One important benefit of arranged marriages is that people do not spend half their youth seeking a mate.

I started being interested in girls around 10 years old, and I was married at age 25. During the 15 years in between, my mind was largely occupied by thoughts related to finding a mate. I think that's fairly normal under the cicumstances. In fifteen years of looking at girls and women as possible sex partners or hopefully a suitable wife, habits develop that make fidelity in marriage difficult for many people.

We talk about marriages of love, but this is nothing but a euphemism for lust. Love is only for God. In Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu's final Siksastika prayer, He says, "I know no one but Krishna as my Lord, and He shall remain so even if He handles Me roughly by His embrace, or leaves Me completely broken hearted by not being present before Me. He is completely free to do anything and everything, for He is always my worshipful Lord, unconditionally." That is love, and there is nothing like it in mundane relationships like wedlock. The fact that the so-called love that forms the basis of marriage is lust, rather than love, is exemplified by the prenuptial agrements. These marriages are basically a license for sex, an economic partnership, and little more.

Marriages based on duty endure far better than love based on sexual attraction. Although sexual interests are very prone to change, duty remains as long as one is civilized. Since Western so-called culture is basically a glorification of animal impulses of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, sex-based marriages are very popular. We have very little sense of duty.

No.

The reaction to this article has made me aware of the poor understanding of arranged marriage. In most people's minds, arranged marriage is when parents force their kids onto someone they dont know. I found it hilarious to read one person say arranged marriage is only found in dictatorships. The biggest democracy in the world, India, has a long history of arranged marriage. In spite of my aversion to such traditions, I find that it is on the whole a functional system.

It is a mistake to think of AM as a controlling force. In modern India, AM is a term used to talk about any circumstance where a planned approach to a long term relationship is undertaken. Web sites, friends and,yes, parents, all contribute to the search for a partner. Contrary to intuition, such arrangements have been shown to work, by producing more stable and happy marriages.


Some extreme traditional practices such as dowry are used by scheming families to extort money and cause pain in AMs, but the rate at which this happens is easily offset by the screening process that goes into selecting a mate that is compatible. In modern India, men and women are free to marry who they love. Usually AM is a way for ensuring compatibility as well, which shows given the far lesser rate of divorce in AMs.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for love. Im an old school romantic myself and cannot imagine a loveless union with someone just to accomplish a social and biological end. But I can recognize the benifits of the system to someone else. For example, many women can find love safely and efficiently in a chaotic and populous country. So, AM, while it has been used to control women in the past (just like religion and sex), can also be a useful protection for women who need to find love but are unable to because of social circumstances. AM is also good to bring good men, with plenty of loving and caring to give and the ability to provide for and raise a family, the opportunity to meet women who would be interested in them, but whom they would not meet usually. There are many men out there who dont play the game, who are not players, who may lack the social skills to enter into a good relationship. As a recent study revealed, socially awkward people usually are better long-term partners because they don't know how to play the dating game and thus are more honest about their feelings... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23128715/

In any case, AM, while not appropriate for many people, can bring a lot of happiness and satisfaction to the lives of many others. Our own subjective biases towards the concept of marriage do not validate an opinion on the traditions and practices of other cultures, or on the efficacy of such practices in our culture.

The reaction to this article has made me aware of the poor understanding of arranged marriage. In most people's minds, arranged marriage is when parents force their kids onto someone they dont know. I found it hilarious to read one person say arranged marriage is only found in dictatorships. The biggest democracy in the world, India, has a long history of arranged marriage. In spite of my aversion to such traditions, I find that it is on the whole a functional system.

It is a mistake to think of AM as a controlling force. In modern India, AM is a term used to talk about any circumstance where a planned approach to a long term relationship is undertaken. Web sites, friends and,yes, parents, all contribute to the search for a partner. Contrary to intuition, such arrangements have been shown to work, by producing more stable and happy marriages.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for love. Im an old school romantic myself and cannot imagine a loveless union with someone just to accomplish a social and biological end. But I can recognize the benifits of the system to someone else. For example, many women can find love safely and efficiently in a chaotic and populous country. So, AM, while it has been used to control women in the past (just like religion and sex), can also be a useful protection for women who need to find love but are unable to because of social circumstances. AM is also good to bring good men, with plenty of loving and caring to give and the ability to provide for and raise a family, the opportunity to meet women who would be interested in them, but whom they would not meet usually. There are many men out there who dont play the game, who are not players, who may lack the social skills to enter into a good relationship. As a recent study revealed, socially awkward people usually are better long-term partners because they don't know how to play the dating game and thus are more honest about their feelings... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23128715/

In any case, AM, while not appropriate for many people, can bring a lot of happiness and satisfaction to the lives of many others. Our own subjective biases towards the concept of marriage do not validate an opinion on the traditions and practices of other cultures, or on the efficacy of such practices in our culture.


