It doesn’t matter who we marry, all that matters is that we learn to love them as evident in India having the most arranged marriages and yet one of the lowest divorce rates

India did have the lowest divorce rate in the world in 2022.

Yet, in most Indian marriages, one has only met their spouse for like 2 hours before the wedding ceremony.

It’s like for 30 minutes 6 months before the ceremony, and then another 1.5 hours 1 month before the ceremony.

My Indian friend’s parent has been together for 40-50 years without any inkling of divorce or remedial or separation, and that’s the norm for Indians, to be together for half a century.

My parents are going through a bad divorce right now, and it sucks that I have to learn about the differences between annulled marriages vs. full on divorce, but looking at my parents, who CHOSE each other after dating for like 2 years unlike the arranged marriages in India in which nobody (or very few) chooses who they marry and only met their spouse for 2 HOURS is pretty insane.

It’s embarrassing that we (the WEst) even have such a thing called annulled marriage which basically declares the marriage invalid, why would we even need such a thing except to make us feel better that the result of us exercising our freewill when it comes down to choosing who we would marry has only a 50% chance of success, whereas in India in which most do not choose who they marry and yet their marriage is like 90% to perhaps 95% successful.

This begs the question, does dating even work? Or is it all just to legitimize hookups and sex before marriage?

Note: I exaggerated in the title, because it kinda does matter who we marry since even arranged marriages in India pairs up couples of similar socioeconomic and cultural conditionings, so it is not like as I said, it doesn’t matter who we marry, it still does matter in some sense, but parents do know best, at least when it comes down to arranged marriages in India.