by Russell Dawson

Created on: April 11, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

Marriage is primarily an economic relationship. If you will allow yourself to read a little further an article that may initially sound heretical and controversial, you may very well come to understand why it is that many cultures around the world continue the practice of arranging marriages.

Forgive me if you were always taught that marriage is the union of two kindred spirits, or that the inexorable conclusion of "love at first sight" is marriage. More than half of all selected marriages in the West fail, which statistic should be provocative enough to cause most of us to ask whether we wouldn't all be better off choosing partners by some other means, such as a lottery.

Which is precisely why another method exists and has existed for as long as human history has been recorded. I speak, of course, of the practice of arranging marriages. Marriages are arranged by parents who have the advantage over their children of having been in a marriage themselves. They have a much better sense than their uninitiated children of what qualities make a person a good husband or wife. They also have a very good sense of the family's wealth and social status and will look to make a match that will at least preserve, if not improve, the status quo.

Many interviews, opinion surveys and case studies have been done of couples who were married by arrangement. The majority of them report that while their spouse was quite unfamiliar to them in the early stages of the relationship, they learned to love them over time. Contrast this with failing marriages in the West which begin intensely and passionately only to result in stagnation or bitterness.

The constant in arranged and selected marriages alike is that both partners will change over time. We are very different people at 40 than we were at 20. The difference between traditional marriages and selected marriages is that arranged marriages are arranged for long term reasons, whereas people who select their own mates tend to look more at their immediate compatibility and enjoyment of each other. For these couples, major changes in the relationship such as children, new homes or jobs can have entirely unforeseen consequences. Typically, arranged marriages weather these stressors better because they were arranged on the basis of long term compatibility which makes couples better able to adapt to short term variations in their lives.

In closing, many of us in the West are slightly (if not more) contemptuous of the whole idea of arranging marriages. But given our abysmal failure rate, is it not possible that other cultures may know something we don't?

Learn more about this author, Russell Dawson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.