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Girl calls wedding off when groom gets maths wrong

 
 
 
My old housemate had an arranged marriage.

It started with her parents arranging 'dates' with suitable candidates. Good feedback led to more dates, bad feedback led to no more dates. Particularly hot candidates were taken home and given a 'test drive' in the bedroom. If she liked them, the parents did a detailed background check into him and the family. The whole process took about 2.5 years at a rate of one new prospect every two-three weeks. Add that to repeat dates for the guys she liked, and she was pretty darned busy.

I wouldn't want that situation for myself. But I can see the attraction. It seemed remarkably similar to getting your friends to set you up with a cute guy, or finding your own, except with fewer nightclubs. Or using a dating service

There were struggles of course. The parents vetoed one or two guys she really liked. She dumped several of their 'best' prospects. But the fact that she was getting an advanced degree from a well-regarded university on a different continent, helped stop the situation becoming too abusive. And she was allowed to just back out at any time, so long as she went out and found her own 'suitable' guy.

Obviously her parents were putting a lot of pressure on her to marry someone suitable. But then my parents did the same to me. That's not an arranged marriage thing.
 
Ronburgandy, not denying that in many cases arranged marriages are coercive and can lead to torture even killings of bride and groom if they try to go against tradition.

But did it occur to you that in many cases specially among the middle classes it is a matter of intertia? Both men and women grow up seeing arranged marriages everywhere and they are simply content to drift passively with the current rather than be revolutionary.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
hinduwoman said:
Different cultures.
Even many educated working women feel that their parents and elders will be better able to make sensible choices based on compatibility rather than relying on hormones when in love --- and if the marriage breaks down people who arranged it gets most of the blame as well!
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I think it's the "not meeting until the wedding" part which rubs most Westerners the wrong way. There's not much issue with the parents doing the legwork for finding a compatible match, but the kids not being able to vett the prospect personally and make sure that they agree the compatibility is there seems a little off.
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Don't know what happened specifically in this case but usually among the more mobile classes it is now the custom for grooms and brides to meet and spend time together --- not a test drive in the bedroom though!
 
hinduwoman said:
Don't know what happened specifically in this case but usually among the more mobile classes it is now the custom for grooms and brides to meet and spend time together --- not a test drive in the bedroom though!
Click to expand...

Well, it clearly didn't happen in this case or else she could have just looked at his face and realized he's not the guy she agreed to marry as opposed to getting him to do a math problem.
 
hinduwoman said:
Ronburgandy, not denying that in many cases arranged marriages are coercive and can lead to torture even killings of bride and groom if they try to go against tradition.

But did it occur to you that in many cases specially among the middle classes it is a matter of intertia? Both men and women grow up seeing arranged marriages everywhere and they are simply content to drift passively with the current rather than be revolutionary.
Click to expand...

Well, I can't speak for ronburgandy, but it seems rather obvious that this is the case among, as you say, the educated middle class. But inertia is one of those forces that help maintain authoritarian and coercive social structures.
 
hinduwoman said:
Tom Sawyer said:
I think it's the "not meeting until the wedding" part which rubs most Westerners the wrong way. There's not much issue with the parents doing the legwork for finding a compatible match, but the kids not being able to vett the prospect personally and make sure that they agree the compatibility is there seems a little off.
Click to expand...

Don't know what happened specifically in this case but usually among the more mobile classes it is now the custom for grooms and brides to meet and spend time together --- not a test drive in the bedroom though!
Click to expand...

It was only the bedroom because we complained about the effect of her social life on our poor sofa!

Yes, obviously not all, or even most, arranged marriages are like this. Personally, I'd strongly recommend getting to know the person first.

Of course if there is a family reputation or inheritance at stake, even unarranged marriages can have baggage. I knew two different guys who fell for what their family's considered to be the 'wrong kind' of girl. One had the wrong social background, the other the wrong religion. The amount of background checks, argument, recrimination, interrogation and investigation was considerable. In one case it all sort of worked out, in the other it didn't. I suppose the point I'm making is that it isn't really the method of finding the spouse that's the issue, but rather then extent to which the potential match is marrying the family, rather than a particular person in it. In particularly sexist or repressive cultures, the individual's preference may be seen as almost irrelevant. That's the issue - not who picked them out in the first place, or how.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
hinduwoman said:
Don't know what happened specifically in this case but usually among the more mobile classes it is now the custom for grooms and brides to meet and spend time together --- not a test drive in the bedroom though!
Click to expand...

Well, it clearly didn't happen in this case or else she could have just looked at his face and realized he's not the guy she agreed to marry as opposed to getting him to do a math problem.
Click to expand...

I know a woman who was being forced into an arranged marriage and responded by permanently fleeing the country (in this case India) to get out of it. Her father secretly helped. Perhaps not as plucky as forcing the groom to pass a maths test, but generally more consistent with opposition to "arranged marriages" in the general as opposed to being against "an arranged marriage to this particular loser".
 
Well, it would seem that there would be a large margin of error in determining whether or not someone was an engineer with a question like that.
 
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