by Jaye Green

Created on: April 25, 2009

When I was growing up, the mere idea that my parents would pick out my furture husband was repulsive. I went on to make my own mistakes. Devasting mistakes, and realise now that had I let my parents select at least candidates, my life would have been far happier.

The problem with so-called 'love' matches is that we tend to be attracted to non-existent people. We see a man with long hair and assume he is revolutionary or artistic, we see a woman all dressed up looking like a queen, and we 'fall in love' with the packaging.

Being young we don't know the difference between gold and brass. We can't hear the difference between a voice repeating an undigested concept and the one who actually holds and lives by certain principles. So we are fooled and fool each other. And then we realise, 'this is not the person I married'.

When family makes the selection their eyes see deeper. They know you are really a very lazy person who only looks busy right now because it amuses you. They know you are more interested in classical music than what is bleating over the radio but are only pretending to be interested in the top ten to be politically correct.

Your family knows that you absolutely can not tolerate certain kinds of people, reject certain attitudes, and see deeper than eye makeup or a good hair cut.

Hence your family will select a person who not merely gets along with you, but that the family of this person and your family believe the same things.

When a marriage is arranged both families have vested interests in seeing that the marriage works. They go out of their way, supplying money, time, diversions, to insure that the marriage works. Yes, call it interference, but when the family notices that you are at your wit's end they will send you and your spouse on an all expense paid two week vacation and take care of your children.

Family will be there to settle disputes and preserve the marriage. For often, without family to help the couple work out problems the marriage would dissolve as do so many 'love matches'.

For 'love matches' are often lust dressed in white.

A man sees a beautiful woman, lusts after her, marries her. She starts to put on weight. This is not who he married, hence he disposes of her. A woman thinks she's married an ambitious fellow, but after a few years realises that he will never get much father, so divorces him.

Romantic love rarely lasts two years. It either mellows into a deeper connection or dissipates as cheap perfume. It doesn't hold up to the stresses of traffic jams, recession, sickness, floods, and the other annoying incursions of reality. Like fairy tales, romantic love only exists in realms of fantasy, and one can not base their future on the possibility of its lasting.

Arranged marriages have to last because so many people have invested so much into it. Mother-in-Laws are now joint grand mothers. His second cousin and her nephew are best friends. Her brother got his uncle a job, and his aunt is her grand uncle's lawyer.

Everyone one in his family and every one in her family become instant customers/clients of each other. Through the marriage of this man and this woman two families become one. Hence maintaining that marriage is a burden shared by everyone in the bloodline.

This isn't two people alone in the world except for each other, these are two people totally absorbed by each other's family. No insecurity, no feeling of what will happen if a job is lost, a child needs an operation,

Just as one can't divorce their parents or sibling or children, and most do their best to maintain a relationship, in spite of...the same mechanism plays in arranged marriages.

The relationship between the couple and their families lasts beyond the death of one of them.

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