Love and Matrimony. Are they related?

When I think of love I think of the hardest things I've ever been through.

For me, Love is tough, like leather and hot tears.

How do you know when you're ready to spend the rest of your life with one person?

Can you love someone without meeting them?

Is love enough?

And maybe I don't have the best perspective on love and matrimony. I always considered love to be something you had to work hard for. My Dad would give me shit for saying, "love you too" - instead of, "I love you" because they have different meanings.

I never thought much about marriage because of my parent's divorce if I'm honest. Marriage seemed like a big dream. I was delusional. Marriage is a fucking honour.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about love and matrimony - I guess it's hard not to when you've been asked by someone, "Will You Marry Me?"


In an arranged family situation you don't really have to ask questions. You know each other well and your families know each other well. Maybe you grew up together; your sibling was their best friend.
If your parents are bringing you over to your future in-laws' house to talk about your wedding, chances are you already know what this person looks like. You know they have the same family values, traditions and mindset. You don't ask the regular questions : do you have a middle name? what kind of music do you like? are you a sibling? did you grow up around here? how many times have you been skating?


A common way to meet someone is through a dating site. These days they're all apps and if you're not sure how they work it's simple: create a profile, post your hottest pics, scroll and wait.

You might have noticed I said, "meet" someone, instead of find someone to spend your life with. And I guess it's because building emotional connections is nearly impossible when you choose to upload the most provocative or filtered photos to represent your "true self".

I shouldn't totally knock the online dating systems because allegedly 1 in 3 relationships in the US begins on Match.com. lol

I don't believe any of them can actually consider themselves "dating" apps.

There are the apps you go on to look for sex, and the apps you go on after you've tried everything.

So let's play a dating game, shall we? Consider removing the ability to swipe right or left all together. Imagine a dating app where you can view just 3 profiles per day, according to your proximity and basic interests. None of the profiles have photographs. Depending on whose bio you find most interesting, you can select and zoom in on that one individual. On the zoom, you can see a photo of them in a group setting. The other two profiles disappear. Now you decide based on the group photo, whether or not you want to meet this person, and go on a date. Even though you'll be going on a date with one of the people in the photo it's not entirely motivated by their physical appearance. If you choose not to date your account will be paused for 8 hours. Now this is what I call a "dating" app!

Meeting someone new of the gender you're interested in romantically can be a lot of different things for humans: hopeful, exciting, apprehensive, confusing, annoying, fascinating, even horrifying!

And for the average couple seeing each other, the step of meeting family members would be a milestone for the relationship. A couple whose parents have known each other since before they were born doesn't experience the milestone of their son or daughter finding this person to spend the rest of their life with. If you're on a blind date you probably do not have expectations, which is a most excellent thing. To consider an arranged marriage there is the anticipation of a "perfect match" which immediately generates particular expectations - a not so excellent thing for a brand new relationship. And maybe that's why I compared going on a blind date to letting your parents choose your life partner. They are both really great ideas as long as you don't think too much at the start.

Every day, relationships are planned for young people; some of whose parents had meetings long before puberty came into the picture.
Negotiation is maybe not the best word to use when referring to an arranged marriage, but I can't help to consider the fact that a parent who favors arranged marriages automatically believes s/he is more objective and less impulsive than their son or daughter who they are negotiating a life partner for. I can agree parents have more "experience" - but your parents don't know what makes you horny. Come on. *wink

I want to start off by telling you a story about my former accountant. Let's call him Luta.

Luta was kind. You could tell by the way his eyes listened when you spoke to him. After a year of knowing each other we came to the topic of marriage during lunchroom chit chat one afternoon. Luta shared he had an arranged marriage with his wife of 32 years.

Historically the arranged marriage was prominent worldwide until the 18th century. And in 2020, the majority of arranged marriages take place in South Asia, where Luta and his family are from. In his culture the bride and groom are selected by individuals other than the couple themselves; their parents decided the families would be joined in marital union, and then they told the kids.

