I think I'm done with dating. No, really, check this out: 40 to 50 percent of all first marriages in America end in divorce. Compare that to anywhere from 2 to 10 to 20 percent for arranged marriages, and suddenly I'm thinking more matchmaker, less Maggiano's.
In my opinion, a major cause for this commitment catastrophe is that people fail to realize that love is a choice. Not the kind of choice that would lead one to, say, pluck a random, unassuming person off the street to marry, but the kind that acknowledges that the whole business of falling in love can sometimes lead us to have unreasonable expectations and face epic disappointment once we've landed back on our feet. And all too often we're too shell-shocked from the fall to put in the real work necessary to make true love last.
One of the reasons arranged marriages (read: not "forced marriages") seem to succeed, however, is because they eliminate this seemingly inevitable curse of courtship. They are based on sheer compatibility and mutual agreement. Sure there are other reasons for the lower separation rate, such as sometimes associated cultural beliefs against divorce that prevent women from speaking up when locked in troubled marriages - which I absolutely do not condone nor do I consider by any means "successful." But, as I recently read somewhere, you still can't deny that sometimes "individuals can too easily be influenced by the effects of love to make a logical choice."
Guilty as charged.
So, if this whole dating thing is based on delusion anyway, maybe it's time to blow right past it and cut to the chase. I mean, if it worked for our grandparents' generation, why not ours?
In my opinion, a major cause for this commitment catastrophe is that people fail to realize that love is a choice. Not the kind of choice that would lead one to, say, pluck a random, unassuming person off the street to marry, but the kind that acknowledges that the whole business of falling in love can sometimes lead us to have unreasonable expectations and face epic disappointment once we've landed back on our feet. And all too often we're too shell-shocked from the fall to put in the real work necessary to make true love last.
One of the reasons arranged marriages (read: not "forced marriages") seem to succeed, however, is because they eliminate this seemingly inevitable curse of courtship. They are based on sheer compatibility and mutual agreement. Sure there are other reasons for the lower separation rate, such as sometimes associated cultural beliefs against divorce that prevent women from speaking up when locked in troubled marriages - which I absolutely do not condone nor do I consider by any means "successful." But, as I recently read somewhere, you still can't deny that sometimes "individuals can too easily be influenced by the effects of love to make a logical choice."
Guilty as charged.
So, if this whole dating thing is based on delusion anyway, maybe it's time to blow right past it and cut to the chase. I mean, if it worked for our grandparents' generation, why not ours?
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