(Image source: Getty Images)

If he had a gun, I would have died that night.

Putting on my coat over my pajamas, I opened the front door, trying not to wake my sleeping husband. I grabbed my cell phone, glad it was by the door. He’d taken it away from me the night before, stashing it in his coat pocket by the entryway. My body trembled recalling the events of the preceding evening, and I desperately wanted to get out of the apartment.

It had started snowing outside, and my shoes sloshed in the muddy, melted snow. Slowly and silently, I walked around our apartment building. Though it crossed my mind that it might not be safe to be out so late at night, I knew I was safer alone outside, away from him.

I tried to understand everything that happened to me. What unfolded the previous night wasn’t one of our usual arguments. My body was bruised and battered. He had locked the bathroom door behind him after dragging me inside and attacking me.

I was a good South Asian Hindu woman, dutifully married, and prioritized caring for our home alongside a professional career. I had heard about domestic violence in stories and news articles. My family had told me numerous times that things like that did not happen in accomplished and God-loving Hindu families like mine. I had a false sense of security and thought my education, social status, career accomplishments, and religion would protect me from meeting and marrying men who mistreated women.

My marriage was my attempt to comply with South Asian social norms and Hindu religious expectations. I was single at 32, which is not typical for many Indian women. I stuck out and was a source of concern among friends and family who were all married. I was also lonely.

When I met a seemingly nice and successful Hindu man in America, I was relieved and immediately interested in a serious relationship. We were both immigrants from India to the United States. Thriving in our chosen careers, we looked like the ideal couple. In South Asian culture, long periods of dating are generally uncommon. So, I was delighted to say “yes” when he proposed one winter evening after dating for only two months. We got married the following spring, much to the delight of our families.

I was married in a Hindu religious wedding ceremony. For practicing Hindus, marriage is a sacrosanct union and a spiritual partnership made for a lifetime. As per the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, marriage is a necessary part of Dharma, the Hindu way of a righteous life, and essential for attaining spiritual growth and ultimately liberation (or Moksha) from the life-death-rebirth cycle. Hindu social rules are rooted in this way of life and strongly encourage women to get married and stay married. My family was both religious and liberal, so while the girls studied and traveled widely, we were also encouraged to comply with social expectations and fit neatly into the cultural fabric.

Our traditional Indian wedding was beautiful. Hindu weddings are highly ritualistic and have three essential parts: Kanyadana is the father giving away the bride, and Panigrahana is taking sacred oaths in front of a fire pit, Agni. In the Sanskrit language, Agni is called the “firstborn of creation” and represents the pure and primordial energy of the universe; Hindus marry in front of fire because it is the marriage’s divine witness. The third and last step is Saptapadi, where the bride and groom take seven circles around the fire. Each lap represents seven wedding vows of love, duty, respect, faithfulness, and a fruitful union where the bride and groom agree to be companions forever.

(Agni/fire at a Hindu wedding ceremony. Image source: Substack)

After the ceremony, we celebrated with hundreds of our extended family and friends. The festivities lasted for three days and nights. We booked an entire floor at a five-star resort in India, with a great hall that could hold eight hundred people. We paid for decorators to fill the space with flowers, chandeliers, and colorful silk banners that hung stylistically from the ceilings to make the room feel like a curated garden. We organized a grand buffet and multiple sit-down dinners. The cost was significant and put us in debt, but we both wanted to please our relatives. We helped pay for it so everyone we cared about was happy with the arrangements.

The honeymoon in Paris was my first clue that something was wrong. There was no lovemaking. It felt like our affection for each other had already run out. We found ourselves in bed looking at each other like strangers who had just taken a plunge into the cold Seine River in an adrenaline rush and then found out we didn’t want to be together.

A week later, back to our regular routines in Washington, DC, life became a dull melody. Working all day and coming home late every evening, I felt like I had acquired a new roommate and not a husband. I started to sense that he was trying to control me. He withheld affection to make me act as he wanted. Even the simplest things were negotiated. If I wanted a hug, I only got it if I had managed to please him that day.

