Two Worlds Apart, Joined with One Heart

Can you imagine to get married with someone just after one or two meeting which is set by your family or elders? According to an interview of Mann & Molloy (2018) for BBC, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were introduced to each other on a blind date arranged by their mutual friend. After that they dated about 2 years and tied knot on May 2018. The Royal Family accepted Meghan despite she is an actress, has some bold scene on TV series and a non-British. At the end, they are now happily married. However, there is no denying the importance of marrying someone who we know for a little long period of time and in a few decades, love marriage will completely take over arrange marriage.

The author Cohn (2013) stated that among married American people, 93% say love is a very important reason to get married; 84% of unmarried people say so. In love marriages, people chose their life partner with their wish and will. Moreover, people used to know their partner longer than arrange marriages. As a result, couples can be aware of their partner. They can know their likes, dislikes, expectations and needs and these things are really necessary for a long lasting relationship. On the other hand, in arranged marriages, there is no option of knowing about each other partner and not even family. Because, arranged marriages are basically old fashioned and it take place between two families who are usually in the same class. And one family just know about the good things about other one in an arranged marriage.

In an arranged marriage, people don't usually know their spouse well before the marriage. Also the families have little margin to know about each other while performing this social norm. On the other hand, in a love marriage, one can easily know others family. One can build a nice close relationship with each other’s family and this helps in bonding well with in-laws before marriage. Besides, a couple can figure out their problem that they might face after the marriage and they can quickly figure it out only if they know each other well before the marriage. Two person can easily build an understanding while dating and try to know each other. This procedure helps them to become compatible with each other very quickly before their marriage. Besides, this helps them to awake about the level of adjustment required after marriage. This is a way of mental preparation before marriage as they come to know their partner very well. Only love marriage can provide this type of opportunity properly to any couple but not arranged marriage. Some people might say, arranged marriage is stable and any trouble in marriage can quickly fixed by taking help from family. Nowadays, family assistance and help is not much available because the number of nuclear family is increasing day by day. Though the divorce rate in love marriage is higher than arranged marriage but I think taking divorce is totally personal issue.According Leibowitz (2015) to a 2,373-person survey conducted by Mic in March using Google Consumer Surveys, more 18- to 34-year-olds met their current significant others through mutual friends than through any other means, including dating apps — close to 39% of respondents said they met “through friends in common”, closely followed by 22% who said they met “out in a social setting”.

In modern age, people used to fall in love in many ways. People find their life partner on their workplace, academia, through friends in common, social media, dating apps, etc. The change is even came to the conservative Muslim culture on choosing life partner. Now, many Muslim’s are having affair before their marriage. Our society is gradually accepting it because we are in the transition period. Love marriage is quite more popular than arranged marriage in the urban areas in our country. Because, in cities people used to form nuclear families and live away from their parents. On the other hand, arranged marriage is widely practiced on the rural areas in our country. Because, in rural areas we see the joint and extended families more often than nuclear family.

To sum up, some people might say love may come eventually after the marriage but there are differences between romantic and after marriage love. Romantic love is knowing someone little by little before getting into any contractual thing and it’s vivid, colorful and helps individual to find a better person as a future partner.