Hi guys and welcome back to A Millennial Mind today i'm so excited to welcome my new guest she's a fashion blogger works in finance and an activist so without further ado i'm really excited to welcome Jigna patel so hi Jigna how are you hey i'm good thanks how are you yeah i'm great thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you for having me i'm so excited i know me too we've been planning this for ages done like so many had so many phone calls so i'm very excited to actually finally speak to you today so for people who don't know who you are can you just give a little bit of an introduction as to what you do and who you are yeah definitely so i work in finance full-time but my passion is in fashion so i do a lot of styling videos on my instagram i like to provide outfit inspiration and more recently i started discussing some of the more taboo subjects in the south asian community like divorce and mental health therapy and things like that and i just create videos to try and spread awareness and also try and educate people on some of these topics your videos recently on divorce were amazing and you reach so many people with that and that's actually how i found you um and that's what i want to discuss with you today is the indian expectation around divorce but i think before we kind of go into divorce i think it's important to discuss marriage now i have a whole podcast about marriage so i'm not going to go into the details you'll hear me ranting on that one then but you know there is a massive expectation that women should be married and there's also simultaneously an expectation that women should never be divorced and you know marriage is seen as a goal it's talked about to so many kids boys and girls since they're born you know it's very much within our ancient culture that we're forced not necessarily forth but it's very much within our Indian culture that we encourage everyone to get married at a younger age to find somebody and i think that comes from you know just the fact that our parents see that as stability they want us to be you know okay and you know in the in the olden ages it was that the woman provided for the man in terms of the household duties cooked for him clean for him and the man was the breadwinner and so you know i do think those kind of um principles are still existing today but i guess it is changing but from your perspective what were the expectations on our marriage for you so i actually got married now i think it was about almost nine years ago and i think a lot of things have changed since so back then there was definitely an expectation on me to finish university get a job and then get married that was the immediacy so at the time i was around 21 or 22 when the conversation started and like you said in my whole life there's been this expectation around getting married at a young age and as soon as i finished diversity my parents were like okay you need to get married now and it was almost like a given i wasn't really it wasn't necessarily something that i actually wanted to do i did used to say to my parents surely i'm a bit young because yeah i was only 23 when i got married but it was also something that everybody did and it was almost like you have to do it this is what everyone does and if you're not married by say 25 then people start to assume there's something wrong with you i can echo that because literally every single person i meet i'm 27 now every single person in me is like why are you getting married what's wrong with you why don't you want to meet somebody are you against marriage don't you want to find someone i'm like i do i'm not against marriage i'm just against finding somebody who is on paper right for me but in person not you know i'm against finding someone just for the sake of it i don't want to just be with anyone but you know you are definitely labeled as somebody who's then difficult or you know not uh accommodating or whatever that people like to play so you say that you were for you were almost it was almost something that everybody did how did you meet your ex-husband so it was actually an introduction arranged type situation so there were about three boys that were presented to me and it was almost like okay here's three guys pick one so i you know knew a few facts about them where they live what they do and it i essentially picked one guy based on that and then whole you know let's chat let's get to know each other but i actually didn't know him for very long before we had to let our families know whether we wanted to marry each other i'd say how long was that long not long it was like a month which really is not long yeah so i think oh my god i know so we've only met up a handful of times and our families were like okay what's your answer and at that point i mean of course you get on with someone so i've only seen him a few times and i said to them yep that's fine like we get on i think it should be okay but also at the time i was 22 i myself had no idea what marriage entailed i was so naive and i just thought okay well we get on surely it's fine and i just didn't know that you there was so much more that you needed in a relationship to succeed in a marriage no for sure and i think matching somebody based on you know the criteria that our parents have for us or you know that people have for us is very much like their age where they live what they do um and sometimes those things are great and they're you're compatible and sometimes you're not and what's interesting now is we have dating apps which are kind of the same version but less pressure for sure um you don't have that kind of mutual family friend or mutual person involved and the obligation to be with that person but it seems that people are now finding it harder to stay in relationships given the choice that they have you know we have so many access to so many different options but with the divorce rate is higher than ever so do you think that there are some benefits of actually having an arranged marriage i think it's difficult for me to see the benefits just because i think my process didn't go so well but saying that my sister went through the same process and she is happily married and you know she you know she has but she's happily married and she has children and it worked out great for her and i think some people it does work well with and i think at the end of the day it just depends on the actual person it's like there are a lot of people that i know that have met their future husbands on dating apps and they're really happy and living that blissful life where i can't do a dating app i'm really terrible at them and i don't know if i just have this difficulty with being set up with someone in