Some extreme traditional practices such as dowry are used by scheming families to extort money and cause pain in AMs, but the rate at which this happens is easily offset by the screening process that goes into selecting a mate that is compatible. In modern India, men and women are free to marry who they love. Usually AM is a way for ensuring compatibility as well, which shows given the far lesser rate of divorce in AMs.

Arranged marriage only happen in Dictatorships or Empires.

Welcome to the Empire of the USA!

its sad this question is even being thrown out here .I see the war on women is gaining momentum here at Fluffington Hoes.Asking this question is like asking if rape is preferabble to consentual sex.We all know a few men and ( greedy,selfish fathers) would prefer rape and arranged marriages become accepted norms..but ill be damned if I live in a country where it is.I'd move..overnight..to a country that isnt steadilly moving backwards.Jumpin mexican beans..what filth!

Great topic and fascinating debate. I posted about this last night, here's my take:
Engage surveyed more than 800 single adults back in 2005 to learn more about the role matchmaking (and romantic meddling) played in their dating lives. Singles mentioned friends, and then mothers, as the two people most likely to want to meddle in their love lives. They resoundingly felt that friends make the best matchmakers and that mothers make the worst. Moms have relationship and marriage agendas that often aren’t aligned with what their children are actually seeking. That’s why every women in America over age 35 isn’t married to a doctor.
Internet “scientists,” convinced arranging marriages may in fact be a scalable enterprise, are peddling their magic compatibility elixirs to singles on leading dating sites today. Singles are matched based on analysis of a personality questionnaire, but ultimately someone decides: Can opposites attract? Do they introduce you to the type of person you are seeking, or the type of person they believe is right for you? What would your mother do?
Look at happy couples you know. How many had to pass a 200-question test to qualify to say “hello” to each other? What you’re likely to find is what we found in our research–half of all marriages are the result of someone first introducing the couple, but that someone was almost never a scientist, compatibility expert or marriage arranger.
Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage.com

I love my parents, but I shudder to think about what kind of women they would have arranged for me to marry!

This is just totally gross. I swear what are we going to back to next? Making education unnecessary for women b/c they should be barefoot and pregnant? Marrying our first cousins to keep the money within the family? I see no benefits to arranged marriages except as a means of social control, since it's clear a huge swath of people simply don't want to expend the energy and effort to take full responsibility of their life's destiny. We're not living 500 years ago, we're living NOW.

Why is it people always seem to gloss over the ugly underbelly of arranged marriages? Have we grown so selfish and self-centered that the fundamental American reasoning for marriage - freedom of choice - to make your own decisions in our lives, for good or ill, are quickly being eroded by good old family greed? Millionaire Matchmaker? You must be joking. Many of my close friends are young, millionaire men and they go through women like tissue paper. You may land one but don't go crying to your friends when he asks you to sign a Webster-Dictionary sized prenup. I've also seen this happen, and most never mention the good ol' prenup to anyone they know, especially their parents out of sheer embarrassment. Why? Because it appears to most as a business arrangement. You give me nookie and I'll let you live in my house. Otherwise, why would the prenup exist?

A good friend of mine, a East Indian girl raised in the states, once proclaimed that she didn't trust herself for that almighty decision - marriage. That she better trusted her parents, people from a remote villiage in southwest India. Hopefully she didn't let them choose her doctor as well. But when she told me of this I was bewildered at the notion of love-less, romance-less, cold, calculating matrimonial bindings. She's about to give birth to her sixth child. What American, in their right mind, in this day and age has six children? I'll tell you who. Someone who believes that by having more children they will compensate for the love never garnered by a mate who views them as a business arrangement.

And while you people are trumpeting the beauty of this glorious Indian ritual, please don't leave out Wife Burning, Dowries and inescapable commitments (hence the impossibly low divorce rates). Most of these people don't divorce because not only would they lose their mate, but their biological parents as well, for having insulted them in their community.

If our fellow countrymen and women have lost their need to experience their own lives and seek out their own loves, for better or worse, then we are truly on our way to third-world countrydom, as many have suggested.

It`s an absurbed question to be asking in this society............................50% of all marriges in the US end in divorce................we are totally messed up by the concept of success.

People are clueless about arranged Marriages.

Mom and Dad arranging is no different from friends arranging an introduction!

Its no more barbaric than your friend reintroducing two people.

What dumb asses you find here!! Sheesh!

I am of much the same mind as Keemia. Arranged marriages tend to be based on factors that matter more in the long term i.e. religious beliefs, career goals etc. Anecdotally speaking, my parents ( who are east Indian) had an arranged marriage and they've been together 30 mostly happy years and they are each other's best friend. Of course the opposite is true as well, but statistically speaking I don't imagine the numbers are much different than non-arranged marriages or "Love Matches" as they're called in India.

theres nothing wrong with arranging meetings or dates based on reasonable comparisons from people of experience, the line is only crossed when people are forced to do something against their will.

So long as the couple has the ultimate choice, and parents are not controlling or self-centered, i think this is a beneficial trend. Let's face it, young men and women are not known to make the wisest decisions. The views of someone who cares about you may bring something to your attention (good or bad) that you aren't noticing.