Arranged marriage

A friend of mine who arranged her son's marriage explained to me that there isn't the choice in non-arranged marriages as we might think.

We choose our partners from people we know, and that usually means that they live nearby, share similar interests, maybe work with us. It's quite unusual to pair up with someone very different - usually they have similar education and background - not always of course, but it's more common than not.

The partners that my friend chose for her son were similarly matched. They took into account religious sensitivities too, but on the whole it was about looking for someone who would fit into her family, and knowing that her son would fit in with his wife's family.

they are called assisted marriages now aren't they? lots of time and meetings over years, girls afforded an education
times have changed thankfully

forced is a different issue

It isn’t just girls who are forced into marriage. I once had a client, a young man in his early twenties who had gone with his brother and parents to visit family in India to attend a wedding, However, when they arrived he and his brother found that the weddings were actually to be theirs! Neither had ever met the girls they were supposed to marry before. The brother accepted his fate but my client ran away back to England. Unfortunately his family took it badly and disowned him, sacked him from the family business and then told lies about his income to HMRC. He came to us in a very bad state but fortunately we were able to put him in touch with a charity who were able to help him.
Like others have said, if the participants are adults who are happy to go ahead with an arranged marriage and are given choices, who is to say it it wrong. But where very young people are forced into marriages it is abuse. In addition, very often the bride and groom are close relatives which sometimes results in children with disabilities.

We have an Iranian family living near us and the older husband and wife had an arranged marriage but were at pains to explain that the wife was introduced to several eligible young suitors who she promptly turned down before taking a shine to her husband. Is arranged for the young men as well as the women. Their grown up children were also introduced to several young men, one married one of them and seems very happy, the other married an Iranian man she met at uni, but protocols had to be observed and the man’s family came to visit with their son.
They say is a marriage of two families.
I am not opposed to this, but forced marriages are an abomination. As is the marrying of a daughter to her rapist so that the family don’t lose face.

Stansgran you are a cheerful soul! Made me smile and I am grumpy!

Very old thread . Many on here dead.

I imagine an arranged marriage can work - forced marriage however is a very different kettle of fish !!!

Just introducing people in the hope that they will fall in love is hardly the same as arranging a marriage.
I worked with a second-generation, British born Indian woman, and she said her parents still thought things were just the same there as when they left 40 years ago, before she was born. She was never able to convince them that society had moved on in India. What I found truly amazing was that her mother spoke hardly any English - apparently her father thought it might 'give her ideas'.

Yes, flickety. What I mean is that when people use the term arranged marriage, they often mean forced marriage. I would call my friend's marriage forced as well, forced by the culture of arranged marriages.

Grannyactivist, I had a similar experience, DH and I got engaged after a brief courtship, having known each other for six years. The only people surprised by the engagement were the participants, all our friends said it had been waiting for it to happen for years.

My lodgers are Indian, but brought up in a very westernised lifestyle. They're both in their mid twenties and have degrees, they're catholics and were educated in private schools where all lessons were conducted in English. They both had the power of veto over the marriage and there would have been no comeback from their families if either had rejected the other. They were undoubtedly very happy and definitely positive about the 'arrangement'.
I agree that a forced marriage is an abuse and is very different to an arranged marriage, which is what I meant by the original question. It occurred to me to ask because when I first got together with my husband it was a real surprise to me (he'd been a young friend, nothing more), but my close friends were delighted and said they had already decided ages before that we were a perfectly suited couple.

But that doesnt mean she is right. Any disinteersted observer would say that that was a forced marriage.

I agree, flickety, but my friend would still have called it an 'arranged' marriage and maintained that there was no force involved. If anyone had suggested she was being forced into it she would have bitten their heads off for attacking her family's culture.

Bagitha, but that is a forced marriage, force is force whether physical or emotional. I had a friend, european in origin, who knew her marriage was a mistake before it happened but felt emotionally pushed into it because her parents had invested so much of themselves and their money into it, she hadnt the courage to walk away. The marriage lasted a year.

Carol, I understood that he was taken to court for the rape but would be released if he married her. He agreed to, her family (not her) agreed to the marriage and the victim was forced into the marriage. He husband was violent and five months later she klilled herself. It was all about family 'honour' and providing the poor unfortunate victim married her attacker 'honour' was saved.