If arranged marriage is not prominent in your culture, it's not going to be something you consider. Whether it's on Facebook, Bumble or Tinder, when you begin a relationship based on physical appearance; features that please or displease you, you've immediately prepared yourself to feel a certain way: in or out. There's very little time spent wondering about real compatibility while you're scrolling or swiping. This is why going on a blind date increases the likelihood of asking meaningful questions. You can't scroll back five years to creep on photos. Even speed-dating makes more sense than Match.com, considering people only post photos in order to control the way others think. When you don't have a clue, you need to get creative, right?

Going back to Luta's story about his own arranged marriage... I didn't think much about it then, but his family had decided so long ago about his marriage that they didn't even talk about it.

He told us he dressed up really nice and his parents brought him to meet his soon-to-be-in-laws. They invited him into their living room for some light conversation including what his thoughts were about their daughter (he is shown a photograph of her). The marriage was probably, more than likely going to happen anyway- but what do you think of her picture? I guess maybe it is always about image somehow. That first encounter was the start of his commitment to their daughter. Luta was 14.


I have a friend from Syria. Her best friend still lives there, is in her thirties, works for the government, and has what anyone would consider a great job. She owns her apartment, knows how to cook, take care of herself and live comfortably. She's single though she has dated in the past. Most days when she talks on the phone with her mom in the village, her mom tells her how worried she is. She says she wishes her daughter would get married. It's another story to run into a Syrian lady on the street who asks if she's married. When she tells them no they say, "I'm sorry," as if she's been in a bad accident. Anyone would look at her as successful, independent and mature enough to know what she wants instead of settling - except for her own culture. And that's one of the fundamental problems with dating in a closed-minded culture. It's here where love does not play into marriage.


Then Luta told us his future bride wasn't even part of that first meeting.

There comes a point in a monogamous relationship where it's time to meet the family. This can be at your cousin Sally's wedding, Thanksgiving dinner, or whatever. And maybe it's at this point when you'd typically identify if the relationship can lead to something deeper. Even if you come from completely different cultures it's still highly likely you'll value your family's approval of the relationship. Remember, when it comes down to it you are the only person who can determine what is best for you. This was not the case for Luta and his bride-to-be. Both their parents knew without a doubt the relationship would develop into marriage. And during that first meeting, Luta did something so wild his parents never even saw it coming: he asked to speak with her privately. In his mature, 14-year-old mind he was completely aware that this meeting meant determining his partner for life. They spoke one-on-one in a separate room, and being the gentleman he is, he straight up asked her, "are you cool with becoming my wife?" (2 thumbs up for consent, hell yeah!) SHE SAID YES. And that's all it took. It was then I realized a common - if not the most common, misconception about an arranged marriage is that the woman is forced.

Luta and his wife-to-be began speaking to each other regularly, (through the help of their dear parents) and the families eventually planned the wedding and they were married. Just like that.

Six years after hearing Luta's story, I can't help but think of a friend of mine who married not 19 months ago and is waiting to finalize her divorce now. They were together for six years, and a year after they married, poof! Just like that. Over. They didn't meet on a dating app but they had the opportunity to learn about one another before willingly committing. One might even say the chances of marital success would be higher, had she written, "looking for immediate marriage" in her online dating bio.

And so in some ways an arranged marriage is more practical. Your need to impress someone's parents is lessened because, well, your own parents have already pumped your tires quite a bit. Sure, you should still be courteous, and being yourself is always the best policy, but the truth is your first ever meeting is not a normal meeting of a potential boyfriend or girlfriend. You are literally on the first date with your almost-definitely future wife or husband. Both sides in an arranged marriage are on the same page, which means the worry that new couples have to not show how they feel too soon in a new relationship does not exist. And in a big way, you're skipping that surface-level, "getting-to-know-each-other" stage all together. You can cut straight to discussing openly about issues in a relationship that really matter: values, objectives, and affinity.

