Arranged or Love: Regrets, Happiness and the Blame Game

The biggest problem with Marriages in India is not if it’s Arranged or Love but actually it is what happens after the marriage. The ideology of the common Indian mass and the much-cared-but-useless opinions of the Society make any kind of Marriage a big problem, much bigger than the question of Love and Arranged Marriage.

Let’s go 2-3 years into the marriage (Love or Arranged). What happens if the marriage doesn’t works out well and both the sexes involved aren’t satisfied with what they have got? Suppose one of them is not a so called supporting partner. They give their best shot and try to make the marriage work but still they can’t, it turns out to be a failed marriage. Evidently, they ‘should’ look forward to a divorce and prepare for a new life, find a new soul mate and move on with life, a hopefully happy one this time. But, this doesn’t happen. On a cinema/magazines based point of view, Divorces are not frowned upon in the upper-class community but this is not the case with the middle-class and lower-class. In these communities, Divorce is still a disgrace and most of the divorcees/divorced males are perceived to be a loser and a blot on the false vanity of an even more disgraceful society.  Besides, as cruel as we humans are, no matter how much you want to but these people won’t let you move on and will keep on reminding you of your sad past, making it a worse-than-Everest-climbing task. As it is going, I can’t see the mentality of the society we live in changing in the recent future. Thus, As of now, I can only see majority of the Indians going along with their Married Life whether or not it is working. Accept it. A bitter truth.
So, on the risk of facing these humiliations either you go ahead with the divorce or else you silently survive the pains and live an even more humiliated life forever with your partner, dying a slow death with false optimism and fantasies(which is a more common phenomenon).

Now that this point has been explained, let me come to the question of Arranged Marriage and Love Marriage.

You can search for the ‘Love of your Life’ but since not everyone is so lucky to find/get their love and you are still very much left with ‘your life’ which must go on, thus settle for the next best thing, arranged marriage. Even though Arranged Marriage is a blind gamble (not-so-blind) but still, there is nothing in this world that Love and Trust can’t do. After all, you can’t live all your life alone without marrying, can you? If yes, congrats! If no, the answer was above, go for it.

Now, if you really have to decide between Love and Arranged marriage, like in a very dire situation. I’ll give you a simple Talisman. If you go for Love Marriage and it doesn’t works out well then you’ll have only yourself to blame, but you won’t have any regrets for the rest of your life. If you go for Arrange Marriage and it doesn’t works out well then you’ll have your parents and family to blame (wow, large number of options) which will make the suffering a tad easy but you’ll live a life full of regrets.
Since I don’t want to sound pessimistic and cruel, either way if your marriage works out well then all these regrets and blame game don’t come into picture and you’ll continue to live a happy and fulfilled life and that’s what I wish each one of you reading this post. Cheers!
Coming back to reality now, the choice is yours…which life do you want?

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This post is my entry for the Indiblogger Love Marriage ya Arranged Marriage! contest.

For more details, check out:  http://www.facebook.com/LoveYaArrange

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Playing in my head: 'All by myself' by Eric Carmen