What It's Like To Have An Arranged Marriage

"I got it in my head that this wasn't the way to be successful by Western standards."

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EXTERNAL CREDITS
Huda Al-Marashi

[xladysybilx]

Arranged marriage is so different to forced marriage.

[sarahrose]

I was in an arranged marriage for a while. My mother and his mother decided it around the time when I was 5 and he was 10. We were quite good friends and we didn’t find out about it until I turned 14. We were both kind of freaked but honestly thought we could end up with worse people so we went along with it.
We ended up going out and falling in love with other people without our mothers knowing.
By the time I was 19 and he was 24 we were both married to other people and we joked all the time that we almost got married.
5 years later he gets divorced and another 5 years later I get divorced. We’ve both got children from our ex’s who we respectfully get along with. Another two years after my divorce my friend and I get married and we now have 2 children of our own.
Altogether we have 7 children.

Arranged marriages aren’t always bad and I’m forever grateful to our mothers for pushing us together but I don’t regret marrying my first husband as he’s a wonderful man who gave me 3 amazing beautiful children. We just weren’t meant to be.
Thankfully all our children love that they have multiple parents.

[choumitsou]

People have to understand that arranged doesn't mean forced! Sometimes you can have an incredible beautiful love story

[Otaku-gfiq]

Yes sure but if you’re lgbt, then this just becomes hard.

[cleverfez]

Good for her that she fell for the man that became her husband, but I feel like this was a very tame example of arranged marriages. Often kids are matched at a young age and the marriage becomes something they grow with and get used to, without having the opportunity to take a step back and chose for themselves.

[bubupowa]

People in the west mainly meet their partners through friends or work. I met my boyfriend through a common friend, in a meeting clearly designed for this to happen, so it's kind of like an arranged marriage. People often try to play matchmakers for their single friends, and it can work if all parties are willing to play that game.
Arranged marriages in that way are totally fine, it allows you to live your youth fully and focus on your studies and your career, knowing you'll have a marriage partner show up when you're ready for marriage.
It becomes creepy when children are groomed into marrying a specific person before they're ready to marry at all. They "fall in love" with that person, but did they ever have a choice at all ?

[tinnikanjilal]

Lots of people mix up arranged marriages with forced marriages. My aunt and uncle had an arranged marriage and they loved each other so much. On the other hand my grandmother had a forced marriage. She had no say what so ever in who she would marry. I like to think of arraigned marriages as speed dating but your parents set you up to see if you are compatible. Forced marriage is when you have no say in the matter.

[gracerolman]

I was surprised that she never said that they were in love. Even though she wanted that love story, she just said she married a good man and they were happy. This could also just be a cultural difference, and they don’t express that publicly.

[CharisSunny]

Unless you're LGBTQIA+
Or you want to focus on your career
Or you want to marry outside of your culture

...hard pass.

[iamwindchakra]

Kinda sounds like you had a little thing for him the whole time lol.

[Sarahalsa]

An arranged marriage doesn't go well most of the time and women suffer a lot. The minute you get a successful one write a book about it. This is how desperate we are. Also, I can't believe she compared arranged marriage with the Batchelor. As a middle eastern woman, I can confirm this is not true.

[hanakhaled]

Honestly i could never imagine myself in an arranged marriage.

[meerachandavar]

Me being an indian where there's almost 90% arranged marriages I'm happy u got a choice but here they don't have a choice. They're ignorant towards our feelings.

[IraLuxuria]

Arranged marriages seem to really focus on marriage as the centrepiece of adult life. It's one thing to debate whether families should have influence over marriages and whether that in fact leads to stable partnerships, but it doesn't sound like the option to not be married at all was ever really considered.

[allialbright]

This seems like a very privileged version of arranged marriages that probably only happens in countries like the U.S. Seems like this woman has rose-tinted glasses on and just ignored all of the horrendous things that happen to girls, who are often children, in arranged marriages around the world.

[gabyelizabeth]

I'm glad she had a good experience. But women and men have been murdered over this kind of thing. Portraying it as something happy isn't realistic.

[samiyakazi]

I'm glad her marriage worked out well and that there are people who are able to go through the steps that she was allowed to go through. Unfortunately, a lot of women don't go through that in arranged marriages around the world. Where I'm from, most women do not get to have several meetings with their potential partner to get to know them before marriage. They usually get one or two meetings, a few phone calls and then they have to decide if they want to get married to their partner.

I don't know how much you can actually get to know someone in that time. A lot of families just look at money and social status when looking for a potential partner. So there's a chance of personalities clashing or even worse, abuse. I know that's also possible when you marey for love, but where I'm from it happens a lot with arranged marriages.

[TiemposDePaz]

I don't know enough to judge, but my friend has run away from arranged marriage for a long time. Her sisters' arranged marriages have not panned out well. One sister and her child have been abandoned by her husband; the other sister, her husband has check out emotionally. This sister has been urged to stay, so that she can ensure more support for her children. So my friend is very wary of the culture's way of pushing people to marry, who do it to please eager parents. This woman's story is very nice and comforting, and she is lucky. There's no sure way to happiness. It has everything to do with compatibility and wanting the same things, and willing to work at it for a very long time. She is right - arranged or not, there are different ways to find someone.

[whyareyouhere]

Me being Indian - 😂😂99% love story is nothing but just arrange marriage.

[isabellebise]

My mom's side is eastern European Jewish and they came to to states when she was a teenager. When she was in college my great grandmother went to a matchmaker and found my mom a fiance. They got married. It was not that good for my mom. She wanted to continue her degree but, he did not want her to continue. Later on they divorced and my mom met my dad.