#why are men allowed to be so slutty without repercussions??

[phati-sari]

Why do you think Arnav wasn't a virgin before Kushi He was really uncomfortable with touching Lavanya & when he was in USA he was with an indian introvert girl Can you message me the answer in private since you said that you don't like how people react to it

PSA (Phati Sari Announcement): I am not interested in a debate over this issue. These are my views and everyone is entitled to disagree or agree as they wish. This is a deeply personal topic because many people have qualities they want in an ideal partner and virginity is sometimes one of them. My saying that I believe Arnav was not a virgin, then, will seem like a personal attack to some. But this is my space and I’m allowed to hold whatever views I wish. If you respect my opinions and arguments, then that respect should be afforded when you agree with me, and when you disagree. I am free to believe Arnav was not a virgin and free to believe that he was an alien, and whether you agree or disagree is up to you. I’m not pushing a particular view on anyone, and would appreciate it if people didn’t decide to “correct” or “educate” me. All it’s going to do is upset both of us. 

A huge huge thank you to @puranijeans​ for helping me out and keeping me sane today! I love you and appreciate you and I do not deserve you.

Hello @dodo8585 :)

I’ve decided to answer this in public because I think it’s important.

The first thing you need to understand is why I am uncomfortable with answering this question. Most people already know what they believe about Arnav’s virginity. He either was a virgin or he wasn’t. There’s an element of confirmation bias around any conversation we have on this topic – people accept only the evidence that supports their view and ignore evidence that goes against it.

I’m not against having a discussion, but often people expect me to defend my views with no intention of changing their own or even defending their position. I honestly don’t care what others think, I have my opinion and I’m happy with it, but I’ve noted that I’m not afforded the same courtesy by others. Even your question frames the situation as “Why do you hold this view when I noticed this and this?”

The short and simple answer is that I view the serial differently from you. And that’s okay.

The (super) long answer is:

Lavanya’s behaviour

When Lavanya moved into Shantivan she expected to be staying in Arnav’s room with him. He expected the same, and it was only Nani’s insistence that she stay in the guestroom that resulted in the situation we saw. Arnav even objected to it in the first instance.

I understand that people excuse this by saying that Arnav was going for the shock value of the arrangement, but I don’t think there was anything in his demeanor to suggest that. He wanted to have a live-in relationship with his girlfriend and an essential part of live-in is the sharing of private space, which in Shantivan is his bedroom.

Lavanya was confident that she could visit Arnav at night dressed in a nightgown. I realise that a lot of people code this confidence as “slutty”, but that feels very slut-shamy to me. There are very few types of women who invite themselves to a man’s bedroom without being confident that she will be received positively. And Lavanya, some six months into her relationship with ASR, doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who would risk his ire. She keeps a list of everything that annoys him, and late night visits in nightgowns apparently don’t appear on it.

Her immediate assumption that it was Arnav tickling her (when it was really Lakshmi) in the very same episode also indicates a level of intimacy that goes beyond what they’re allowed to show in desi serials. And this is an important for me because many people argue that they never explicitly shown being intimate!

Neither were Shyam and Anjali, and yet no one is arguing that her conception was immaculate.

Lavanya made a habit of touching Arnav. She touched him often, with haq, and so casually that it implied a deeper intimacy. For example, there is a scene where Lavanya places her hand on Arnav’s upper thigh while speaking to him. She does it without fanfare, and neither of them has any reaction to it, which spoke volumes to me. That’s an area of a man’s body one generally doesn’t touch unless there is a high level of familiarity and intimacy.

A lot of these points are ignored by those who believe Arnav was a virgin. These people genuinely seem to believe that Lavanya behaved like this because she was immoral or wanted sex regardless of Arnav’s wishes, and while they are welcome to their views, I don’t agree.

Arnav’s behaviour

You pointed out that he was really uncomfortable with touching Lavanya. I agree that he was, but only after Khushi became a permanent fixture in his life. When she was first introduced, Arnav had absolutely no issue with Lavanya feeding him cake, kissing his cheek, and even went as far as to tell her that she was one of the few people who could waste his time. I think he stopped being comfortable with physical intimacy with Lavanya when he knew he was sexually attracted to Khushi.

