Arranged Marriage or Love Marriage

I quote from this site:

For example, in 1982, psychologists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur ran a study comparing marriages of choice in the United States to arranged marriages in India. They found opposite trends: choice marriages experienced a lot of initial passion and little compassion thereafter while arranged marriages experienced no initial passion but increasing compassion as the years went on. Moreover, arranged marriage couples were nearly twice as compassionate than choice marriage couples ten years post marriage – a result reinforced in a recent paper by Robert Epstein and Mansi Thakar highlighted in the January/February 2011 edition of Scientific American.

Does this mean that arranged marriage is the way to go?

Not necessarily. A follow up study done by Jane Myers et al, in 2005 compared 45 individuals living in arranged marriages in India to individuals in choice marriages in the United States. They found “no support for differences in marital satisfaction or love aspects of wellness in relation to arranged marriages.” In addition, studies by Schwartz (2007, Orthodox Jews) and Walsh and Taylor (1982, Japanese) found no differences in love between arranged versus choice marriage. As such, Myers is correct to conclude that, “further research on the relationships between cultural differences, cultural values, and characteristics of marriages are needed to explain these relationships and provide a knowledge base for cross-cultural couples counseling.”

What psychologists do know is that people who are married are happier and healthier. In addition, data shows that the happiest people usually have strong marriages and that married people tend to live on average longer – seven years for the male and two years for the female. Researchers have also found that the death of a spouse can be detrimental. Dubbed the “widowhood effect,” many studies demonstrate that men who lose a wife are between 30% and 100% more likely to die within a year; the same is true for women although there are fewer studies.

So basically, it doesnt matter whether you are in an arranged or love marriage, its marriage which matters. Me? I prefer arranged marriages, at least you have some more people to blame