any situation but i think they are definitely positive you know there are there are benefits to an arranged marriage and i think it is possible to meet the right person but i just think my experience just wasn't the best so let's talk a little bit about your experience now so you were kind of pushed into marrying someone at a younger age and i guess that person was compatible with you on paper or what was expected of you what what made you then realize that it wasn't working in that relationship so i'd say i knew about a few months into knowing him that we were not well suited and it was almost like the more time that i spent with him i realized that we actually don't get on and we're actually really different people but by this point everyone knew that we were getting married the whole community knew people around the world relatives in america and india everyone knew we're getting married and i just didn't have it in me back out i just did not have the courage to say to my parents okay i don't want to do this i don't feel like it's right so i almost went five minutes you have the courage to do that what was stopping you saying no i don't want to do this honestly i was so scared of what people would say and when i think back now i'm like that it's ridiculous that i was so scared at the time but because now i just don't care what people say but back then i lived by what people would say and as did my family and a lot of it was it was less so what people would say about me and more so what people would say about my family and that's what i didn't want i didn't want to be the person that ruined my parents reputation and that's what was scaring me and that's why i couldn't turn around and do it because i just thought it's better that i'm in this marriage rather than ruining my parents reputation i just did not understand the ramifications of an unhappy marriage at the time i always just thought i'm strong enough no matter how bad things get it's still better than backing out now and i think that's just so heartbreaking because i think it's so relevant today's society where we're constantly in a world of social media where we're posting on social media oh i'm gonna get engaged and when you realize okay it's not the case so many people continue with that because they're afraid of what other people are gonna say you know the focus within an indian community has always been from a young age focus on your reputation what people think of you what people are going to say about you and i think in a western world today it's really apparent for absolutely everyone because we share everything and everybody knows about everything so so many people that i know have stayed in unhappy marriages because they're afraid of what other people are gonna say and so often it can be prevented in the beginning and it's really amazing for the people who go through that and are strong enough to leave but it's also really difficult because there's such a big stigma attached to it and i think that is changing now but there still is a stigma attached to people who break off their engagements or break off their marriage when there's absolutely no need for there to be because ultimately i don't think anybody gets engaged thinking they're gonna break up i don't think anybody gets married thinking they're gonna break up i think they want it to be something that's gonna be lasting forever and to break up with somebody takes significant strength i mean we've talked about this so much it's so hard to actually do that and go through it and deal with the consequences after from you know dealing with everyone's opinions and everyone has something to say and actually leaving that person that you've married that the stigma just enhances the insecurity and anxiety that somebody feels and for me i just think there's so many negatives for us not addressing the stigma which is why you know i think it's so important we're having this discussion today but what's the biggest disadvantage you see from still having a stigma around getting a divorce or breaking off an engagement i think the biggest disadvantage is that there are so many people out there who are staying in unhappy marriages because of what people will say and you know there's unhappy marriages but there's also marriages where people are being treated really badly or there's some sort of physical abuse domestic abuse involved and they're situations that people really should not be in but they're so scared to leave them so people are actually staying in dangerous situations as well simply because of the fear of what people will say because of what society will say and because of how unfairly they'll be judged and so many people are scared to hear those things because it is difficult to hear those things especially when you're in a bad situation and you're already feeling so terrible about yourself it's really hard to put yourself in a situation where you know you're going to have to listen to a lot of things and a lot of people don't have the strength to do that and that's so for them it's easier to just avoid it altogether and how did you find the strength to do that i think for me i was so depressed at the time i think i was in i was four years into my marriage and things had just got worse and worse and worse and even though before i got married i always thought i've got the strength to deal with this because i like to think of myself as quite a mentally strong person and i never ever believed i would just become this broken woman that i had about four years into my marriage and i was severely depressed and i just thought there was no escape from my marriage in my head i still didn't have the strength to get a divorce and i thought okay i'm trapped in this life forever now and i got to the point where i was so sad that i just wanted to end my own life and when it got to that point it's almost like it hit me that surely this isn't the only way out surely now i have to go and get a divorce if i want to live but and that was about that was basically what pushed me to do it and even that was so difficult and that's so scary to think that because of this stigma because you're f of the fear of what people are going to say or how you're going to be judged it almost lets some people get to that stage of their life where they're feeling this deep depression and you know like you said the consequences that are huge you know you're thinking about ending your life for some people they may get to that and it's too late because they're so worried about the image that they're going to give off by getting a divorce and i think it's me we really need to understand that nobody intends to get a divorce and therefore you cannot be blamed or