Would you prefer to marry the person you love or prefer to you fall in love with the person you get married to?

This has been a topic of debate perhaps for decades. Different people have different views on this. For years and years arranged marriage was an accepted norm in the Indian community. The concept of love marriage wasn’t very well understood or appreciated or to some extent accepted in Indian societies for a long period of time. The bride was traditionally picked by the parents for their son and the son would spend the entire life with that person. Typically there wasn’t enough time or opportunity before the marriage to understand the person or analyze the compatibility. You were expected to get married and make it all work, in other words learn to love the person you married and become compatible with each other. It’s what the great Indian Yoga Guru “Bikram Choudhury” says while teaching Yoga “It’s an Indian marriage - no choice”. This also reminds me of a dialogue from an Indian movie in which the hero says “We are born once, we die once and we only fall in love once”. I feel that it’s true. Some people especially in western cultures would argue against this and say “What are you talking about? You fall in love number of times in your life and you get married to the person you are in love with. If it works, it works but if it doesn’t you get divorced and you move on. There is no such thing as compromise or making it work”. I fail to appreciate this theory. I am a firm believer of “Making it work”. There is no need for the word “Impossible” in this relationship. I say “Impossible here just means “I m possible!!” Think about it.

This concept of arranged marriage is almost nonexistent in the western societies. This topic raises their eye brows. I have seen it several times being argued when it comes up in any discussions. Most of the times the response is “what do you mean by arranged marriage?” or “How can you marry someone you don’t even know?” This is also getting lost within the so called next Indian generation who is growing up in western societies in North America. It’s also termed as “Generation Gap” sometimes.

Over the years this philosophy appears to have changed in Indian society as well. Now a day’s love marriage is quite common and it’s also quite common to see these marriages crumble after a few years. When in love everything is rosy in the beginning which makes you think that the person you are dating is really your soul mate. Some argue it’s because when you are in love you portray your best to the other person but when it comes to living together it’s a whole different ball game. Somehow all the love vanishes behind the day to day fights; arguments over petty issues. But in an arranged marriage you really haven’t see the best part of the person until you actually start cohabiting. All the fun starts after marriage, you learn to adjust and make compromises where ever necessary and work really hard to make it all work.

So is it really true – Do couples in arranged marriage make better soul mates VS the couples in love marriage?