Marriage Requires Compromise
The fact is, anyone who wants a specific thing must make some compromises to get it, be it something material like a fancy apartment or something more spiritual like a spouse. And this isn’t even just about marriage. If you want sex without relationship, you can have it, but you’re still making a sacrifice; you risk not having a supportive bond. If you want marriage, and to be married, more than anything else, then you can do that, too, provided you’re willing to do away with the impossible standards and endlesss dealbreakers you’ve clung to in your search for Mr. Perfect … who doesn’t exist, by the way.
In other words, you must have to be willing to commit first and love second. After all, it’s only (fairly) recently that we demanded the whole package: true love, intellectual match, perfect partner, best friend forever. As Stephanie Coontz taught us in Marriage: A History, for most of recorded history, love was considered a pretty fickle reason to get married — it was more about creating a family unit and a stable life — which may be why today, with so many couples marrying for love alone, so many of us are leaving in droves.
DIY Arranged Marriage
You know where I’m going here, right? Because what Chen is essentially telling you to do is perform your own arranged marriage. And you can decide to do it now. If what you want is a committed, long-term bond, then maybe — just maybe — this is the way to go.
It’s estimated that 55 percent of the world’s marriages are arranged — 90 percent of which happen in India. The divorce rate, as you probably know, is roughly 50 percent in this country. Guess how many divorces result from arranged marriages? Four percent. That’s not because people are happier elsewhere as a rule, or don’t suffer the same emotions or experiences that all couples do. It just means the ones who enter into arranged marriages by and large don’t do so with the same expectations as others do. They kind of say, “He’ll do,” and let the bond form over time. Then love grows — not in all cases, certainly, but a lot more than you realize. Full lives, children, a summer home, perhaps — all of this can be yours, too
