Ok, so the wedding bells have rung, the dance floor has witnessed your best moves, and the intricate mehendi has faded from your hands. Your Indian wedding extravaganza is over, and suddenly, you find yourself asking, “Who am I now?”  

For us Indian women, the wedding isn’t just an event; it’s a seismic shift in our lives. We go from being daughters to wives, and with that transition comes a whirlwind of emotions, expectations, and a dash of confusion. The post-wedding phase is like the morning after a storm—you’re left to pick up the scattered pieces and figure out where they fit. Over the course of generations, Indian women have customarily embraced a new identity after marriage – involving changes in their name, way of life, domestic surroundings, principles, aspirations, or the role they play in a family system.

What is identity?

Identity is like a mozaic – its a unique arrangement of individual pieces that together form a some-what cohesive picture. Each piece represents our personality, goals, values, beliefs, ideologies, career, and affiliations, all glued by our memory and experiences. New experiences re-adjust our neuronal circuits so that we have an updated mental framework of the world around us and where “we” lie within that framework.  

According to developmental psychologists, identity development begins in adolescence to young adulthood and is effected by the balance of two parameters: 

Based on your exploration of identity options

Based on your commitment to an identity  

Exploration involves encountering new perspectives, while commitment is embracing a specific identity. For instance, Anya had a deep interest in both writing and mathematics, but her parents urged her to pursue a career as an engineer. Upon completing her education, she enrolled in a creative writing course and apprenticed with journalists. This exploration exposed her to the possibilities of a writing career but also illuminated the challenges associated with its long-term stability. Drawing from her exploration, she ultimately chose to commit to a career in engineering while simultaneously maintaining an online blog to pursue her writing passion. 

Depending on where you stand in the spectrum between these two parameters, you can fall into the following categories:

Identity Diffusion: You have not explored identity options AND also haven’t committed to an identity. This might make you feel a sense of aimless drift and a lack of purpose in life. Individuals in this category may have low self-esteem, a deficit of meaningful friendships, and a lack of ownership or responsibility of their lives.

Identity Foreclosure: You committed to an identity without any exploration. The commitment could be driven by social or parental pressures. Individuals in this category may constantly seek approval from authority figures and hold limited acceptance for change.

Identity Moratorium: You are in the exploration phase – whether that means testing new ideologies, values, goals, or a new “role” in your life. Individuals in this stage try to bridge the gap between “who they were” and “who they are now” which might cause confusion and anxiety due to uncertainty about your place in the world.

Identity Achievement: You have surpassed the moratorium stage and have constructed an identity based on your exploration. Individuals in this stage feel at-peace and have a stable self-definition.