looked down upon or looked at you know and you talk about this in your videos that people were labeling you all these negative things can we talk a little bit about that yeah sure yeah so i had a lot of horrible things said about me i think at the time when i got divorced divorce still wasn't spoken about very much it's almost five years ago now that i got divorced and back then people were still very much staying in unhappy marriages or people were getting divorced and nobody was talking about it and i was new and i was in no way prepared for the things that people were going to say to me i just was really naive to the whole situation and people were constantly calling me things like a second timer and they were calling me damaged and they were saying that no one's going to want to marry me now because i've been married before all of these horrible things you know you get told that you'll have to marry leftover people or you get married you get told that you can now only be with someone who's divorced as well because apparently now like we can't marry someone who's not been divorced and there are so many horrible things that are said about you people speculate on why your marriage has ended you know people make up all sorts of rumors about you and and the list it goes on people are just really really negative about the whole situation no definitely and i think i see that a lot you know when people have been in long-term relationships with somebody and they've broken up they don't have that same stigma attached to them but it's essentially the same with the marriage except that you know you've just put a certificate like you've got you've signed a certificate you know that's how i look at it though anyway but it's so much better to be with somebody who's been in a committed loving relationship or you know even it's so much better to be with somebody who's been committed to a relationship compared to somebody who hasn't and yet we don't attach any stigma to the other side so it's a bit confusing sometimes because surely what you want from somebody is commitment and yet we stigmatize against people who have just shown commitment so i definitely think that's something that we need to reevaluate and think every time we judge somebody for being divorced and i think the biggest thing for me is there's such negative effects from the stigma what at the time i was already so low in confidence and it made me even more anxious about meeting people because before i met someone i would always have in my head all of the things that people have told me i was already scared to tell people that i'm divorced because everyone around me the community people that i'd spoken to everyone had told me that being divorced was such a bad thing and no one's gonna accept me so before i've even given someone a chance i'm already expecting them to not accept me i'm already expecting them to have an issue with me being divorced i'm already getting ready to justify why i got divorced or why i'm not a bad person and it causes so much anxiety in someone it causes so much self-doubt and it really chip away at your confidence no definitely i can imagine so how did you start to overcome that and start to think okay no i'm not gonna allow other people's opinions to affect me i'm gonna block out anyone who's negative around me and just start to really focus on me it was actually so difficult because when i first told people that i was getting divorced there was a lot of negativity from my community and my family also found it really difficult to accept so it was really hard for me at the time knowing that something that i had done had upset so many people but at the time i was also going to therapy and my therapist helped me so much in terms of building up my confidence and getting past all of these things that people would say and it's quite funny i always used to say to my therapist oh people are talking about me and people are saying this and he would always say who are these people who are these people speaking about and when you think about it like that it really did make me realize actually who are these people these people are not supporting me through my divorce these people are not paying my bills these people are not asking me if i'm okay so why am i allowing these people's opinions to affect me so it was at that point i really realized that the only person's opinion i need to focus on right now is myself i'm going through a tough time and i need to do whatever i can to get through that i'm not really involved blocking out negativity not listening to people and just trying to constantly remember that what i'm doing is the best thing for me and i just almost have to keep going over that same saying over and over again completely agree and i think that's the best way to be but the thing i find is that there's a significant difference between our generation our parents generation and our grandparents generation and for them you know they see divorce as kind of giving up and not working through things and i think uh stereotype that's massively attached to millennials especially is that we're lazy we don't work hard enough we don't work hard in relationships don't work hard in school we don't work hard in companies and we want everything quickly you know we want instant gratification so when you're in a relationship that you're not getting the love or the care or whatever it is people are like you're not you're not persevering and it's really difficult for us because we're in this constant battle of listening to cardi b and beyonce who are like do whatever you want be your own person know who you are and then our parents who are like push through push through push through how did you know when it was the right time to leave and how did you manage to balance those two ideologies in your head because i'm sure you had them from like your parents and then obviously yeah i went back and forth with this divorce decision for years even after we got married i i knew straight away i knew before we even got married that he wasn't the right person for me but i still went ahead and did it but after we'd actually got married there were so many times where i thought no this is it this is it i want a divorce and i just kept going back and forth because every time there'd be parents or someone saying no it's fine you can work through it you haven't been married long and then it becomes timelines where oh you've only been married for a year give it more time give it more time and it almost got to the point where even though i'd been married for four years i was still going back and forth on the decision and my family was still saying no you just need to talk it through at that point i was