Baduy Village

The Baduy people believe everything they do for their life is for their salvation to God. They do their marriage because it is one of human behavior and their ancient have done that before. It is a manifestation of one of the salvation for God. They will do marriage just because they have to do; often their parent selects the bride and groom.

They do not have any particular standard for a ‘good husband’ or ‘good wife’. They only know what husband and wife job descriptions in their life. A husband will responsible for giving them shelter and food. Wife should carry her responsibilities on cooking, looking after house and children. Their understanding of husband and wife just as it is.

As comparison, we pick one culture in Javanese tradition. Marriage should be done carefully and fulfill some criteria. The famous quotes are “Bibit, Bobot and Bebet.’ These are of high standard criteria for bride and groom. Bibit means that she/he must be born from no divorce parent or have clear identity of parent. Bobot means that his/her family should wealthy enough to do ceremony or can afford to help the couple on their early years of marriage to settled up with material, such a house and job. Bebet means that she/ he well qualified in education and attitude.

It will be huge different if we get on Western marriage as comparison. In Western marriage, as Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her book Committed, 2010; we often found so many difficulties a couples facing marriage because of our ‘self-centered’ tendency. We need our satisfaction, happiness being most important part in our life, and as implication, it has to work well onto a marriage. By the time we did not found the happiness, which can be happen by many reason, we will easier blame our spouse and even our marriage. Then marriage is being a fragile and finally we chose a divorce as a best solution. The Baduy people mind is full of feeling gratefully, calm and receive their life as God willing to them, whether is bad or good. They receive their marriage as it God willing and we must receive it with love. Until 2010 we found there is no divorces in Baduy marriage couple, since five hundreds years a go as Suhada  wrote in his book ”Masyarakat Baduy dalam Rentang Sejarah".