I am watching this thread with fascination.
My husband and I will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of our
non-arranged marriage in December. There have been times when I have
thought we married for all the wrong reasons and lucked into
compatibility in areas that weren't on the radar. There have been times
when I have thought I should have paid more attention to the serious
dysfunction in his family before I married him. There have been droughts
where we were both just putting one foot in front of the other. There
have been unexpected and blissful periods of falling in love all over again.
There have been times when I have thought that a well-arranged marriage
would have been better. There have been times when I have asserted that
any reasonable man and woman can make a marriage work if they choose to.
(To that, my friends and family all bring up the name of the same mutual
friend and ask me if I could make a marriage work with him.) There have
been times when I believe my heart was connected by a string to my
husband's and that my feet would have found their way to his side no
matter what happened. There have been times when I wished that I had
changed direction at one critical point and found my way to an alternate
life. What would it have been like?
When our daughters grew out of babyhood, we started joking about
arranging marriages for them. My 25-year-old sometimes asks when we are
going to arrange a marriage for her. She wouldn't mind, provided we
found exactly the sort of person she would choose for herself. My
18-year-old son would also probably go along with an arranged marriage.
The other two, no way.
I feel utterly incompetent to arrange a marriage for another person! How
do parents proceed in this business? Has anyone on this list been
involved in arranging a marriage for their children?
--hmm
