Modern sensibilities find arranged marriages to be utterly repulsive. They represent a great affront to human freedom and harken to a time of patriarchal repression of women. Nevertheless, for much of human history men and women came together in marriage, not through courtship, but through some prior arrangement. I am not suggesting that we return to those days, but instead to admit that given the glass house of marriage that we are living in, we should not be so quick to throw stones of subjection and patriarchy without first grasping the wisdom in the practice. In particular, we can look to see how both love and freedom were actually protected and promoted by this practice so that we can apply these principles to the decrepit institution of marriage today.
In order to begin, we must put aside our gut reactions in order to see why, at least in principle, arranged marriages could work. A father, when he truly loves his daughter, sees her as a gift and wants her to be fulfilled in the truest sense of the word. That fulfillment includes the time when she must join herself to a husband. Because of his great love, he wants to make sure that she will be yoked to a man who has a sense of responsibility of the great gift that has been bestowed upon him. And so, in arranging the marriage, he was vetting his future son-in-law to make sure that he was worthy of such a priceless gift. Did it always happen like this? Of course not. But the principle which animated it is wholly lacking in today’s culture and so bears some further examination.
Attraction in Marriage
What if the woman was not attracted to the man or vice versa? Attraction, both sensual and emotional, is very important, but only in the sense that they contain the seeds of love. But love is not the same thing as attraction. Attraction is about the pleasure your presence brings to me. In other words, it is a love of the feelings that you stir in me. It draws me towards you, but I must decide whether you have more value than the mere trigger of pleasant feelings. It is ironic that we recoil at the idea of our parents arranging our marriages while we have no problem submitting to the genetics of our passions, the same genetics we have received from our parents.
Attraction should serve to spur me towards love to see if the good that I detected is a real good for me. When it does, love emerges in which my consciousness of the fact that you are gift (“a good for me”) stirs me to make a gift of myself (“to be a good for you”). This is a solid foundation of love in which the couple sees each other as a gift and takes responsibility for the well-being of the other. Once love emerges then genuine attraction roams free because it is directed towards the full value of the person and not just some attributes that I happen to like. When a relationship never grows past attraction, then true love never develops—infatuation, lust, cupidity, yes—but not true love. This seems to be one of major obstacles facing marriage today; an inability to move past attraction. Marriages end because “I just don’t love you anymore,” which really means “I never really loved you, only the feelings you stirred in me.” They put too much stock in the laws of attraction and when the market crashed they were left with nothing. Arranged marriages may not have been the solution to this problem, but at least they recognized that attraction was only a seed of love and not a foundation; a lesson we would do well to learn.
Freedom and Marriage
The modern distaste for arranged marriages also sees them as a great affront against freedom. We are right to think we should be free to marry whomever we choose, but we fail to see that true freedom comes not in choosing who to marry, but in being married. What this means is that marriage truly is the ultimate sign of human freedom. When a couple says “I do” it constitutes the greatest act of human freedom. Why is that so? Because they are saying that no matter what happens, nothing will change their will to be yoked to the other person. They are free from any feelings that come or go—their freedom is stronger. They are free from any person who might come or go in their life—their freedom is stronger. They are free from any external circumstances that might happen—their freedom is stronger. In fact, far from diminishing their freedom, holding onto the “I do” and making it an “I am” they are actually increasing it. To give in to any of the thousands of temptations to call it quits is not freedom, but slavery.
Unlike the marriages of today, arranged marriages emphasized the freedom through the permanence of their consent. We on the other hand emphasize the “I’d like to” even going so far as to cohabitate on a trial basis. With no real emphasis on the “I do” we find it just as easy to say “I no longer like to.” To say “I do is to say “I will” and it shows that the human will is stronger than any other compulsion or external circumstance. Marriage is the great sign of human freedom.