You may be the one getting married but it's really about your families merging. Arranged marriages are also excellent at keeping traditions and the family's culture alive and well. Getting married just because you love someone has little history in comparison. And so it was at this point I had to stop myself from asking Luta, at what point did you know you were IN love with your wife?

Weddings a.k.a. Matrimony - being the ceremony of a contractual union between two persons, stems from the Latin word mater, which actually means mother, although very informal and dated.

I'm only guessing... but could it have something to do with the idea of saving yourself for marriage? Maybe. Maybe no. Traditionally, matrimony is step 1 to becoming a mother. Once you're married, people will ask how soon after the wedding will the "little ones" come?


So marriage never was about love.


Going waay back, the first recorded evidence of a marriage ceremony was back in Mesopotamia in 2350 B.C. For those of you curious enough, Mesopotamia is roughly corresponding to most of Iraq, Kuwait, the eastern parts of Syria, southeastern Turkey, and regions along the Turkish-Syrian and Iran-Iraq borders. And then later on, and I mean over the next several hundred years, marriage evolved into a ceremony embraced by Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. And in biblical times, people were married in YOUTH. And a lot of those people stayed together in marriage until death did they part. Which to me is truly insane to think about because for the many child brides, that's a long time!

Yet totally normal.

Early marriage is so ancient it probably seems foreign to a lot of us North Americans, but, if your brother died in the old days, and you were unmarried you'd be expected to marry his wife!

That is ancient Hebrew law. And though the laws of marriage differ greatly from culture to culture, at the root of it marriage was about social and economic stability. Back then marriage had little to do with love, or religion. The joining of man and woman was more or less to guarantee he'd have biological heirs.

Somewhere along the way, Christians became interested in the concept of marriage after Augustine, a theologian wrote about it. In the 1500's there appeared to be many marriages taking place without witness or ceremony. They began having marriage ceremonies conducted by ministers then, and later in the 12th Century, the Roman Catholic Church formally declares marriage as a sacrament sanctioned by God. Leave it to the Catholics to make things weird. In European nations, marriage was traditionally considered a civil union. As the Roman Catholic Church grew to be a powerful institution in Europe, you could say the concept of marriage shifted a bit. Divorce became widely frowned upon, where before if wives failed to produce offspring, their husbands could trade them for someone else. No biggie. Pope Nicholas I declared in 866 that, "if the consent be lacking in a marriage, all other celebrations, even should the union be consummated, are rendered void." Needless to say church blessings improved the lives of husbands and wives when consent became an important part of marriage laws.

But even then, love was not yet in the picture.

When did love join matrimony?

Apparently the idea of romantic love as a motive for marriage only goes back as far as the Middle Ages. Still, if you research marriage in the Middle Ages you'll notice they were still based around the idea of monetary worth. The family of the bride would prepare a dowry to give the groom's family. Comparatively a bride price is the amount given to a bride's family by the groom's. Once colonists came to America, the coverture came into effect. Regulations were strict and even American women who married foreigners immediately had their citizenship revoked.

Fast-forward: today there are many forms of marriage that exist, including:
-Same sex (finally legal in all 50 US states as of 2016)
-Polygyny
-Polyandry
-Polygamy
-Monogamy
-Exogamy
-Endogamy
-Cousin marriage (still legal in nearly half of US states)
-Common law (commonly confusing)
-Arranged

And while arranged marriages are far from a new concept, there isn't much research on the success rate of these couples. This study from 2012 shows the divorce rate of arranged marriages at less than 4 percent. Meanwhile in Canada, the divorce rate of couples who choose to marry of their own free will is over half.

When you love somebody so much you're willing to enter into a legal contract, think again. While the majority of us won't end up at the "altar" standing next to someone we feel we do not know well enough, there's something to be said about the successes of arranged marriages. Or, do I think we can all learn something from our parents' parents' parents?