Love/Arranged Marriages

Few days back I was discussing about marriages in India and the discussion was mainly on whether to get married to a person whom we find ourselves or to a person whom our parents find. In both the cases we have to compromise on many things and in both the case after compromise also we are not assured that the partner is right for us.

In arranged marriage, we will marry a person whom our parents decide. Our parents chooses a person on various criteria like his/her family, his/her current job, his/her current salary, his/her economic condition, his/her horoscope and all non-sense stuff which really doesn’t matter. These things do matter but according to me the only thing a person should look in his partner are his/her thinking patterns. Parents give much more importance to the family, and in this case i am totally against to their thinking. I have seen so many cases where the sons/daughter thinks quite opposite to what their parents think. For instance there is a friend of mine whose parents are very orthodox and they have very high respect in whole area and this fellow is very much opposite, he has lots of bad habits which a girl never wants to see in her husband. There is one more instance where the parents are very orthodox and the father is a temple priest and obviously they have lots of respect in society whereas the son is one big time crook. This guy tells lies all the time, drinks, smokes, steal money from home only. We should not judge the character of the person from his/her family. Most of the guys/girls live alone in some other cities nowadays. Their nature, life style, way of thinking everything differs from their parents nowadays and in no way we can rely on their parents to choose our life partner.

In love marriage we choose our life partner and marry that person. In this case we are the one who chooses our life partners and not parents. And the main thing here is we take the ownership of our lives, we decide with whom we have to live till last breath. In most of the houses parents are against to love marriages and the reason which I figured out is the strength of their son’s/daughter’s love. Parents think their child do not know what love is and is just going behind attraction. If their children convince that it is love and not just infatuation then parents will agree if they do not take it as ego or pride matter. Nowadays there are many breakups happening but in almost all the cases it will be just an attraction and not true love. If we love a person then there is no question of breaking up with that person.

There can be failures in both the types of marriages. In arranged marriages there will be not even a single person who can take up the blame for a failed marriage but in love marriages the person himself/herself can take up the ownership for their bad decisions. People say at least we should need our parents in our support if something goes wrong and that is the reason they are going for arranged marriages but for this reason should we stop ourselves from finding a life partner? Expecting our parents to support us in a time where we should become their support is just heights of expectation. The most commonly heard reason is if a person goes for love marriage then that will affect the future of their younger brothers/sisters. People say their younger brothers/sisters will not get good alliances if they marry a person whom they love. Nobody is responsible for what happens in our life. Also it is better not to get married to a person who gives preference to the elder’s life rather than giving respect to the person he/she is getting married.

Bottom-line is we should never stop ourselves from doing something giving all invalid reasons. If we could not select out life partner by ourselves then only we should take our parents help in choosing.