Lifelong Marriages

Lifelong Marriages
Mrs. Natasa Gulyas Lakatos

It always makes me wonder, how differently we, Gipsy women think about our lives, compared to non-gipsy women. To us, marriage is sacred. We fall in love with our husbands on the first sight and stay for the rest of our lives together. I met lots of Gipsy women living happily in the same marriage for decades. They told me that love, patience, understanding and adherence are really important, such as expressing one's opinion, even if it's uncomfortable for the other person to acknowledge. Most women consider the most important for their husbands to have a job to provide comfort for the family. Meanwhile, men told me that the most important things for them are love and work.
In my family the most important thing is to talk through everything, no matter what the topic is.

It is common knowledge that more things are allowed to men in the Gipsy culture. We, Gypsy women try to adapt to the cultural conditions and habits, mostly successfully. Most of us are getting married at a really young age. Then we give birth to our children, and from that point our lives cycle around the daily chores – 'cooking, cleaning, washing' – as we say.
Our husbands demand housekeeping and taking care of the children, as in our families children have a great influence on the parents. But the world is changing slowly in our communities, too, the number of teenagers getting married is decreasing. Our children consider studying to be more important than growing up to be a young parent. My 16 years old son doesn't even have marriage in his mind - fortunately. Even in Gipsy communities people are starting to recognise that one needs a job and needs to be a responsible man to start a family, apparently.

But marriages still go on lifelong, according to the Gypsy tradition.