One night soon after our honeymoon, I was stunned in disbelief when he choked me while I was asleep. He said he was having a nightmare, mistaking me for a monster that suddenly appeared in his dreams. I woke up struggling to breathe, confused, crying. I was sleeping next to someone who could attack me at any time. My monster was real.

Everyone I talked to about my husband’s rising anger told me that “good girls are patient.” South Asian friends and family encouraged me to give it time. What was the alternative? Indians are not known for divorcing bad husbands.

I knew my marriage did not follow the path our religion promulgated. An ideal Hindu marriage is characterized by harmony and cooperation. It is supposed to be built on a foundation of friendship with spiritual growth and mutual support. Even so, India is still a patriarchal society, and a traditional South Asian marriage revolves around the man having the upper hand.

In my marriage, I was scared. I wanted to find a way out of my predicament. However, in our culture, perseverance through the troubles of a marriage is seen as a sign of strength. I wondered why that was. I wanted to find the root cause of this distaste for divorce. I was named Gargi by my family, after an ancient Indian philosopher, so it felt natural to look deeper into my religious roots for an answer. I read through the Hindu religious texts, including the Bhagavad Gita and English translations of the Vedas. Both were silent on the topic of divorce. Instead, they emphasized that marriage was meant to last a lifetime. Some Hindu texts even said this union was so sacred that it continued forever post-death.

In 2025, divorce is still a dirty word among South Asian Hindus. Despite its rise in popularity in urban areas in India, many regard divorce as a Western and much-despised concept. India’s divorce rate is still one of the lowest in the world; some sources cite it as low as 0.01 percent.

Undeterred, I continued to delve further into Hindu teachings on marriage. I found passages of Vedic scriptures that said, “Both of you, husband and wife, should remain stable and married all your life and not leave each other.” They went on to say, “These newly married spouses should live together with each other for the entire life.” I was stunned to discover that although Hindu teachings and religious practices had brought me comfort for most of my life, they did not offer me an escape route from my terrible marriage.

Meanwhile, our fights kept getting worse. Three months into our life together, my husband held a pillow over my face until I almost passed out. He wanted to silence me forcibly. There were no bruises on my body from the suffocation, but I was deeply shaken. Yet, when he apologized profusely soon after, something I had never seen my father do after any of the times he screamed and shouted at my mother for hours, I forgave my husband. I thought my relationship with him was better than my parent’s traditional male-centered marriage. Being married and fitting in with the other married couples in my South Asian circle took precedence over everything else.

Good Hindu women like me are expected to study hard, be patient, and never dishonor the family by speaking poorly of their husbands. We are taught to be obedient and seek permission from parents or elders for every big life choice we make. Sacrificing for the husband or the family is the higher moral standard and the expectation. Leaving the marriage went against every social norm and religious view I grew up with.

The path forward seemed like a fork in the road. If I got divorced, there would be severe social ramifications. Typically, the woman is considered tainted if her marriage breaks for any reason. If I left my abusive husband, I would bring shame to my family and disappoint many people who said they cared about me.

Yet, as I trudged through the snow that night, I knew I deserved better. I was in imminent danger, and that realization made me decisive and willing to lay aside social and familial expectations, as well as archaic religious mandates. The Vedas were written between 1500 and 1200 BCE; it was time to move past the Bronze Age.

Growing up in a deeply religious environment, I believed prayers worked. So, I prayed to Durga, the Hindu Goddess of power, strength, and protection, for the best path forward. Soon, an answer came. Hindu traditions emphasize the importance of life energy or Prana. Hindu religious leaders discourage suicide and self-harm. Taking your own life is considered a violation of the code of Ahimsa (non-violence). I believed an extension of that philosophy was the necessity to move away from a violent person who could take my life. I was convinced that if I did not leave this marriage, I would be dead.

God has a better plan for my life, I told myself. That conviction gave me the determination to do what I should have done the first time my husband hurt me. I found the courage to return to the apartment and make an important call. I had a better signal on my phone there, away from the snow that had turned into rain. I knew from past experience that my husband would pretend nothing unusual had transpired the previous night. When I heard him wake up and walk into the bathroom, I dialed 911 as soon as the water ran. The noise would mask what I was about to say on the call.

