My case for arranged marriage

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Ya I would of gotten married at 18 given the chance but it just hasnt happened yet for me.So I hear you.

i wanted in the worst way for somebody to marry me when i was young. an arranged marriage would have worked out best for me at least.

Did the 3 in arranged marriages mention anything about how satisfied they were in their marriages? Just because they're still married doesn't mean they're happily married.

I don't know a lot about Indian arranged marriages, but my guess would be that divorcing your partner within the context of an arranged marriage is probably more looked down upon.


I think the ultimate goal of any sort of dating is to work in unison to live a more fulfilling life together than you would apart. I'm speaking from a place of inexperience, but I don't think that breaking up with someone after things are no longer working out invalidates the satisfying experiences you got with them while things were working out. Sometimes people just grow apart.


While some common interests or proclivities are important to provide you an avenue through which to connect with your partner, I agree that having the most common interests possible doesn't necessarily make for a stable relationship. Compatible life goals and values are more important.

That said, if you're not well-connected socially, avenues through which to meet potential partners are sparse. Online dating is notoriously brutal on average and below-average looking guys, and if you're not religious, religious institutions aren't a viable avenue either. Being introverted and less outgoing only makes it all the more challenging. Really, as an introverted autistic guy who's nothing special in the looks department, what options are there for meeting women to date other than maybe joining interest groups?

I'm certainly not for forcing people to date each other, but I think something that more arranged marriage-esque societies got right is the external assistance with finding prospective partners. I'd love nothing more than for somebody to help me find some matches to potentially take out on dates and see how things go.


I think after you've matched two people together who seem to have some interest in each other, the matchmaker's job is done, and those two individuals then just need to continue the dating process to see if there's anything there. I think people should get to know each other well before they consider trying to live together.


Yeah, dating as it currently functions seems to heavily disadvantage many of us on the spectrum who struggle socially. Being successful at dating seems to hinge a lot more on one's social skills and social confidence than it likely would in an arranged marriage scenario.

I think for many of us, we'd find it a lot easier maintaining a relationship with a compatible partner than finding a compatible partner with no assistance. Our social skill deficits, along with the general trend of the atomisation of society really make it hard for a lot of us. One need look no further than this subforum for evidence of that.

Well, it's kind of a societal experiment. Right now we're trying the "pick someone you kind of like from the 100 or so people you meet" style for finding partners, and it seems to lead to a lot of divorce. Maybe just because people are selecting. The more we judge something, the less we like it. People in arranged marriages might just not judge it so they don't dislike it. But being nonselective is not the solution either.
Maybe it''s just a development process for humanity to find the right style of selecting partners. I certainly think the last 3000 years of arranged marriages mostly just led to resignated people who put up with whatever they were dealt, not happy marriages. Now we're in this transition stage where we get to pick people, but from a relatively small pool and then we don't really spend that much time with them because we're always working. Maybe a future version is to find people from a larger pool (i.e. actually travel the world and meet thousands of strangers to find a fitting partner from a segment of society that you are adapted to, not just pick one from the few dozen people you happen to run into at work/school) and actually spend time with them, because society is richer and we don't have to work all day.

The advantage of a society where arranged marriages are seen as the norm is that nerdy/socially awkward guys who would have otherwise sucked at finding a partner, would have been able to find a partner much easier because of arranged marriage. A 30 year old shy, awkward, nerdy, virgin who can't get girls, may have benefitted from living in a society where arranged marriages are common, and he would have a far less chance of winding up being foreveralone.

Would someone want to end up with the type of person who resorted voluntarily to arraigned marriage assuming it's by choice?

If it's a "mandatory" arraigned marriage, would you want to live in such a society?

China, once completely reliant on arranged marriages, gradually transitioned to free marriages in the 20th century.
Although I don't approve of arranged marriages. But one scholar living in the midst of this transition argues that a society dominated by arranged marriages has its advantages:
Both men and women (especially women) do not have to spend energy on improving their attractiveness to the opposite sex, and can spend more time on self-development.

