few years ago the family
returned to Jakarta. On the other hand, she does credit her stay
in America for bringing out the best in her own, once very timid
personality. America taught her that it is not chains that hold a
home, but hundreds of little threads that sew people together
through the years and make a marriage last.
As a United Nations family member she has lived in different
corners of the world, and today feels happy at the thought that
her grownup children have seen the best of both worlds in the
east and the west. While England will always be a second home for
her, it is in the hills of Bukittinggi in Minangkabau where both
she and her husband plan to spend most of their time.
It is not always easy indeed for parents to see their son or
daughter marry foreigners. And things must be more difficult if
this mixed marriage involves not only one, but two members of the
family. But a Central Javanese man, asked what it felt like to
have given away both his daughters in marriage to foreigners,
joked that at least his daughters were married. He did add that
his dislike for foreigners dated back to the time when as a young
freedom fighter he was fighting the Dutch who had colonized his
country.
With two white men in the family now he can't afford to be
prejudiced anymore, he said with a smile.
Thomas, 49, has another story. He felt that he would not be a
thinking person today if his father had not brought home an
Australian wife. He said it is because of his stepmother, Joan,
that he is able to speak English fluently, and has also inherited
her love for books. His own mother he remembers as being kind and
loving but incapable of providing guidance to her children, or
talking to them about what life is all about.
But for Monika from Switzerland and her husband, the dream
lasted only during the courtship period. When the two woke up to
wedlock, life was not so easy.
He is with Garuda airlines and she was a tour guide. They met
in Bali, and the rest as they say is history. Seventeen years and
two children later, there is little communication between the
two. Monika feels that she was never made to feel part of her
husband's close-knit Javanese family, although she speaks fluent
bahasa Indonesia and was found participating in a group that
meets periodically to study Koranic verses.
This group has certainly helped Angela, originally from
England, to get to know what Islam is all about. Her husband
comes from an Indonesian family with Arab origins. "We are very
conservative," said Angela, who keeps her head covered and gives
religious lessons to anybody who is interested.
That perhaps is the best part of mixed marriages, to get to
know new people, different cultures and countries notwithstanding
all those cynics of course who continue to wonder whether it's
worthwhile going through so much to learn so little.