Noida : Kushal Tanwar, better known as Gullu, has opened up about a deeply personal chapter of his life on Bigg Boss 20 — an arranged marriage that lasted only a few months and ended in divorce in 2024. Speaking to fellow contestant Qazi Touqeer, Gullu said he had been married for around four-and-a-half to five months. He also spoke about the pressure to marry early in his community and the difficult fallout that followed when he chose to end the relationship. According to Gullu, his family initially opposed the divorce and stopped speaking to him because of concerns about reputation and what people would say. He has described that period as one of the most difficult phases of his life. His revelation is personal, but the question it raises is much larger:
What happens when the pressure to “settle down” arrives before a person is emotionally ready to marry?
Arranged Marriage Is Not the Issue. Agency Is.
It is important not to treat arranged marriage and pressured marriage as the same thing. An arranged marriage can still involve consent, attraction, compatibility, courtship and genuine personal choice. In many urban Indian families, the institution itself has already evolved considerably. A 2025 study by sociologist Megan N. Reed of Emory University examined 48 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 with recently married or engaged people, unmarried young adults and parents in the New Delhi area. All participants belonged to the college-educated middle class. The study found that arranged marriages in this group increasingly incorporated courtship, romantic expectations, compatibility and autonomy during the engagement period.
In some cases, that courtship period even led couples to call off an engagement after discovering that the match was not right. That distinction matters. The problem is not necessarily who introduces two people. The problem begins when they do not feel genuinely free to decide what happens next. Parents can suggest a match. Relatives can make introductions. Matrimonial platforms can bring people together. But the final decision still has to belong to the people getting married.
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When ‘Settling Down’ Becomes a Deadline
In many families, marriage is still treated as a milestone with an unofficial expiry date. Age becomes a countdown. Relatives begin asking questions. Parents worry that “good matches” may disappear and eventually, concern can turn into pressure. Gullu’s comments are significant because they also challenge the assumption that this pressure affects only women. He said that in his community, men too can face strong expectations to marry early, especially when families believe there is nothing else left for them to do except “settle down”.
Roshani Shenazz, Spiritual Thought Leader, Spiritual Guide and Counsellor, and Holistic Wellbeing & Happiness Coach, says the focus should be less on completing a social milestone and more on preparing for the life that follows it. “Marriage should never become a deadline created by age, society or family anxiety,” she says. “Arranged marriage is not the problem; the deeper issue is whether two people are given enough time, emotional readiness and honest space to understand each other before making a lifelong commitment.” She adds that parents should ideally help children develop “the emotional foundation, self-awareness and discernment to navigate relationships consciously”, rather than decide the future on their behalf. Her conclusion is simple: “A wedding can be planned in months, but a marriage may shape decades. The real preparation, therefore, is not for the wedding day, but for the life that follows.”
What Happens When Someone Says Yes Under Pressure?
Mansi Poddar, a trauma-informed psychotherapist, says agreeing to marriage mainly because of family pressure can create emotional consequences that emerge much later. “When people say yes under pressure, it’s because they have been raised to believe that obedience and conformity to family wishes equals a display of love,” she says. According to Poddar, resentment can eventually be redirected towards the spouse, parents or the marriage itself if the decision was never fully owned by the person making it. She says this can show up as emotional withdrawal, irritability, anger, difficulty with intimacy or reluctance to invest in repairing the relationship. The situation becomes even harder when leaving an unhappy marriage is treated as a failure.
In families where marriage is closely tied to social approval, caste or community expectations, reputation and duty, ending a marriage may feel like more than ending a relationship. It may mean disappointing parents. Inviting gossip or admitting that a decision in which the whole family had invested did not work. That is close to what Gullu described when he spoke about the conflict with his own family after deciding to divorce.
Compatibility Cannot Be Assumed
One of the biggest problems with rushed marriages is that compatibility is often treated as something that will automatically develop later. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not. Two people may agree on religion, caste, family background or education and still have very different expectations about money, intimacy, careers, children, household responsibilities, independence or the role of extended family. Those differences often become visible only through sustained conversation and time spent together. That is why the courtship element identified in Reed’s study is important.
Among the urban middle-class respondents she interviewed, engagement increasingly became a period during which couples dated, met each other’s friends, had disagreements and explored whether they could actually build a life together. In other words, compatibility was not assumed simply because families had approved the match. It had to be discovered.
Perhaps Marriage Needs More Conversations Before It Needs a Date
Parents can introduce potential partners. They can ask questions, share concerns and offer experience. But the person getting married also needs enough space to hesitate, reconsider and say no without feeling that they have betrayed their family. Because marriage does not unfold at the wedding. It unfolds afterwards — through money decisions, disagreements, careers, intimacy, children, household work, family responsibilities and the slow discovery of who another person really is. That is why the real issue is not arranged marriage versus love marriage. Neither guarantees success.
A couple introduced by family can build a deeply compatible, loving relationship. A couple who chooses each other independently can still discover they are not suited to married life. What matters is whether both people had enough time, information and freedom to make that discovery before the wedding. Gullu’s story does not prove anything about arranged marriage as an institution. But it does raise an important question about pressure.
A marriage may involve two families, but the decision still belongs to the two people who have to live inside it.