A friend of mine married the person her parents had arranged for her. She left him after being married for only two months. She was one of those unenviable people caught between two cultures. Raised by Ugandan Asian parents (ejected by Amin) in Britain, with a British university education behind her. She couldn't hack all the expectations other people had of her. Half of her wanted to please her Indian roots; half of her wanted to be a modern Brit. The divorce caused a lot of ill feeling in her family.

Greatnan I wasn't challenging anything about the issue, just commenting that I had read a story that was like the one you described, that it looked like the publication I had read had got the story a bit out of kilter. One publication says she didn't get married but killed herself, and the others seem to say she did marry him under duress. Did she kill herself? I was confused by what I read after seeing your description.

I certainly don't object to that kind of 'arrangement'. Only meeting your potential mate a few days before being expected to marry them and not having a real choice even if there is one in theory is a bit different. Just introducing people is hardly 'arranging' really. There is no pressure with that kind of arrangement but in some cultures where actual marriages are arranged there is a great deal of cultural and family pressure and I doubt if some of the people being arranged actually feel they have an opt out clause.

An arranged marriage means just that because if the couple do not like each other they do not marry so they have absolutely as much control over who they marry as anyone else from a culture that doesnt have a formal system for bringing people together. Anything else is forced marriage.

Anyway there are plenty of arranged marriages in western society, it is just that it is more informal. I can remember arranging a social event to introduce my sister to a friend because I thought they had a lot in common and would be well suited. In my case they got on well and became good friends but nothing else. I have other friends who married people they were introduced to through friends who thought they might get on.

If a potential bride and groom come from a culture, and it doesnt have to be asian, where to consult their parents or a marriage broker when looking for a marriage partner is normal why not. It is not as if the cultures who reject this way of meeting someone, prefering random comings together produce a spectacularly high rate of marriage successes.

I see, but I don't think the order in which events happened really changes anything, does it? Women/girls who report rape can be forced to marry their rapist under their penal code. One woman was imprisoned for being raped. She was sentenced for something like 'immoral behaviour'.

Greatnan I mention the misreporting query because you talked about the girl being forced to marry her rapist, and I read she had killed herself in order not to marry him, hence the suspicion that one of the papers had misreported. Hope that clarifies it.

In a culture where marriage is essentially about producing offspring and continuing the family line, and where girls were expected to start reproducing almost as soon as they were physically able to, arranged marriages do make 'sense' because the people in control are the older adults. The girls are still just that — girls, and probably not old enough, educated enough, or experienced enough to arrange their own lives. That is the crux: arranged marriages keep the older generation in control and give less scope for the younger generation to change old customs by going about it in a different way. In many ways, we've seen it all before in this country. Just think of Jane Austen's novels. It wasn't perhaps quite so prevalent, but the older generation control thing was still there.

I prefer the "power to all our friends" idea and so am not in favour of arranged marriages. For me the ideal is for young people to be allowed to grow up well-educated and able to make their own life decisions in their own time.

I think this discussion links well with the one about the proposed new marriage laws. The definition of marriage is changing in most people's eyes. It is no longer seen as being just about procreation. The power balance is changing too.

Perhaps the best compromise in a culture that expects arranged marriages is for the parents to get a matchmaker, who arranges for the couple to meet, but either can say 'no' without any comeback. That way the parents have input, but there is no coercion.

I met my own husband through the YHA. So many of us did, that we reckoned it no longer stood for Youth Hostels Assoc, but for Your Husband Assured. What was assured, was that by being members, we had plenty in common.

Yes, i have read so much at various times about those poor young lasses who get lumbered with some man they've never met, often too old for them. I can't imagine the horror of their wedding night.

There is a difference - though the line is very fine - between arranged marriage and forced marriage.

It can work obviously! But, I've been to an Indian wedding in India. It was obviously a middle class wedding - he was an officer in the Navy. We were invited by the bride's uncle to come and see her - she was the most beautiful girl but one of the saddest I have met. Our feelings didn't change during the ceremony....he looked bored and she looked very unhappy! But sometimes they do grow close....really just the luck of the draw! I have always thought background important because values may be much the same...standards too maybe. But, I don't think it's much fun - takes away the thrill of the chase, the heartbreak that everyone should experience in a lifetime and must be only for the insecure and unimaginative amongst us who believe anyone will do at the end of the day!!!

Carol - why do you assume this case was misreported? Yes, she did take rat poison rather than be raped by him in marriage. It has been reported in many different papers and news services - I usually google any report before I quote it.