A friend recently in a conversation about marriage had something interesting to say. It was about arranged marriages. Strange as the idea may seem to many of us, arranged marriages still occur in some traditions. This man was talking about this arranged marriage and the difference between arranged marriages and those we might consider done the usual way of falling in love and choosing whom you will marry.
According to him the difference is those who go into arranged marriages know they are going to have to work at the marriage to make it work. What’s more they are expected by family to make it work.
On the other side, many who go onto marriage today and do it via what we would call the traditional route of falling in love etc, think once we are married it will all just happen of its not accord. We don’t have to work at it. This is a decidedly wrong concept.
If you want to be a violinist you can’t just fall in love with a violin and then pick it up and expect to play beautiful music. It requires hours and hours, and years of practice. You have to work at it.
It’s the same when learning anything new. It doesn’t just happen. Why should marriage be any different? We need to work at it, every day at making our marriage better and stronger.
It is best to start before we get married. Going to marriage preparation classes, so you have some idea of what to expect and the issues involved, will help. But it also continues on every day of married life as we encounter different experiences life throws us and work out how to respond to them as a married couple and how best to work at our marriage and make it better.
It won’t just happen of its own accord. It needs two people committed to making the marriage work and making it better.
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