Somewhere in the world couples getting married…. and by their own volition.
Really?!? What are they thinking???
Hilarious image from xkcd.com. Check it out.
After a long day of shopping, baking, cleaning, and laundry, I settled down to watch a bit of TV before hitting the hay. A friend of mine recommended a show called Married At First Sight… it just happened to correspond with my late night couch time, so I took a look.
The premise of the show deals with finding a match made in heaven, or at least on paper. Four relationship professionals met with over 3000 applicants and put together 3 couples. The men and women know nothing about each other and only meet for the first time when they are standing at the altar — a modern twist on the practice of arranged marriage.
Hey, it could work. Statistics show an average divorce rate of 4% for this type of union. That means 96% of all arranged marriages last… but for better or worse? One would argue having an arranged marriage is better as the matching process looks for more similarities between the couples. When love and physical attraction are removed from the early relationship equation, it’s easier to see the red flag differences (as listed by Jordan Gray on the The Good Men Project) that pose huge problems down the line.
Obviously some of the relationship red flags are not easy to see if you go into an arranged union, but a couple of the biggies are easily addressed:
- They don’t put effort into the relationship – in an arranged marriage, both parties know it will take lots of hard work
- Their core values are different than yours – probably not the case in an arranged union as the two families are making sure that both the husband and wife are equal in many areas (such as education, religious views, jail time)
A surrogate family member in the form of a professional relationship expert will probably not suggest a pairing between an unemployed couch potato and a highly motivated go-getter. But…
Left to my own devices, I’ve been sucked in by a charming smile and a sexy body, thinking that the person I’m interested just needs a bit of time to grow into his ambition…. Come on, fellow women, you know I’m not alone in this delusional thought process… Leading us to questions like, “What was I thinking!”
The Bad Boy Syndrome runs rampant in the local bars and our Hollywood dreams. Yes, I’ve dated a few of them <insert eye roll here>.
After watching the first episode of Season Two, I asked myself a serious question: Would I ever do this? Would I voluntarily hand my love life and future happiness over to a team of professionals and allow them to pick out Future Husband #3 for me?
Strangely, I would take the chance. Because I’m obviously not doing such a bang up job on my own.
I laughed out loud when one of the participants was asked how he handles conflict. I thought immediately of my answer to the same question: Very poorly.
Or at least that’s how I handled it in the past. I haven’t had a chance to practice my new conflict skills recently as I have no one to conflict with!
Life is calm when you cut all people out of it.
OK, I haven’t cut all people out of my life. I still function socially and as part of a team. I just don’t function romantically at this time for an obvious reason.
Move along, move along. Nothing to see.
Which brought to mind another interesting question: What exactly do I bring to the table? How would my friends and relatives sell me if they were arranging my marriage?
Hmmmm…..
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