Mrs. Crowhill and I have been watching Timeless, which is a fun TV show you can see on Hulu. (I was going to call it “decent,” but that word has connotations that don’t apply.)
In episode 24, “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” a young Denise Christopher is arguing with Lucy Preston and Jiya Marri about marriage. Preston and Marri ask if Christopher loves her betrothed. (They’re trying to talk her out of the match.) Christopher — a Hindu from India — says that in Indian culture, marriage comes first, then love.
The thoroughly American Preston and Marri object to this, and Christopher replies, “what’s the divorce rate in America?” India has a very low divorce rate.
Correlation does not imply causation, and the low divorce rate in India is probably more the result of their poverty than their assumptions about love and marriage.
Still … it’s interesting to think about.
You forgot about the third part: pushing a carriage. Then there is of course the fourth, which is often what really comes first: SEX.
Love, marriage, or reproduction may or not follow that. Another possibility is that DISEASE will follow sex.
All things considered, however: I am glad I wasn’t born in India. Of course I mean no offense against people who were born there.
Yes, I am also very glad I wasn’t born in India.
Comparisons between countries and cultures are notoriously difficult since there are so many variables to think of. But I do believe it’s worth considering whether our emphasis on first love, then marriage is necessarily the better idea.
Indeed it’s complex given cultural and individual differences. It’s easy to look at arranged marriages as more successful because of the lower divorce rate. Yet, you also have to consider the context and ideals of marriage. Is the couple living according to that? Are they functional and content within the relationship? Or, is it a perfunctory, possibly dysfunctional relationship that primarily serves to please the parents/family and to procreate? Is simply staying married the goal? Or, is it staying together and having a reasonably fulling life? What’s the right measures to determine success?
There is an interesting show called Married at First Sight. Allegedly, they take a scientific approach to arranged marriage, which attempts to strip love and emotion out of the equation initially. Trained marriage counselors identify core success factors and then match two individuals that seem highly compatible. The day the matched couple meets, they marry. With the support of the counselors, they have 6-8 weeks to live as a legally married couple. After that time (Decision Day), they choose to stay married or continue. Over the first ten seasons (within 6 years), 34 couples were chosen for the experiment. Out of these 34, 21 chose to stay married on Decision Day. As of mid-April 2020, however, only 9 couples are still married, making for an overall current success rate of 26%.
One thing all those marriages have in common is that they involve people weird enough to go on a reality TV show. 🙂
True. 🙂 Yet, it does illustrate some of the chinks in the armor of arranged marriages.
Who’s to say that isn’t the function of a marriage?
I think most modern marriage books are just total bullshit. We expect too much out of marriage. Maybe your wife isn’t supposed to be your best friend and fulfill every need? Maybe some needs get fulfilled by having a beer at Cheers or going fishing or a scrapbooking party? Maybe marriage is just hyped way too much.
Do arranged marriages work better? IDK. Maybe the culture that is for the pressure of an arranged marriage is better at using social pressure to keep people from getting divorced. Used to be in this country that divorce was rare. Then it became more common among unchurched, then prots, then even rcs.
Have a couple Indians at work. All arranged marriages mostly. One guy met his wife at OSU, but parents were still involved in approving. One of the guys got a divorce. Wife filed, naturally. Maybe with parental pressures 10,000 miles away, it’s easier to get a divorce.
I agree that we expect too much of marriage today.
And there are aspects of arranged marriage that we can learn from.
@RR, I think it fundamentally comes down to how a culture defines marriage. What is it suppose to mean and accomplish. That’s why I posed those rhetorical questions. There can be varied responses to them.
That said, I too think there is too much fairy tale…”happily ever after”… expectations in modern marriage. Yet, I don’t think it’s intended to be a life of drudgery, devoid of any joy. Those who have been married for a long time can tell you there are distinct stages/seasons within marriage. Maybe we are to learn/experience different things during those seasons? Overall, as with most things in life, there’s balance. Given that, there is something to learn from arranged marriages (especially since some of that is found within scripture). We should apprehend what is beneficial, utilize it and discard what’s not.
William,
I think that your comments were addressed to SM, not me. In any case, I do agree that modern American culture puts too many unrealistic expectations on marriage these days. That in part contributes to divorce and now declining rates of marriage as more people just opt out of it altogether. While I don’t advocate arranged marriages, yes, there are things to be learned from arranged marriages. For example, in a culture with arranged marriages, parents tend to pick mates from other families from similar religious, cultural and socio-economic (in India this means caste) backgrounds. Perhaps the lesson for our culture is that opposites don’t attract and that getting along with the in-laws is important. I certainly don’t discount love and feelings, but for a marriage to work in the long-term, it needs a strong foundation of things in common too as feelings and romantic sparks tend to wax and wane over time.
@RR, it was a ploy to get your attention…it worked! Kidding. My apologies, I thought I saw your name. That’s what happens periodically when one becomes a man of a certain age…beware! 😉
As you, I don’t advocate arranged marriage but there can be lessons learned. I’ve known people who have been in arranged marriages and one thing I noted was their commitment to and support for each other. “Love” was an active reality in their lives, not a silly romantic notion as portrayed in movies. With time, they also developed romantic feelings and seemed relatively happy. That said, if one can have commitment and romance…go for it…nothin’ wrong with that!
One thing that concerns me is when some advocate for longevity as THE measure for marriage success. I’m not an advocate for divorce. Yet, there are some cases where I can understand why it occurred. To put pressure on people to stay married when their physical safety and mental health is at risk is problematic. I’ve seen this play out and it isn’t pretty. Specifically, with one couple, if they hadn’t separated, there was high probability of homicide as an outcome. As well, their home environment was so dysfunctional, it resulted in emotional issues with their children. Unfortunately, every story doesn’t have a “happily ever after” ending.
People probably do expect to much out of marriage, but you can’t expect them to get married solely for the good of society. They have to get something subjectively enjoyable out of the deal, right?
*too much
The practice of marriage coming before love in India belongs to the caste system. The parents choose your spouse from their connections in their caste. I am glad that I was not born into a caste or some sort of rigidly defined class.
One thing you should not do in making cross-cultural comparisons is isolate one feature and consider it pristine abstractness. You must always bear in mind how the various customs in a given culture hang together.
Everything is pretty much related to everything else, so you could dismiss anything from India as being “part of the caste system.”
I doubt that. Many changes have occurred there throughout the ages and left their caste system intact.
*in pristine abstractness
William,
I agree with you that longevity isn’t the only marker of success for a marriage. And certainly divorce and separation is sometimes the least bad option for marriages that are really dysfunctional or especially those that are abusive. Still, I think the bigger problem in American society is that we have raised expectations too high for marriage and have placed too much emphasis on romance and companionship. Those are indeed good things that healthy marriages should strive to have. But they aren’t the end all be all. And couples should have friends (preferable of the same sex) as friendships mean all of the companionship that people need isn’t just on their marriage relationship. In other words, it is good for husbands to hang out with men friends apart from their wives on occasion and vice-versa. Also, many people forget that feelings ebb and flow in marriage. Sometimes you have to go through rough patches, but end up better on the other side.
As one could argue that people expect too much out of marriage in terms of romance, one could equality argue that they expect too much out of it in terms of longevity, social stability, and all the other features that are often touted as its benefits.
Robin,
I doubt many young people in their twenties consider longevity or possibly even social stability when they are considering marriage. Young people don’t think much about longevity.
Be that as it may, longevity of a marriage (or even of a relationship) might well be overestimated. While social stability is good, it is not everything. And perhaps we shouldn’t expect marriage to contribute to it all that much.