Arranged Marriages Have a Strong Foundation
There an age-old debate on the on whether take the scenic route from love to marriage or marriage and then love. Living in an age that is considered self-actualized and civilized, most of the people will tend to consider getting married to someone that they love. This is considered the right path by most of the people in the society relative to the feelings associated with love and the affection that comes with knowing and being in love with someone. As such, committing to someone that we love seems as the best approach for marriage. However, it is not entirely true and love after marriage does develop strong bonds as well.
Ideally, the element of love after marriage or what is normally referred to as arranged marriages are considered to be outdated. This is the case considering that in most of the cases, arranged marriages were traditionally practiced in the olden days and in the rural areas. Relative to the level of civilization, most of the people have felt the need to have the freedom to choose their own partners. It is this element of freedom that has pushed most of the people towards basing their romantic relationships as the first track to marriage.
Love takes several stages before it dies out. By this time, most of the people that have committed to marriage with their love partners, start to doubt if their partners actually love them. It is common for most of the marriages to start experiencing challenges after a period of roughly three to four years. At this stage one or the two partners are ready to leave the relationship. Everything they believed about their partners are shaky and uncertain if they knew their partner. In this confusion, most of the people tend to end their relationships get into a stage where they no longer try to make the relationship work. As such, the marriage becomes a miserable union where the parties are only together relative to the commitments that they have such mortgage, care loans, children, family and friends. Otherwise on the inside the marriage is dead and most of the time the parties do not have time for one another. There are cases where the parties will even live different lives such as having an open relationship.
On the other hand, there an aspect to consider when it comes to the arranged marriages, expectations. In the arranged marriages, the level of expectations is low. This is to mean that, given that neither of the party is into the other or the commitment in general having been forced by their families, they do not expect much from their partners. This is contrary to the love based-marriages where the partners are in love and thus they have so much expectations from one another. The partners in the arranged marriages have less expectations, and thus, even when their partners do not much what they hoped for, they do not feel as disappointed. The is to mean that the level of disappointment is low. With time, they learn to love and their love grows stronger. By the time the relationship is into the fifth year, they are love and have come to appreciate one another. By this time the love marriage is experiencing serious challenges. The arranged marriage partners start with learning one another’s strengths and weaknesses and develop coping mechanisms, thus have a good foundation when it comes to lasting in the relationship.