so exhausted i was spread up i knew that things weren't going to get better things had just got worse over the years and i think it was at the point where i knew in my heart that i had tried everything i had tried so hard to make this work and knowing that nothing had changed in those four years that i knew in myself i was 100 comfortable now with getting a divorce yeah and i think people are so different some people are able to stay in a marriage that isn't conventionally what people would expect from a marriage where there's a lot of love and care and you spend a lot of time together and you truly love each other because they're not bothered about that they just care about what people are thinking from the outside and what they look like to other people i mean social media has really made us all try and be happier on social media than we are in real life so as long as you're portraying that you're happy and in a marriage then it's okay it does not matter to some people at all if they're living separately from their partner they never see them they see them like once every three months it doesn't matter at all for some people but i think it matters to a lot of people to have a relationship in which you feel truly loved and you want to truly love that person and for them it's really difficult to actually make that decision to walk away because it feels like you're abandoning somebody right and you talked about this you know you felt so much guilt from actually leaving that person how did you manage to move on from that honestly i've had that guilt for ages and no one no one tells you that you're gonna feel guilty no one had told me and i carried that guilt for years i mean even now sometimes i still feel guilty about it which is weird because i know it was the best thing for both me and my ex-husband and i know that we're both happier now knowing that we are divorced and we've moved on with our lives but you still carry so much guilt and i think again like i said earlier you just have to keep reminding yourself that getting a divorce was better than staying in an unhappy marriage for both of us and so that's almost what helps me get past it but i just have to keep telling myself that this was the best thing for us both of us not just for me even though i'm the one that initiated it it was definitely the best thing for him as well the way you're saying it was the best thing for you and for him is more that you love yourself more than putting yourself through that right so the self-love journey i think people experience at different moments in their life when did you start to experience when did you start to realize how important it was to love yourself it was after i filed for divorce and i was going through my therapy because i think i'd spend so much of my life not loving myself i think i've always been really self-critical i've had such low self-confidence i've been in bad relationships and i think all of those things have just compounded and they've really lowered my self-confidence and for so many years i think that's why i i put up with being treated incorrectly in relationships and i put up with being unhappy in my marriage because i thought i didn't deserve any better and it was going to therapy and really understanding why i felt the way that i did and really understanding where my anxiety was coming from and how my self-confidence was driving all of my relationship decisions and i think that was the beginning of my journey and my therapist really helped me build my confidence he really helped me recognize things that i need to love within myself which i found really awkward at the time because i am so self-critical but he really helped me on that journey and now it's something that i always work on daily because there are still days where i'll feel rubbish about myself or i'll have low self-confidence but i really try to put into play the things that my therapist just told me and you know making really good like things about myself just to remind me that actually you know my self-confidence could be higher and there are things about myself that i should be happy about i love that i think therapy is the best thing in the world you know people there's also a stigma around therapy and you know people always find it weird when i share that i've gone to therapy there are some people who are like wow tell me more amazing and there's others who i can just see from their face that they're so uncomfortable that i've shared it um but i think it really helps you to really understand who you are and also just helps you grow in so many make ways that you can't even comprehend and you know i think the most important thing is when you've made a decision often you doubt yourself because it's in your control and that's happened to me so much in my life whenever i've made the decision it's always made me think twice like why did i make that what did i do because i'm quite self-critical as well and i just overthink so much that i think did i do the right thing and often i think the main thing to remember is that your gut never lies and so making that decision in the moment was something that you have to do looking back on it is something that you can question several times but with a divorce i think it's really difficult because you probably have so many people telling you to not do it just because of the societal pressure that we face within an indian community how did you start to really navigate through that because obviously therapy was helping you but did you tell people you were going through therapy or did you just go on with it one of my friends who told me how to even get therapy because at the time i knew that i was anxious and i knew that i was depressed but i really did not understand anything about how to get therapy i didn't know even how to get a therapist so he sent me a load of details and i called up the therapist so he knew that i was getting therapy and a few of my close friends did i told my i told my immediate family but again it was really difficult telling them because i think for them they also find it hard to understand mental health issues and depression and so for them they were just like why can't you talk to us or why can't you talk to your friends it's difficult for them to understand why i'm going to third party to go and speak about my feelings a complete stranger who doesn't know you but often i think that's the beauty in it isn't it that you just can say whatever you want without any judgment with nobody knowing anything about your life but i had a similar situation when i went to therapy because i was so stuck in something at the time and i just felt so lost and didn't i'd over exhausted everyone with my