Sobbing of women after marriage day, an unanswered question..

One aspect that has always intrigued me throughout is the fact that almost all women sob heavily when they leave their paternal house a day after the marriage ceremony gets over. This is even more astonishing in case of love marriages.

It was perfectly logical for the bride to cry in the good old days, when they were married off as teenagers to elderly people. In those times, there were hardly any love marriages. Even in arranged marriages, the prospective bride and the groom never saw each other before marriage, forget talking to each other, which has become commonplace today. In effect, the poor girl was marrying an unknown person, and embarking upon an unknown destiny in an unknown household. She had every reason to cry for her parents when she would leave them forever.

Now, in an era of women liberation, where half of the marriages are based on choice of the couples than that of the families, and also in an era when the prospective couple spend so much time together before marriage getting to know each other, such acts of sobbing by women on leaving their parents makes no sense to me. The fact is that even in arranged marriages, the would-be bride and the groom start loving each other before the marriage actually happens. So why does she cry when she is about to be with her dream partner forever? Is it because her parents cry in front of her? Or is it something spurious just for the sake of attracting attention?

I have asked this question to many women, including my mother. They opine that the girl is aggrieved by the fact that she is leaving her parents forever. Well, in today’s world of nuclear families, even males stay away from their parents. They don’t cry on leaving their home for a job or studies, do they? At least I did not.

In fact, I feel that such acts put the groom in an awkward situation if the entire family of the bride start sobbing heavily just before he is about to part with his wife. A feeling of guilt engulfs him, when he feels as if he is inflicting capital damage on an innocent family.