JapanForum.com - Arranged or Love Marriage??

Well, both have pros and cons. In a love marriage, you definitely want to be with the person, and feel some passion for them for any amount of months/years. But then the marriage can dwindle into friendly companionship, or constant fighting. And once the love is gone people tend to realized that they're not matched as well as they'd like/they want something different/they're unhappy/they have changed, so they break up.

In an arranged marriage, there is no initial expectation of happiness or love: people are married for money or propriety or any other factors, so often these people tend to have few or no common interests, good sexual rapport or complementary characters. But if both are decent people, it is likely the marriage will run smoothly because both are aware of their responsibilities, and they might eventually fall in love, or at least experience that tender companionship necessary for living together for a long time. On the flipside, they might each fall in love with someone else and be desperately miserable.

Personally, I don't believe in marriage...or maybe at my age it seems unnecessarily constricting. Now that divorce exists and single women are able to easily exist in society, marriage and its 'till death do us part motto' seem obsolete, ne? Most couples are together from a few months to a few years, and then inevitably break up. Few people find even a semblance of 'the one'. Marriage is simply a social contract legitimizing coexistence in the same house, and it is not essential nowadays.