stories and what i wanted to do and i literally just googled therapist in nottingham and i went that day and and that is a true story i literally went that evening um and it was amazing it changed my life i love therapy i think it's so powerful but like i said with those aunties and people who are shocked by it how did you overcome that it was really difficult initially because i remember my first public community outing and it was a wedding and i knew that so many people were going to be there my ex-husband's family were going to be there and it was the first time i was going to see everyone after filing for divorce and i was so so nervous i was honestly so shaky and nervous but it was almost like i had to just take a deep breath and just remind myself that no you are happy this is the best thing because even when the aunties came up to me and they would all come up to me and say oh i'm so sorry i'm so worried honestly they would all speak to me and say my life was over smiled in their face and i just kept telling them don't be sorry i'm doing really well i'm happy i'm in a great place this is the happiest i've been in years and it's almost like you you can't sit and accept when someone talks to you like that you have to tell them no i'm fine please do not feel sorry for me please do not pity me i'm in a great place but again it has to come from you and it has to come from your own self belief that you genuinely are in a better place don't you feel you're constantly justifying to people oh i'm happy i'm much better off uh it didn't work out between us do how do you even cope with that because i would get so frustrated having to justify to absolutely everyone how i was feeling exactly i think honestly i still have to do it now even if i meet random people and they find out i'm divorced or i tell them i'm divorced their immediate ration is i'm so sorry what happened and then you know i have to go through the whole thing and it is exhausting and honestly this is one of the reasons why i made my instagram video because i was going through a phase i was really fed up of having to justify people about my divorce and i was really fed up with having to keep telling people that it was a positive thing and that my life was actually better afterwards and i was at the point where i thought surely i'm not the only person now that is feeling this way there's got to be other people that feel this way and that's actually what i was saying to make this video yeah and there are so many and i i mean it's great and every time someone asks you about a dial should be like just like yeah it's composed i've got it all written down you can replay it however many times you want but you know no in all seriousness that video was unbelievable and i think you reached so many people i think you told me i can't remember how many thousands of messages you said that you got from it but i think it's so it's amazing you spoke out about it and the way you articulated yourself and shared you know things to do how you looked after yourself you even did like several q a's after that which i loved because you know some people are so afraid to even ask questions to other influencers because they don't even want to claim like they don't even want to tell them that they're divorced or that they want a divorce because there is such a taboo around it that we almost just stick and stay in one relationship because we've already said that we're going to and how i look at it is that you just have one life and if you're with the wrong person that's it your life is done whilst well that's been negative but you just have one life and you know that one life is for you to be happy for you to feel comforted for you to feel love and when you're in a relationship and it sucks out all that energy out of you and you feel miserable then what's the point really i don't i can't understand how people stay in such unhappy marriages just for the sake of it and i really hope that this video and all the rest of your videos really encourage people to know that you can be happy after it's not the end of the world all these negative things that people say around divorce are completely made up and false so you know for me that's the thing i would say around divorce but from your perspective what's the one thing you wish you could change around the indian expectation on divorce i wish i could just remove all of the judgement i wish i could remove all of the negative judgment that comes about divorce because i really wish there was more of a dialogue about it so that people could go and speak about divorce to their parents and they could actually discuss these situations and so that they don't feel pressured into staying in an unhappy marriage and i really wish people could understand the positive aspects of a divorce and that is one thing i really like to talk about on my page all the time is all the positive things that come from divorce people just focus on the negative and they think with no positive aspects involved and honestly that is the one thing i would change i just want everyone to start looking at it as the beginning of a new life rather than your life ending so i don't think we covered that what are some of the positive aspects of divorce i think you're able to focus on yourself you know for me personally i was able to work on my self-confidence which is a huge thing that i've basically been neglecting for most of my life and it's honestly changed me as a person i've done things like traveling solo around the world i've put myself in situations that would have normally felt really uncomfortable with but they've all helped me work on me as a person and even just little things that you think you can't do or little travel things that you can't do or put to the back when you're married because you think oh i can't do this or i have to think about somebody else and it's almost just being able to focus on yourself it's actually so freeing yeah it sounds very free you know just being able to do whatever you want and feeling you know i think you radiate so much happiness so you know it's not necessarily you saying i'm happy i'm happy i'm happy like i can hear it i can see it and i'm sure everyone singing or watching this can also see that and you know i'm really glad that you have taken the step to talk about this it's so brave of you and you know i really love talking to you today i think there's so many things that i've learned from you and that everyone else is going to be learning whether they're listening or watching this and i really appreciate you coming on so thank you so much thank you so much for having me it's been so great wow lovely talking to you and hopefully see you soon thank you bye bye