Why Love Marriages Are Better Than Arranged Ones For Man-to-Woman Marriages (Essay Sample)

Love Marriages and Arranged Marriages
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Introduction
Marriage refers to the union between two spouses attached to each through personal relationships that are social, ritually or legally endorsed to bring ascribe some roles and obligations to the two in the wedlock. Initially, marriage was an institution to join a man and a woman (). However, marriage does not necessarily emanate from love as institutionalized in holy books such as the Bible. With time, morals and cultures have changed affecting the way marriage is perceived in the society. This phenomenon has brought about two types of marriages that form the basis of argument in this paper. This paper investigates why love marriages are better than arranged ones for man-to-woman marriages.
Love marriages allow a person to choose the other person that matches his or her expectations. According to Fisher (2016), most love marriages are built on chemistry and attraction between the spouses. In most cases where love marriages occur, the couple allocates some time to learn each other and give themselves time to evaluate the viability and likelihood of their marriage to succeed. On the contrary, the parents of the couple entering into a union mostly instigate arranged marriage. Williams (2016) argues that marriage is not all about family union. However, arranged marriages are based on this concept, where parents from one side seek to find a spouse for their kid. These families aim at finding compatibility in the cultural backgrounds of the other spouse, the socio-economic status of the other family (class) before allowing their son or daughter to associate with the other family. In short, arranged marriages are based on security and status as opposed to attraction and chemistry between the spouses. Statistics show that most marriages of this type have the couple as objects of materialism. Critics of arranged marriages feel that this is an ancient tradition where people lack liberty to choose their marriage partners.
Secondly, love marriages are originate out of self-consent between the two spouses. Unlike in arranged marriages, the spouses have esteem in each other and most likely are people with very many similarities in terms of passion, dreams, and feelings. For instance, in India where arranged marriages account for almost 90 percent of the total marriages, there is less commitment, affection and other expected features that makes a warm marriage. Arranged marriages foster significant economic, cultural and even social stereotyping in the society, where people of certain social class do not like to associate with others and forge unions in form of marriages. According to Anitha (2011), arranged marriages are cold to the unwilling partner as they feel that the marriage obligation belongs to the parents. This spouse may end up in such unhappy marriage as a sign of obedience to his or her parents. The assumption to initial resistance and hesitation from the uncomfortable partners is that “love will grow with time”. Arranged marriages overlook the emotional responses and feeling of the persons entering the union.
Moreover, where there is little to no self-consent in a relationship, spouses are likely to involve in infidelity acts. According to Mayer (2013), loves goes hand in hand with loyalty. Loyalty implies the foundation of a successful marriage. This virtue is tied to feelings one spouse has over the other. In love marriages, there is a higher probability of loyalty since each spouse cares about the feelings of the other. The mutual connection between the two also creates a strong bond that culminates to the liberty of expression, transparency, care, honesty, and respect between in the marriage. Critics of arranged marriage such as [cite] argue that one cannot respect someone you do not love in a marriage. Through physical mistreat might not be prominent in arranged marriages, Pine (2013) affirm that infidelity is a source of “emotional scars” that take a lifetime to heal. In addition to that, marriage requires being defined by personal readiness to enter into it. In most cases, love marriages occur naturally, without an ulterior motive and reveal readiness to a commitment by the couple. Conversely, arranged marriages are quite informal and forceful leaving the couple without an option other than agonizing their fate marrying when not ready to settle. According to [cite], children raised in such a family are easy to assimilate into the system of forging relationships where mutual willingness does not exist.
However, marriages based on love and mutual affection are not effortless to achieve. According to Edin (2011), most of the couples who enter into this type of a marriage has a false conviction that they have a great understanding of their spouse and that they are ready for marriage. Regardless of all the efforts of dating to study a person, Robinson et al.,(2010) affirm that the point of entering into a marriage marks a transition between the partners and many changes follow invalidating the expectations of the couple. Statistics show that in arranged marriages, “love” starting creeping in after the couple has settled for over 5 years. Marriage advisors such as Strong (2013), attribute this gradual growth in love to the lasting effect on arranged marriages. Since the couple ha...