While most people in the West wanting to marry someone in their future would balk at the idea of their parents choosing for them, over half of marriages in the world are still arranged marriages.
And if you look at just the divorce rate compared to self-selected marriages, arranged marriages seem to be a lot more successful. On average, arranged marriages have a divorce rate of around four to six percent, and in India it is even lower: just one out of one hundred Indian marriages end up in divorce.
Compared to a 50% divorce rate in the States, we might begin to ask ourselves, what are we missing out on?
1. Not Every Relationship Starts Out Hot and Passionate
In the West, we have a deeply ingrained narrative about how relationships are supposed to begin. You look all over for the “one,” and once you find them, your love will erupt like a volcano, you will have hot, passionate sex, fall madly in love, and live happily ever after.
But few couples do live “happily ever after.” Instead, while the beginning of the relationship seemed beautiful and perfect in every way, couples encounter more and more problems as they are forced to shift from an idealist version of love to a more realistic one.
While self-selected marriages tend to feel less in love over time, those in arranged marriages tend to feel more in love as time grows.
No, your relationship does not need to follow the fairytale narrative of falling madly in love at the beginning. It is perfectly reasonable to find a nice, kind, caring, and supportive partner, and allow your love to build over time.
2. There Is No Such Thing as a Perfect Person
There is a story of a man who spent his entire life looking for the perfect woman. He would go into relationship after relationship only to find a flaw in the person and move on.
When the man turned 80, a friend finally asked him, “After all these decades of searching, did you ever find the perfect woman?”
And the old man said, “Yes, once.”
“And what happened?” asked the friend. “Unfortunately,” the old man confesses, “she was looking for the perfect man.”
The story is a humorous one that points to a fundamental truth: nobody is perfect. You have things to work on just as your partner has things to work on. If you spend your life looking for the perfect person, you will not find them.
No relationship is perfect either. Yes, there will be beautiful and joyous moments, but there will be challenging times too.
So, instead of looking for a perfect partner, the best thing to do is try to become the perfect, best partner that you can be. To acknowledge and take responsibility for when you make mistakes, and forgive your partner when they make one too.
Those in arranged marriages know this. They have been put to the task of not finding the right person to love, but bringing the right love to the person they are with.
3. Growth-Oriented Beliefs are Better than Destiny Beliefs
If you believe in the Disneyland Fairytale, a psychologist would say that you are holding what is called a “destiny belief.” Destiny beliefs most often manifest around ideas of finding “the one” and living “happily ever after.”
Unfortunately, destiny beliefs do not make for a good, long-term relationship. Research shows they actually tend to break up more quickly and more often, particularly when things start to become challenging.
When partners in a relationship with destiny beliefs encounter a problem in their relationship, they conclude they must be with the wrong person, rather than work together to solve the problem. People who believe in such romantic destiny tend to become unhappy quickly when relationships go through challenging times.
People with strong growth beliefs, in contrast, think that partners can cultivate a high-quality relationship by working and growing together.
Spouses in arranged marriages tend to hold these growth-oriented beliefs already. They know they are starting from just a seed and set the intention to grow the relationship as much as possible.
4. Every Marriage Needs a Support Network
Arranged marriages acknowledge that no relationship is a separate and isolated island. That is why they exist in the first place: by bringing in siblings, parents, and grandparents into the decision making process, you are creating a supportive network to help the marriage grow and thrive.
We all know the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child.” And it is true. Two people is simply not enough to raise a child.
You are more than welcome to get married to someone you love, even if their parents do not approve of you. But it is important to recognize that even so-called “nuclear families” establish what is known as a network of care: a group of people that can support you in your child-rearing.
Every marriage needs a support network of people, whether its grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, babysitters, older siblings, neighbors, or other parents, in order to survive and thrive.
5. Use Your Head Along With Your Heart
When I interviewed Anita Stoudmire for the Learn to Love Podcast, she emphasized that “healthy love is a 50/50 blend of head and heart.” We can absolutely follow our heart and feel the joy of falling in love, but we cannot forget about the discerning aspects of our mind that can rationalize whether our relationship will be a successful one.
For example, it is important at the beginning of a relationship to ensure you have the same values and are on the same page about what you are looking for in a relationship. This will involve some necessary communication, using your words, coming from your mind. There is no way around it.
Many arranged marriages do this already. Lots of factors are taken into account when two people come together. People are wed, not just because there is potential for love, but to join families together, for economic reasons, to control family inheritance, for politics, for ethnic or religious reasons, or just because they live in the same village.
One Final Caveat
Now before you jump too much on the arranged marriage bandwagon, do not get too attached to those divorce rates.
The lower divorce rate of arranged marriages can be a result of legal challenges, social pressure, and a patriarchy that does not allow women to leave their abusive husbands. A higher divorce rate is actually a relatively good indicator of societal freedom and equality of the sexes, like when the divorce rate doubled from 1960 to 1980, when more women entered the workforce and were no longer dependent on staying in their toxic marriages.
Nevertheless, there are still some mental frameworks and wisdom we can gain from seeing how arranged marriages work and end up happier than autonomous marriages in the long one.
We can take the mindsets listed above and apply them to all of our relationships.
