Hard Decision and Heartbreak

30/ M started talking to this girl X a little less than 3 months ago. While my parents usually like to visit the prospective family's home before exchanging numbers, this time they had a video call instead as we live in different cities. Due to connectivity issues, they couldn't be too thorough but thought it was ok to let us start talking.

We clicked almost immediately. We worked in the same profession. Had some common experience etc. Was a bit cautious at first but gradually opened up even about a lot of very private stuff. Around 3 weeks in, she started to show the she was really invested the conversation. Wanted the conversation to be exclusive etc. I thought it was time to meet up but she wished to postpone a bit.

Her brother briefly met me at a restaurant soon after but by the time we/ our famillies met up we were nearly 6 weeks in. I felt pretty satisfied by the meeting but my parents had quite a few concerns. Her parents were a bit older, had a more small townish attitude. While we belonged to the same caste, her parents were more middle class, while we were more upper middle class. My parents couldn't find much to connect with them. They didn't give out much information about extended family etc. Also they seemed very obsessed with astrology etc. I dismissed my parents concerns as too premature and thought all these concerns would disappear once we got to know them better with time.

Over the next week or so, I felt pretty sure about her. Opened up about everything else including details of my and my family's finances. For various reasons she and her family weren't able to make the trip to our place immediately and things dragged out for over a month. My father did have a call with her brother but found him very reserved. Meanwhile she informed me that her family wouldn't like her coming over to our place until we got engaged due to some family tradition. We wanted to bring a couple of aunts and my grandmother who are very close to us but they said they didn't want to bring in extended family. Finally we invited my grandmother alone to avoid making her parents uncomfortable.

While from our end we hoped to confirm our interest in taking the relationship forward after this meeting it turned out to be a disaster. From the begining small irritants began to appear. My parents didn't appreciate the fact that they invited some friends of theirs suddenly without informing us, the way they refused food, beverage etc. Her mother seemed really restless. Kept walking around the house. My family found her comments on questions regarding vastu of my house a bit intrusive. Very little of the conversations were about the matters at hand. Very little was asked to my parents about expectations from them or their daughter, what they thought a future relationship would be like etc. A few minutes of me going to the restroom were all it took for tensions to flare up.

A comment by my grandmother about how she would have liked to meet X before finalizing our decision led to an aggressive reply from her mother. While initially I thought I should defend X as she had expressed her inability to come to us earlier, her mother gave me no room for it escalating tactlessly without even trying to bring down tensions even it was clear that my grandmother was upset. In an attempt to try to find connections my grandmother mentioned that my grandfather's family had been prominent in the city for a long time, and that details of quite a few relatives can be found online. Immediately her mother thought she needs to compete with us and said her family is very similar but obviously couldn't drop any names. We didn't even expect it from them. No other branch of my family is even that prominent. Her mother then began talking about marriage. Said they planned to keep it in their current city of residence. We don't have many relatives there and have a large family, so my mother said it would be a bit difficult for us (We don'texpect them to foot all the costs or anything but they never even asked us what we can contribute). She continued to go on ignoring this, said they had already spent a lot of effort on their son's wedding and wanted to relax a bit this time. It was even less well received when it appeared as if she was getting their friend to chime in on this. Even as they left they looked at a photograph of my late grandparents but ignored it. They then asked us about our family deity (kuladevata). They rejected our reply saying we must be misinformed given our native village and said it must be the deity of some other shrine and advised my father to visit it before any engagement.

All in all my family's opinion was that we couldn't connect. Her father seemed to be a simple and quiet man. If the girl was nice enough we could deal with. The mother though was an entirely different story who seemed determined to pick fights. I was ready to fight even blackmail my parents to proceed further but on discussing it further with friends realized it was no use. I couldn't deal with an in-law who behaved this way and neither of us could be happy if our famillies couldn't get along. Initially my mom thought we could somehow make it work bit my father and grandmother were also against it. By this time I had also decided.

When she replied with a 😃 to my cold good morning wish and I couldn't reply back it broke my heart but I decided to go along with it. My family broke the news to her family first and they said she'd call me back after work for feedback. I was scared I'd start crying on a video call but she insisted on one. Since she was combative and started making accusations about me/ my family wasting her time I luckily didn't get sentimental. Said I said she's a great person who deserves a wonderful life but it won't be as a part of my family. Deleted her contact and texts. Deeply miss her, feel like there's a whole in my heart but will probably heal in a couple of weeks.