Arranged marriages

[woolybanana]

The post by Chancer on internet trolls got me pondering about the ways we choose our partners and how imperfect it is and made me wonder about arranged marriages.

If the parents of the boy/girl choose the partner, do they choose one whom they actually like the look of (fancy?) themselves? Well, not so stupid perhaps, given that chaps are supposed to choose girls who look like or even have a lot in common with their mothers. Do girls choose chaps like their dad in some ways, perhaps ways not so obvious?

So, is an arranged marriage or at least a marriage where the choices are limited a better bet, a surer bet, based on alternative biological imperatives.

When I think of some of the girls I fancied at Uni and what disastrous couples we might have formed, I just wonder whether limiting choice in some ways is not a better bet.

[suein56]

[quote user="woolybanana"]So, is an arranged marriage or at least a marriage where the choices are limited a better bet, a surer bet, based on alternative biological imperatives.[/quote]

Having married for love I don't know the answer but having read this article on Friday it seems some arranged marriages are quite literally fatally flawed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/shunned-beaten-burnt-raped-the-dowry-violence-that-shames-britain-9803009.html

Sue

[idun]

Apparently some arranged marriages work, or so I have read. Still in come cultures it means marrying one's cousin and just how many times can that be done without serious genetic defects coming to the fore!

Yes, it is curious as to how we chose 'the one'. Unlike many of my friends I clearly remember being young, I remember that whoosh, and being so green, would not have recognised it for what it really was at the time, but now know it was 'sexual desire' at seeing some bloke. And at the other end of the scale, the slight revulsion and fright really, of being aware of someone who I was not attracted to, and probably they were not very good looking was attracted to me. I never took my self for being a 10/10 though, I suspect that female '10's' or those who believe they are '10's' expect everyone to fancy them, so that would have not have been a problem for them. I remember it was for me.

I learned a lesson though. There was a male '10' and I ended up going out with him a couple of times, what a boring bloke, I know that not that all attractive people are boring, far from it, but my was he. So looks sometimes are only skin deep and I grew up.

wooly, how do you know that these relationships would have been disastrous?

I suppose that the thing about 'mothers' is also relevant to me, as if I was seeing anyone my mother hated, was a very good point in their favour as far as I was concerned. My mother wanted me with someone I would have found really boring. And so, my husband, who she detested, just fit the bill. He is not boring, he is talented in many fields and quirky and very importantly a good and caring man, and yet he still drives me round the bend at times..... and boy can we argue, always have, a little less perhaps, now we are 'old'...........and I would not swop him for anyone. Just because people row, and seem very different doesn't mean to say it won't work as long as the love is there. But hey, if the loves goes, I do believe that people should move on, life after all is not a rehearsal.

If I was ever alone, I would still go for someone 'odd'. Cannot do with straightlaced, I can't.

Strangely the marriages I know that have not worked, have usually been based on the couple being too 'linked', always seeming perfect from the outside and often making me feel 'odd', and then theirs disintegrate and the veneer has just been a coating for boredom and unhappiness and all signs of affection were also part of the veneer.

I know people who have met on dating sites. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But is the web in all it's states, any worse than a semi intoxicated encounter in a bar or nightclub. I never fancied work place relationships, if it didn't work could be awkward.

And I must say that there are quite a few posters on here, even those I am not in touch with personally, who I am very very fond of......ofcourse I don't know these people, never met them, but it feels like I would like them if we met.

I have spoken to one old poster from this board on the phone. And I have met one lady from another board in person, and that is it.