Arrangerede ægteskaber: et kulturelt perspektiv

There comes a time in most peoples life, where they meet that ‘special someone’ and want to get married, just to show each other and the hole world that they love each other, and that they want to spent the rest of their life together. But this scenario if very different in other cultures. In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, isn’t it normal to go out and date, and possibly find a potential husband. Here it is the parent’s job to find a match for their child. Arranged marriages are normal in many religions and cultures. The parents search for a long time, to find the perfect partner for their child. But why do they do that? Why can’t their children find someone on their own? I personally don’t know, and I can’t quite put me in their situation. How can you marry someone you don’t love and know? This is all very hard for me to understand, because I am raised to be an individuals and to make my own decisions. In my world you meet the person, you fall in love, make a commitment, have a long time relationship, until you love and know this person, and make sure that this is the person you want to marry and be with for the rest of your life. But in the Western countries they believe that marriages come first, and loves comes after. But what if love never comes? Then you’re forced to spend the rest of the life with someone, you don’t love. And why do that, when you can spend it with someone you love and cherish? I personally could never marry someone that I didn’t love, and just the thought of it makes me ill. But no matter how awful us western people believe this is, its considered normal in these countries, and their children actually expect their parents to find them a companion. But even though this is how their lives are, I can’t avoid feeling a little sorry for them, that they might never experience true love. But at the positive side, I do believe that you can learn to love each other, or be lucky enough to feel ‘love at first sight’. And if that is the case, arrange marriage can be an advantage at some point, - you do have the fully accept from the parents, and they will help and take responsibility for the marriage as well. In a typical arranged marriage, the girl and boy will be from the same religion, so they have the same upbringing, life style, food and culture. Examples of a successful arrange marriage is from the short story “clothes”, which is about a girl named summit, who’s been married away to a young Indian boy. In this telling you can see her father spends a lot of time finding the perfect man for his daughter, Sumita. And even though Sumita and her husband didn’t get to know each other before after the wedding, they still learnt to love each other deeply. So maybe arranged marriages aren’t that horribly after all? But to my conclusion, there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages of arrange marriages, but in my opinion you should always have the chance to choose your own life partner.