I cannot stress this enough. Though purely anecdotal I was raised by parents of arranged marriage. After seeing years of mental and physical abuse of my mother by my father she still has not even contemplated divorcing my father. Why? Its frowned upon in the culture she was raised in and she has no where to go. I can assume that this is the ONLY reason why divorce rates are lower in arranged marriages., not because it is somehow magically "better".
I am not trying to argue arranged marriages are great at all. I am just trying to bring a perspective. Some of my friends (actually quite a few) were married before they even met the husband or wife. Their marriages seem to be just as much normal or disfunctional as the rest of us. I didn't understand how someone could marry without even meeting the other side, but then I got some perpectives after talking to them.
Some of my friends got married that way because that's the only way they knew how to get married. We are talking about Indian nationals who work and study in the US, so they have opportunities to find love on their own if they wanted to.
Updated list: 1.Believer of the holy book (major 3) 2.Intelligent 3.Sense of Humor 4.Kind/Caring 5.Strong/Independent/whatever you want to call it I figure if I had to give up on some things, these were some of the staples that I feel I need in a wife. People do stupid things, make mistakes, or perhaps were sure of something that later didnt work out. Virginity in this day of age is rarer than (insert very rare object here) Cooking and cleaning can be taught. I know how to do both, but I'd rather have my wife do it, at the very least make it a "team chore" In all honesty, if a girl chooses to drink or smoke, I can only hope that if she ever planned to have kids, she would give those up. But I'm just getting way to ahead of myself now.
So you want a woman who is independent and intelligent but miraculously tolerant of heavily male-dominant criteria even when offered through the blurry medium of arranged marriages? Good luck.
I actually think the stats on living together pre-marriage show the opposite of what you would think, but it's been awhile since I looked at them.
I don't think you understand me then. I said it was either find a woman that meets the criteria that you quoted, or get an arranged marriage. I am actually resisting arranged marriage, but I guess you didnt read my other posts in here....
If I was a woman I would not be attracted to a guy who wants an arranged marriage. It shows a lack of ability. Unless it's a royal family where the men aren't allowed to develop social intelligence and they just need trophy wives to keep the bloodline pure.
I'm not a supporter of arranged marriage, but I will counterpoint you with this: on the one hand, some people persevere through an unhappy marriage because of tradition. But the truth is that many people think they can find the right person by just testing how deeply, madly in love they are with them, and those people are horribly mistaken. They end up in even worse marriages. My conjecture is that arranged or non-arranged really bears little or no correlation with the success of marriage. Compatibility matters a whole lot more. And sexual compatibility is the LEAST of it. When you get married, you'll find that regular/good sex makes things go more smoothly (like an engine lubricant), but it's not going to be what determines how well you fit together. People scorn the idea of abstaining before marriage, but the truth is that it forces you to focus and build upon what's important first. I for one am glad I did it that way, and my marriage only keeps getting better and better.
All of this stuff is subjective. In my own case, I lived with my S.O. off and on for 4 years before we decided to make it a more permanent arrangement. That decision was over 30 years ago. Our sex life is in some ways better now than it was when we were young hippies who met in the early '70's. I'm a few years older than she is, but we have so much in common that it's crazy. We both love art and music. We both love to travel. We both nearly decided to blow off having kids because we were having such a damn fine time, and even when we made that decision, we had been together for nearly 20 years and it even then it was a close call. With a son graduating this month with a double major in computer engineering and computer science from a well known university (with an excellent engineering program), and a daughter who's going to be a senior at a magnet high school this fall, who's making the best grades she's ever made, we seem to have done something right on that score. In less than 5 years, we'll have our house paid off, our daughter will be close to graduating from college, and we already have tuition and fees paid for if she goes to a state university. The two of us are looking forward to many years of traveling and just enjoying life as a retired couple. Who knows, we may even have grandkids someday way in the future (if we live long enough!). I'm a pretty lucky son of a gun, actually. Looks pretty damn good in print. All true.
I actually remember reading that in some divorce article. Like couples who didn't live together then married stayed married longer than divorced couples. But it was all done in percentages so I don't remember the exact number. Also, it stated that couples were both partners had an advanced education decreased the likelihood of divorce. And getting married in the late 20s and beyond decreased the likelihood of divorce too.
The problem here is that you view sex as a big exclamation mark. Something unnatural and divine that excites you like nothing else. Stripping yourself of physical intimacy is uncreative and bland - it creates a sexually regressive mindset, and places a heightened need to find any mate you can hammer a relationship out of. We're all given pieces of wood to build a fence, so why wait for marriage to begin building it? I'm glad you found a path and made it work. However if you're honest with yourself and a little less fearful of straying off a path you can't even see, you'll find sexuality is fluid and not something that detracts from personal goals in life.
I'm glad Ronny has something to say on this matter. "sexuality is fluid" So how long you been into dudes?
No, it doesn't. Truth is that you're the one who is fearful of traveling down a path less traveled. Your "advice" is that people should cheapen sex to just a run-of-the-mill activity, and what you fail to realize is that by cheapening sex, you also cheapen the intimacy that it provides and make it less effective in marriage as a result. It is very possible to have great sex and horrible intimacy, and in fact that is what many people are going through. Sex should be the glue that helps hold together the structure of marriage, but many people don't even have a real structure to hold together, and sometimes even when they do, the glue is ineffective because it's cheap. If your goal is to have a transient fling, then you don't need to build a foundation. But you're fooling yourself if you think gushy emotions and great sex are going to build a foundation that lasts a lifetime.
Sorry to quote myself, but I need to add one more thing. There are also many people who get married so that they can have sex and make babies. If your goal for getting married is to get into her pants, you've also lost the script. Badly.
Ewww... Old people sex.. Just joking with you Deckard. It sounds like things went very well for you and congrats on your great family life.
