Wednesday 22 April 2009

Marriage

Had a wonderful little discussion in Jules' class earlier on singleness and marriage. He comes from India, where marriage is assumed and arranged, although not always. It's got me to thinking - does marriage have to be borne out of love? Does it work better if it's romantic or not? Is a marriage of convenience - here I talk of marriage where perhaps people's needs are met in a way they could not be when single - any less legitimate than one that gives people butterflies? I don't rightly know. Discuss.

10 comments:

Moonstruck said...

meh

RH said...

Alot of our friends (Es and I) live with the knowledge that they will have arranged marriages and they're somehow okay with it, because it's part of their culture. I myself cannot understand how you're forced to learn to love someone you barely know.
There is one thing that annoys me-they're okay with it, with having their parents decide who they're gonna be with for the rest of their lives.. They're not stupid.
Oh, and another thing- It annoys me when people think of India as a place where you have arranged marriages and everything's very backward. It's only a group of people who actually think like that.

David said...

I know it annoys you. That would be why I said it doesn't always happen.

I'm sort of in favour of arranged marriages. I would trust my parents - mostly - to find me someone suitable.

RH said...

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa-?!?!
Okay, so, you're okay with learning to love someone and having no other option than to love that person, and erm, even if they are horrible, and just put on a fake show in front of your parents and is very convincing...?
So you're okay with marrying someone you don't know... and having no say in who is picked to be your partner for LIFE...?

David said...

As I said, I would assume my parents know me well enough to choose someone suitable, not someone horrible. Yes, it is quite a lot down to their judgement, but that's something you would have to trust.

Mind you, I'm not totally in favour - but I can see the advantages.

RH said...

Advantages.?!!?
Name 'em. Really.

Moonstruck said...

Advantages? Really?

I rely far too heavily on chemistry to have faith in arranged marriages.

RH said...

THANKYOU.

Steve said...

The thing is in any marriage you'll get to the point where you will have to make the choice to love the person you're with. And actually about a third of all couples have chosen not to do this, they've done their 2-5 years where they are madly 'in-love' and then they start to realise the person is actually just a normal human with things that annoy them and don't choose to love them. The marriages that do work are where people can come out of the 'pie in the sky-in love' phase and continue to choose to love.

So, yeah, why can't arranged marriages work? I don't think its all about learning to love but I think its more important to choose to love.


Stevo
sorry for the length.....

David said...

Length is not an issue - thanks for your comments. That's the way I'm starting to think. You can only fall in love with certain people. But you can choose to love anyone.