A society that makes hair removal/makeup/slim a semi-mandatory task for women is not so kind to women, at least in my opinion. This also applies to other burdens used to "enhance attractiveness," for any group.

at this point in my life, yes.

Yeah. Reminds me of many people I've known in older generations who didn't have divorce as a socially-accepted options. I've known people who've spent most of their lives miserable, tied to someone they couldn't stand. Divorce is better than being unhappily married.

And it's important for children, too. Unfortunately, a lot of people think divorce is bad for children, when longitudinal studies show that in families that end up divorced, mental health issues in the children peak in the last few years before the divorce, and decrease once the divorce has happened. Unhappy marriages hurt children, and divorce is often a huge relief.

My parents separated, then divorced, in the 1970s. I came out okay.

Everybody came out better.

My father married the woman he wanted to marry....and my mother pursued her career in psychotherapy.

When I was single, I talked a bit on here about wanting an arranged marriage. Long-term relationships like marriage require commitment, treating each other with respect, & willingness to listen & compromise in order to last. I believe the main reason lots of relationships do not last is because people are NOT willing to invest the time, energy, & effort into trying to make their relationships work. People figure they can jump ship & find a new partner as soon as a problem arises. The thing is that NObody is perfect & every single relationship will run into problems at some point. How couples deal with those problems together is the key to having a decent long term happy relationship.

Real love is something that develops & evolves as people get to know each other & spend time together. Just because a relationship like an arranged marriage did not start because of the couple having butterflies in their stomachs nor finishing each others sentences, it does NOT mean that the couple cant both majorly love each other after a while if they are both willing to put in the effort & treat each other with respect & decency.

How would that be detrimental?

For me, having at least some interests in common has always been a sine qua non.


I agree that these are very important also.

Agreed.

In my opinion, the most important thing two people need to agree on is how to deal with disagreements. If they don't agree on that, then every disagreement will turn into a fight over how to deal with the disagreement, thereby blowing the original disagreement way out of proportion.


I agree for the most part.

IMO one of the biggest problems in Western culture is that a lot of people believe in "love at first sight," which IMO is an absolutely nonsensical concept. If you've just met someone, you can't possibly know much about them. Therefore, if you've just met someone, you can't possibly love that person. You can love only a very incomplete image of that person that you have in your head.

IMO, in order for a relationship to form, there needs to be something to draw the partners together initially, but that something does not need to be an emotionally intense attraction. It seems to me that if people place too high a value on initial emotional intensity ("butterflies"), then the relationship has nowhere to go but downhill as the people get to know each other better.

This is generally true throught the south , though generally they aren't arrange many come to be facilitated by the Parents wedding the kids to an older person if the child , parents and the old say yes..

they can't do anything hanky panky until much later

btw those laws have long been erased by the bastards in Washington...

I was gonna marry my teen sweetheart with those laws and btw you can make an effort to make them sound primitive but simply look on Yahoo answers and you'll artifacts from the past of many kids like me who got happily married at my age it was our way of life.

I have family who did this and many of there kids now and we off and doing very good for themselves

I'd talk to the people at school and it was the same for them

It wasn’t abnormal until maybe the 70s for teenagers to marry each other.

Even in the 80s, a 13-year-old girl could get married with the parents’ permission in some Southern states.

It was more of a problem if the man was 21 or over and the girl was under 16.

I had an online friend in Texas who married her husband about 15 years ago when she was about 15 & he was about 22. He was related to a good friend of hers & they both shared a weird interest they bonded over & started dating when she was 14. Her mom had some serious problems & was abusive & ended up getting arrested for some serious stuff. Due to the extenuating circumstances, the couple was able to get a judge to marry em. He was still living with his parents at the time so she moved in with them. His parents woulda adopted her but the couple got married to avoid potential problems with others calling the cops on him for statutory rape.