As tempting as it is to shunt Lavanya off and decide that Arnav never cared about her, my interpretation is that she meant a great deal to him. He wasn’t in love with her, but he wasn’t in love with anyone and didn’t think he would ever fall in love. By all accounts, he was a dedicated and honest partner. If she wanted more and he couldn’t give it to her, it was because he was incapable of giving more at the time, not because he was purposefully holding back a part of himself for his True Love.

After all, he claimed not to believe in marriage or love when we met him. If he wasn’t waiting for his future wife, and if he wasn’t waiting for his True Love, then why would be remain celibate? I’m not saying that men are sex-hungry monsters or anything, but Arnav has none of the drivers most people have for remaining celibate. He isn’t religious, and so didn’t believe in repercussions around sex before marriage, and he wasn’t “saving himself” for a wife or True Love.

He was twenty-six when we met him, and I just can’t see why he would remain a virgin when he doesn’t seem to have a reason to.

Breaking the bed

One of the most important things that happened before the remarriage is that Arnav’s bed was replaced. The bed they broke was a symbolic and visual negation of any sexual relationships in Arnav’s past. Even if he had slept with anyone else in that bed, it was replaced before he and Khushi were intimate. In a way, it ensured that their marital bed was solely theirs, a bed they broke in made their own after marriage.

Sheetal

I guess the main reason people believe Arnav was a virgin before Khushi is because he was absolutely sure that he hadn’t slept with Sheetal in college and told Khushi as much. I agree that he said he didn’t sleep with Sheetal, but I have a different interpretation of what he meant when he followed it up with the declaration that he wasn’t “that type of guy”.

On one hand, I think that the writers tried to back away from the narrative that Arnav had clearly slept with women before Khushi. Perhaps it was a way to get the conservative audience on board, perhaps it was because they forgot, but I think they established Arnav one way and then tried to fudge it over in the Sheetal track.

On the other hand, I think there is a difference between having sex before marriage and being promiscuous, and that Arnav could have easily meant that he wasn’t the type of guy who slept with any and every girl. He had previously given Khushi a very long list of past flames as a joke, and she seemingly followed it up with the assertion that he’d fathered Aarav. I think Arnav linked the two and tried to reassure her that he wasn’t the kind of guy who had casual hookups.

Values and commitment

The typical audience for the serial is an Indian woman. And for cultural and religious reasons, this audience equates “commitment” with “marriage”. The idea that Arnav could’ve been committed and dedicated to the point of needing a level of emotional intimacy before engaging in physical intimacy seems to be completely alien to a majority of this audience.

He is either seen as someone who was too busy for sexual relationships, someone who went through the motions of a relationship without wanting or needing any aspects of it. Someone who was completely disinterested in women but let them hang around him for Reasons. But his behaviour with Lavanya never suggested this, in my opinion, so I don’t agree with it.

Or he is seen as a man-whore, someone who banged everything in a skirt (including and not limited to prostitutes), because a lack of belief in love and marriage must equate to a lack of respect for women and an inability to commit.

This is the sort of thinking that Khushi fell prey to. Maybe some part of the audience agreed with her when she argued for the merits of marriage to Lavanya but I think Khushi was laughably ignorant there. Because if the only thing preventing a man from trading a woman in for a younger model (or two!) is his marriage vows then there is something fundamentally wrong in that relationship, whether it is called marriage or not. And this serial is full of men to whom it did not matter any way.

I believe Arnav was a dedicated and committed partner, but that his definition of commitment did not include marriage. I believe he didn’t need the label of Husband, didn’t require his partner to be labelled a Wife, and I think it makes sense given his history.

If not love or marriage, what then was the point of Arnav’s relationships with Lavanya and Sheetal (and Lisa of the fur coat)? I’m not suggesting that every relationship needs to be sexual – many of them aren’t and that’s perfectly understandable – but it still defies logic, in my opinion, to assume that Arnav spent the entirety of his adult life engaged in relationships that weren’t satisfying to him in the ways he needed.

Are we suggesting that he was so starved of people fawning over him that he sought out a special person who’d fawn over him in private and at command?

#ipkknd #iss pyaar ko kya naam doon #arshi #khushi kumari gupta #arnav singh raizada #dodo8585 #answered #about: arnav's virginity #analysis #i haz opinions #greatest hits