[opine4me]

I think people in western cultures can be overly critical of the concept of arranged marriage. I know people that have had arranged marriages and it has actually worked out very well for them. I'm not saying I'm about to go get MYSELF into one, or that people who don't believe in arranged marriage should be forced into them... but if two young people are OK with the general idea of an arranged marriage and it is simply the choice of partner that is arranged by their families, I think that can work out fine.

The main advantage of arranged marriage is that the mindset going into it is devoid of the unrealistic expectation of eternal happiness that goes into a lot of western marriages. Two people meet, are strongly attracted to each other and get emotionally attached, and our American mindset encourages them to think that this means they will be happy together forever. But the data show that this is simply not the case... after 5 or 10 or 20 years, the feeling often fades and you end up with half of the marriages ending in divorce.

In contrast, with an arranged marriage, at least there is the fact that someone (the parents) is thinking rationally in terms of long-term compatibility and stability, rather than short-term bliss. You pay a little up front in these marriages in terms of not always having that initial excitement, but after 20-30 years I think oftentimes people in arranged marriages are just as happy with their situation, or happier, than people in non-arranged marriages of similar duration.

All that said, I'm sure in arranged-marriage societies bad matches are made all the time. But bad matches are also made all the time when people choose their own partners. So overall, I think we Americans give the arranged marriage societies a bad rap. I've never seen statistics on marital happiness at the 25-year mark in arranged versus non-arranged marriages, but I bet those data would be pretty illuminating...