Australia is a multi-cultural country. It is the land of immigrant, to have inter cultural marriage is very common here especially between Australian – European decent and Australian – Asian descent. My family is Vietnamese and they immigrated to Australia more than 50 years ago. There are many Vietnamese in Australia even some of region has unofficial Vietnamese street where you can find Vietnamese markets, restaurants and people. Some of my relatives married to white—Australian but I am the one in my family who married to Pakistani.
"I met Sultan, my husband through dating apps.
He was an International student
from a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan."
I met him few times before I decided to be his girlfriend. After almost 1 year in relationship with him, he asked me to marry him. We had a small wonderful wedding party with western style and it was my dream wedding party that I used to dream when I was a little. Not only, I got the wedding dress that I wanted, I also got a wonderful husband. Sultan has nickname for me, he does not call me “Thao” like my family and my other friends but he calls me “Janu”, it means “sweetheart” in his language. Sultan is a lovely man; he knows how to make me special. Since our first date, he always paid my meal; he did not let me to use my money when I was going with him for our date. He always there whenever I needed him, he treated me really well as his girl—friend, I never met such a guy like him before.
All friends and family came to our wedding party except Sultan’s parents. The family members who attended our weeding from Sultan side were his cousins who reside in Australia. Sultan’s parents never agree about our relationship because I am not a Muslim, and actually, I am not a religious person neither. I do not hold any religion. The issue that Sultan’s parents had about my faith, it was hurt me deeply. How could a person cancel the love marriage only because of different faith? The thing that I felt at that time, the parents were too selfish until they wanted their son to sacrifice himself and prevented him to get a happiness.
I was worried about this in advanced but Sultan convinced me to continue our relationship. I told him that I was afraid if one day he would leave me because his parents disagree with our marriage, and likewise, I did not want to be treated badly by his family, but he said that he would not leave me and he would leave his family for me. He also said that he would not come back to Pakistan even though his family asked him to come back. What he said to me, made me sure to take our relationship further. I love him so much, so of course I really wanted to marry him and be with him for the rest of my life. I think Sultan has a lot of issues with his parents; therefore, he does not want to be in touch with them anymore.
"It was not the first time that his parents rejected his marriage plan,
before me, Sultan cancelled his marriage to an Iranian woman."
He said that his parents did not agree because the girl was Shia Muslim. Honestly, I did not know what problem they have with Shia, because for me Shia is Muslim, but Sultan told me that the problem about Shia was more complicated than what I thought.
Sultan is a Muslim and he is from Muslim family, he told me that his family is conservative. I think Sultan is very different with his family. He is an open-minded person and he does not have any issue about my faith. He respects what I believe and never force me to convert to Islam. He fast in Ramadhan but he is not a strict Muslim. He is flexible and is adaptable, that is why I like him. Sultan does not continue his study, he did not renew his student visa and he applied spouse visa instead. Visa application drained a lot of energy and money; I used all of my saving to help Sultan paying his visa fee, which is extremely expensive. However, we believed it was the best thing to do because he said that he did not want to pay his school tuition anymore and wanted to get a job as security, so we could start our new family very soon. It took months until the visa was granted. The process was quite fast because we already prepared everything far ahead before our wedding. After we got our marriage certificate, the agent lodged the visa application.
Since the first day of our marriage, we did not have any issue. We were happy couple and our relationship was steady. Nevertheless, few months after our wedding, Sultan changed to be the person whom I do not know. He put some restrictions on me. He complained when I came back late because I had gathering with my friends and he limited my social life.
"Not easy for me to contact my male friends
without getting any issue from him."
It was problematic situation, because I really love Sultan, but I also have male friends. I tried my best to make him understand for a month without no result, even it made him doubt about my love to him. No matter how many times I tried to explain, to make him compromise; the situation was not getting better, in fact, it brought new issues between us. I do not want to lose him because I love him, and I know, he already sacrificed a lot to be with me—he left his family. Therefore, I decided to sacrifice my social life for him. I tried my best to avoid working over—time and I never go for hang out with my friends anymore on weekends. Sometimes, I go out to meet my friends, but only female friends without male friends. I learned to cook Pakistani cuisine to please him because I know he loves Desi foods. It was arduous for me to stop contacting my male friends because I have mixed gender friends for so long. Some of my friends even thought that I married to a Taliban (Islamic radical) man.
Sometimes, I will be feeling sad and lonely whenever Sultan wants to meet his friends. He always refuses to bring me with him to the gathering. I think he only wants some spaces to be with his friends, and I understand that. One day, Sultan was really bored and he had plan to go to Melbourne, he also has some friends who live in Melbourne, so he wanted to visit them too. I have been to Melbourne for several times, but he never been there before, and I agreed that he had to go. But, he went to Melbourne with his male friends by car. I asked him to bring me too, but he gave me so many reasons why he could not bring me with him, he said I could not go with him if he was with his male friends. A woman among men is not a good thing in Pakistani culture. At that point, once again, I need to understand him.
I cannot deny that I have to sacrifice a lot to be with him and to make everything in our marriage life goes well. Sultan is a caring husband and is full of love, but he is also an exceptionally dominant man. I am an Asian and I grew up in Asian family, man in Asian culture is dominant too, so I do not mind to adjust myself for our good.