Jas Kaur, a Sydney-based Sikh woman, recently opened up about being shunned by her family for choosing love outside her culture and religion. 28-year-old Kaur was abandoned by her family two years ago after she refused to go into an arranged alliance as per her parents' wishes. Today, Kaur owns a personal training business and is enjoying a happy and "peaceful" relationship with fellow personal trainer Sven Malte Koch.
"The hardest thing was constantly lying about where I was and not being able to share one of the best things about my life, combined with the fact that my parents would bring up an arranged marriage whenever they had the chance," Kaur told Daily Mail Australia. "I was torn between two worlds and finally realised that the double life had to end," she added.
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Kaur further added that if she didn't choose to follow "my heart" and "pursue my relationship", she would have "denied a part of myself. I just couldn't let myself down like that."
'I was a serial people pleaser'
Kaur was the eldest among three kids to immigrant parents in Sydney. She landed a corporate job after studying at a university but soon she felt "suffocated" as she was afraid of letting others down. "I told myself that it was better to risk it all and possibly fall flat on my face than to living in regret and spend the rest of my life wondering 'what if'," she reflected. She eventually quit her job and became distant from family and friends.
"I was a serial 'people pleaser' putting the needs of everyone else before my own because I didn't think my voice mattered," Kaur said of her old life.
"I thought it was my duty to be an obedient daughter and follow the path that was set for me," Kaur said adding that this constant internal battle was engulfing her. "Do I put myself first and risk losing my support system or do I continue to walk the path that is expected of me? I was leading a double life where I was one person at home and within the community and another person, the real me, everywhere else," she noted.
Kaur then found solace in exercise and going to the gym. About choosing a career as a trainer, she said, "I thought I was going to live a life that had already been decided for me by others. I thought it was my role to play the part. I thought it was OK to feel sad on the inside as long as the people around me were happy. I ended up falling in love with someone I wasn't supposed to and my entire changed. I lost the support of my birth family but I gained so much more. I gained my joy, freedom, happiness and peace."
'It is still a taboo'
Kaur said her parents were shocked when they found out the truth and they wanted her to "marry within my own culture and religion and because I didn't want to do that, my relationship was not accepted."
"For them it was better to disown me and preserve the honour of the family than to accept their daughter being with someone who didn't tick their boxes. It is still a taboo and the blame and shame is usually put on the disowned child," she claimed.
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However, besides the divided response from her cultural community, Kaur said that "hundreds of other women reached out" to her since she decided to openly discuss the matter on social media. Recently, she shared a personal insight into her previous life in a TikTok video, where she has almost 50,000 followers. She said that women told her that "they were in similar situations and thanked me for shedding light on an issue that is barely spoken about."
"Since I had expected backlash from my family and parts of the community, I focused on the hundreds of positive comments and messages," she explained.
"I gained my voice, freedom and peace by dropping those parts of my conditioning that no longer served me," Kaur said.
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