Which is better Arrange Marriage or Love Marriages .

Hi, Pal! I knew a girl from India who was arranged to be married when she was very young to one of the boys from her village. She wasn't married yet, although I know that some communities in India do have their children marry quite young. However, she was in love with another guy at the time I knew her, and being she was from a very traditional family, she felt she must keep her promise to marry the boy from her village so as to not cause disgrace to fall on her family. She was pretty sad and I felt sorry for her. Interestingly, a psychologist I know once told me that studies have been done to see if arranged marriages or "love" marriages had a larger occurance of divorce. Guess what? You have just as much chance of a successful marriage with an arranged marriage as with a "love" marriage! If I may ask, are arranged marriages traditional in your culture, and if so, were you arranged and how has it worked out for you? If I'm getting too personal, please tell me so. I apologize in advance.

Arranged? Don't know anyone that has had this, but think that love grows. And love marriages, sometimes don't work out in the end, because you fall out of love. There are exceptions for those couples who communicate well. I prefer love ones, you only live once!

The acceptance of diverse lifestyles in the subject society affects the success rates of marriages. When we talk about arranged marriages we talk predominant marriages in eastern society alone. So, I will compare what allows the statistially higher success of eastern marriages versus those of western marriages. My point is not to put one society over the other but to highlight that statistics do not capture the whole story. In eastern societies divorce, single motherhood, and aged singles are frowned upon. These are non issues in western societies. Spousal abuse is a prosecutable crime yet an accepted norm in eastern societies; it is a prosecuted crime in western societies. Families provide social security in eastern societies, govt does that in Western societies. Individual dignity is of most importance in western societies, family dignity is the case for eastern societies. Each spouse has an independent life of his/her own in addition to the marriage in western societies, this is mostly not true in eastern societies. In a lot of cases incompatible spousal relationships sustain in eastern societies because of lack of alternatives; this shows as a positive marriage statistically. The available alternatives encourages the spouses to opt for the impulsive/easy/necessary path of divorce in western societies; this shows as a negative marriage statistically. So any comparison between arranged and love marriages has to account for both quality and quantity. I think at that point we might find both kinds of marriages, love and arranged, have equal likelihood of success. After all, the marriage is between two individuals and they are the same wether they go through arranged or love marriage.

In traditional arrang marriage the parents choose their son's or daughter's future spouse with some input from the to be bride or bridegroom. If ethier son or daughter refuse the choice, the parents tend to respect their wishes and choose another possible spouse. The main motivating factor is Happiness of Son or Daughter. Since marital incompatibility has found to be the major reason for divorce arranged marriages might ensure higher probability of success because they tend to match persons from same religion, cast,socioeconomic background, education, linguistic group, age group etc. My parents are happily married for more then 25 years now and it was arranged marriage. I am also happily married from last 4 years now. I have also seen couples who were in love and then got married. Here they have higher expectations from each other where as in arrange marrige neither the man nor the woman knows quite what to expect and there is great understanding on both sides. Infact the divorce rate in love marriages are higher than arrange marriages.