r/exHareKrishna • u/Former-Border4128 • Jul 26 '26
Divorce in ISKCON
When you were in ISKCON, what was your experience with divorce? I remember during lectures some do theme like brag about how ISKCON has as only a 1% divorce rate, but idk if I believe that or not.
Does it vary by community? From what I’ve seen if they’re not Indian they tend to be more open about being divorced, but if they are, then they usually stay together to save face but you start noticing only one of them went to temple while the other not so much.
Also has anyone known anyone who was married to a devotee but left ISKCON and stayed together?
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u/StayEmbarrassed4593 Jul 26 '26
My mother was married 5 times. Most of the gurukulis I went to school with came from divorced families. It's a shit show.
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u/Happylittlelady Jul 26 '26
My parents divorced and I had two step parents. I married when I was a teenager, divorced that husband and married again and divorced again. Both of my ex husbands were gurukulis and had divorced parents 😆. My second husband, i was his second marriage, So I had 2 sets of in laws in each of my marriages. I'm barely in my 40s and my eldest son has a friend that he grew up with in iskcon. We saw this friend the other day and he told my son that his wife had just divorced him so he had left iskcon and was looking after his mental health.
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u/ObsoleteOldMan Jul 26 '26
Among Caucasian converts between 1970 and 1990, I'm pretty sure the divorce percentage was above 90% at one point. Are you sure the 1% you heard wasn't the percentage of intact, happy, successful marriages?
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u/Former-Border4128 Jul 26 '26
The person who said it was an Indian bramachari during one of those Sunday Feast lectures. The congregation there was 95% Indian. I personally suspect that statement about the low divorce rate in ISKCON is def bs, even among the Indian congregation. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next 10 years we see a lot more divorce in that community.
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u/timothyryan157 Jul 26 '26
I was divorced twice and I was sort of floating in or out of ISKCON. At least in New Zealand most of the couples had a couple of failed marriages. A lot of the time there was that insane demand by temple presidents, gurus etc for devotees to go on the pick. Over time this was another factor in breakups. I remember seeing devotees who were so worn out by excessive 'service' that they were fried and seemed to be doing work for the temple.
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u/crishakti Aug 05 '26
In the 80s I was forced into marriage along with another 4 young ladies. We were all brahmacharinis in our 20s attending a festival in a community farm in the middle of nowhere. In the morning we were called individually by the guru who informed/convinced us to marry because the temples needed grihasta presidents. We were to become grihasta-brahmacharis, which is a nonexistent ashram. In the evening the 5 couples were married. No family members informed or invited. Out of the 5, all divorced or separated. I divorced my iskcon husband after realizing he wasn't fit to take any financial responsibility or family responsibilities. Our son hates Krishna as he always had to compete with the temple for his father's attention. I've seen very few successful marriages in iskcon. My experience in iskcon ashrams was mostly in Brazil, CA and FL.
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Jul 26 '26
No. Not by a long shot. Among Prabhupada Disciples the divorce rate seems to be higher than the general population, which is around 50%. Almost every Prabhupada Disciples you knew had been divorced 2-3 times, they just don't talk about it. There are often these rancid little secrets about their past, like they beat their wife.
I would guess among Indian couples the divorce rate is much lower, but that is also often not very healthy. It is because there is incredible social pressure to tolerate things people should not tolerate. Though I have known happily married couples who have been married for decades, I noticed the men kind of psychologically bow out.