By then, I was scared for my life. The two policemen who came quickly after my call were incredibly kind. They took one look at me and told me I was safe. They asked my husband to step outside the apartment and interviewed him separately. They wrote down my story and took many pictures of my bruises. Until that day, all the things my husband had done to hurt me had left no tangible evidence of harm, which made me think others might not believe me. Now, the red and blue marks all over my body spoke for what I could not say. Finally, just outside our apartment, I heard my husband’s cry of protest when the police arrested him and took him away for processing. They told me I would get an emergency protective order and that the case would be sent to the prosecutor’s office for the next steps.

The protective order was a blessing because it meant my husband could not come within 100 yards of me, the distance of a football field.  It gave me breathing room to plan for my safety. I had my own money, so I did not need assistance from my parents or others to leave my marital home. The first couple of nights, I stayed at a nearby hotel. I could no longer sleep at our apartment because I was terrified my husband would return unexpectedly. I moved from the hotel to a friend’s couch, back to a hotel, then to another friend’s guest bedroom, and back to another hotel.

The victim assistance counselors in the courthouse gave me my first real education on domestic violence. They heard my story and told me about the “power and control wheel,” which is a tool to help victims see the pattern of abusive and violent behavior they experienced in their relationship. I was advised to carefully plan my next steps because the separation phase is considered one of the most dangerous times in domestic violence cases. This is because the abusers finally understand that they are losing control, which often makes them take desperate measures to harm the victim. My emergency protective order was soon expiring, and I was too distraught to keep extending it. I moved out of my marital home for good and rented an apartment by myself. Eventually, I filed for a divorce. I never stopped going to work. Earning my own money was the key to keep doing things my way without seeking permission from anyone in my family.

When I finally left and took steps to end the marriage, I chose to honor myself and my own life force, Prana. A year later, I became a Hindu woman who was divorced, estranged from the family and friends who did not support me, and a survivor of domestic violence. I had accumulated all the social black marks to be considered a write-off from my conservative culture and religious South Asian society. The decision to divorce affected every significant relationship in my life. While my immediate family was broadly supportive of me saving my life, they had strong feelings about how I should live going forward. One part of the family blamed me for choosing to marry a man who beat me so violently that I had to leave him. The other part considered it my fate to suffer and advised me never to fall in love or marry again. It became increasingly complex to manage their emotions and expectations in addition to the everyday post-separation challenges I still faced, including testifying as a witness in the state’s domestic violence case against my husband. As I navigated the American justice system, I lost many close family and friends who could not support my steps toward a life of hope and independence.

In moments of distress, help sometimes comes from unexpected sources. I discovered that there were a few South Asian domestic violence advocacy and victim assistance programs in the United States. A brave Pakistani-American Muslim woman from Saathi, a South Asian nonprofit, supported me as I made agonizing choices about marital property and the next steps with the court cases while severing ties with my husband and his family. I was glad I had hired an American lawyer and a therapist because they were accustomed to divorce as an ordinary part of life. Unlike my family, they passed no judgment on me. The American legal system and the protections it provided for victims of domestic violence moved me deeply. That quickly became a significant turning point in my life. Instead of wallowing in the misery of being socially ostracized, I decided to go to law school. I wanted to use my voice and my legal education to empower other women caught in the clutches of domestic violence and help them escape.

The reality is domestic violence can affect any of us. Education, social status, and religious affiliations do not make women less vulnerable to this crime. Ignoring red flags because we want to be married or because we are trying to satisfy familial and religious expectations is what pushes us into the arms of abusive men. It doesn’t have to keep us there.

Every woman feeling scared to go home today should know that a life of accepting abuse is not her destiny. She has the power to step away and change the ending of her story.

Gargi Sen, Esq. is a writer and lawyer in New York and the founder of UnsquashableGirl, a social media handle that inspires women to break out of abusive and dysfunctional relationships and seek better lives.