Love is out
The Case for arranged Marriage
Romantic love is a supreme fiction; marriage for love is the
consequence of that fiction; and divorce is the painful evidence of that initial delusion.
The history of romantic love is the continuing ironic testimony of the power of our minds
to mesmerize our bodies, and romantic marriage is the most recent and least successful
stage in the history of matrimony.
Now that the census Bureau has estimated that almost one in two marriages will end in
divorce, it is apparent that the solution to the troubled state of matrimony is a return
to the tradition of arranged marriages.
The sentimental sanctity of love was the invention of the Provincial poets of the twelfth
century, and they saw it as the exotic refinement of a bored aristocracy. Since then,
however, courtly minority but the expectation of every man and woman. Indeed, the joys of
romantic love would seem to be the birthright of every American, for the Framers of the
Declaration of Independence declared "the pursuit of happiness" to be an
inalienable right of all men and women.
Love, though, is neither a right nor an instinct, but a learned form of behavior; it is
not a spontaneous feeling but an artificial ritual. It is a response that we have learned
from literature and from its contemporary handmaidens, the news media. As lovers, we are
all actors we imagine ourselves most spontaneous when we are most imitative. We learn how
to love from movies, television, novels, magazines, and advertisements. We learn to adore
love, to idolize love to fall in love with love.
To most Americans, love is romantic love. It is a drive or state of tension induced by our
prevailing romantic myths. The lovers nourishment is the expectation of bliss. Love
is a competitive and covetous game; Competition for a mate brings out the "best"
in an individual. To be alone is not considered a self-imposed choice but evidence of
failure in the contest of love.
During the Industrial Revolution, arranged romantic marriages gave way to individual love
matches. The monotony of work and the impersonality of the city led people to escape
monotony in personal relations and retreat from impersonality to the emotional fortress of
marriage. Urbanization caused the "privatization" of marriage so that intimacy
of wedlock became sanctuary from a world where all intimacy was excluded.
Yet romantic marriage could not last. More and more pressure was forced on marriage to be
a haven in a heartless world. In earlier more structured societies, married partners were
externally oriented and did not have to rely exclusively on each other for emotional
gratification. They could find that elsewhere. Romantic passion had always existed outside
of the marriage and had little to do with wedlock. Contemporary society forces couples to
depend on each other for permanence and stability, functions that were formerly provided
by a large familial and social network. Today, marriage has not lost its function; it
suffers from a surfeit of functions. The marriage partner must not only be a lover, but a
friend, a colleague, a therapist, and a tennis partner.
Traditionally, the selection of mates has been determined by social, political and
economic considerations directed either toward establishing new ties or toward reaffirming
old ones. Every arranged marriage was the formation of a new society a merger of a network
of family and social relationships. Marriage was a duty. Its purpose was procreation.
Children were best raised in a congenial home, and a congenial home was best created by a
reasonable arrangement between congenial people. Marriage was contracted according to a
principle other than the self-interest of the participants, and emotional satisfaction was
neither the origin nor the purpose of marriage.
The concept of arranged marriage is based on a positive view of human nature. Its guiding
principles are that marriage requires a more durable foundation than romantic love, that
wisdom is more important in the choosing of a partner than passion, and that everyone can
find something to "love, honor, and cherish" in anyone else. Romantic love is
fundamentally narcissistic; we either choose someone who resembles ourselves (the selves
wed like to be or think we are), or we choose someone who complements us. Romantic
love is self-indulgent; arranged marriages look outward, beyond the solitary self, toward
numerous others.
Romantic love allows the reverie of imagining what the other person is like, whereas
arranged marriage forces us to acknowledge truly another human being. An arranged marriage
teaches us how to live with an individual instead of falling in love with an idealized
one. The myth of romantic love teaches us how to fall in love. Perhaps when marriages are
arranged, we learn how to love.