postr/StutterDecember 11, 2018

Would you marry a girl who had a profound stutter?- Asking for a friend.

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Would you marry a girl who had a profound stutter?- Asking for a friend. My friend- we’ll call him Tor- just got out of a bad breakup about a year ago. His ex-girlfriend cheated, confessed and moved out. His parents panicked and have now set him up with a match maker. The parents are convinced he will never marry on his own as he is in his mid-late thirties. Tor work on oilrigs and is around no women like 90% of the time. Anyway, the match maker set him up with a couple of poor matches but the last one was with a very pretty girl (28 F)- we’ll call her “Pretty”. The match maker said she had a “very mild speech problem and was shy and inexperienced”. They got connected and as per custom, he took his parents to Pretty’s parents' house for a chaperoned introduction. He met her family which was ok. The father is a professional accountant, mom is a home-maker, 2 older brothers are kinda wild drug-addicts, but her younger brother is a successful soldier. Pretty herself had a graduate degree in Chemistry but worked as a minor research assistant- seriously underemployed and underpaid. Idk why I gave all this background but this is exactly how he explained it. Anyway, he and her went for a walk with his older brother and her younger brother in tow as chaperones. Tor and Pretty sat down and he tried to talk to her. At first he just thought she was shy, but after some gentle encouragement he realized that she had a profound stutter that he could barely understand. She said like 4 words total in about 2 hours. He called me and asked for advice. He is aware that it may have been extra hard for her that day as there was so much pressure to perform, but her younger brother told him that she has always had a profound stutter, and that it controls much of her life, she didn’t have a job for years as she cant interview. She’s not well adjusted to the stutter at all and regularly has depression and sadness because of it. He is not a snitch, just trying to be open for her sake to save her from embarrassment and rejection further down the line. Apparently, she has been rejected like 5 times and had even sworn off any more matches but somehow agreed to the one with my friend, as his family is very honorable and well respected in the community. To say no would have been a faux pas. The problem is that they have like 10 days of courtship before he has to make a decision to get engaged. He doesn’t want to string her along unfairly because it would be impossible to learn who she was and form a connection in 10 days with her poor speech, but at the same time he doesn’t want to reject her especially for something so out of her control, and he seems to think that she may lose the stutter with time?1?. Also texting is out of the question because this MF just cant do it. He is an engineer and he cannot for the life of him spell. He is a very honorable man so this is a real dilemma for him. I told him I’d Ask Reddit. What advice can I give him? TLDR: friend needs to get to know a girl in 10 days for an arranged marriage but she has a profound stutter and can't really communicate. what to do?

Themes

Emotional ExperienceSocial & Relationships

Subthemes

Shame & EmbarrassmentSadness & HopelessnessFamily Support & ConflictHelplessness & Agency

Codes (2)

listener_reactionsocial_pressure