Lessons Learned from Arranged Marriages
 
By Robert Epstein
 
About 50 percent of first marriages fail in the U.S., as do two thirds of second marriages and three quarters of third marriages. So much for practice! We fail in large part because we enter into relationships with poor skills for maintaining them and highly unrealistic expectations.

 

We also tend to pick unsuitable partners, mistakenly believing that we are in love simply because we feel physical attraction.
 
That combination of factors sets us up for failure: eventually-often within a mere 18 months-the fog of passion dissipates, and we begin to see our partner with new clarity. All too often we react by saying, "Who are you?" or "You've changed." We might try hard for years after that to keep things going, especially if children are in the picture. But if we start out with the wrong person and lack basic tools for resolving conflicts and communicating, the chances that we will succeed are slim to none.
 
Over the years, having looked carefully at the fast-growing scientific literature on relationship science and having conducted some new research of my own, I have come to believe that there is a definite fix for our poor performance in romantic relationships. The fix is to extract a practical technology from the research and then to teach people how to use it. At least 80 scientific studies help to reveal how people learn to love each other.
 
We grow up on fairy tales and movies in which magical forces help people find their soul mates, with whom they effortlessly live happily ever after.
 
The fairy tales leave us powerless, putting our love lives into the hands of the Fates.
 
But here is a surprise: most of the world has never heard of those fairy tales. Instead more than half of marriages on our globe are brokered by parents or professional matchmakers, whose main concerns are long-term suitability and family harmony. In India an estimated 95 percent of the marriages are arranged, and although divorce is legal, India has one of the lowest divorce rates in the world. (This is starting to change, of course, as Western ways encroach on traditional society.)
 
Young couples in India generally have a choice about whether to proceed, and the combination of choice and sound guidance probably accounts for the fact that studies of arranged marriages in India indicate that they measure up well-in, for example, longevity, satisfaction and love-against Western marriages. Indeed, the love experienced by Indian couples in arranged marriages appears to be even more robust than the love people experience in "love marriages" in the West.
 
In a 1982 study psychologists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India, used the Rubin Love Scale, which gauges intense, romantic, Western-style love, to determine that love in "love marriages" in India does exactly what it does in love marriages here: it starts high and declines fairly rapidly. But love in the arranged marriages they examined started out low and gradually increased, surpassing the love in the love marriage about five years out. Ten years into the marriage the love was nearly twice as strong.
 
How do they do it? How do people in some arranged marriages build love deliberately over time - and can we do it, too?
 
Over the past few years I have been interviewing people in arranged marriages in which love has grown over time. One of these couples is Kaiser and Shelly Haque of Minneapolis, who have been happily married for 11 years and have two bright, welladjusted children. Once he had a secure life in the U.S., Kaiser, an immigrant from Bangladesh, returned to his native country to let his family know he was ready for matrimony. The family did the rest. After just one meeting with Shelly---where, Kaiser said, there was "like at first sight"---the arrangements were made. "We've grown to love each other and to get to know each other over time," Kaiser says. "The sparks are getting bigger, and I think we can do even better in the future."
 
Kaiser and Shelly are not atypical. A study that Mansi Thakar, a student at the University of Southern California, and I presented at the November 2009 meeting of the National Council on Family Relations included 30 individuals from nine countries of origin and five different religions. Their love had grown, on average, from 3.9 to 8.5 on a 10-point scale in marriages lasting an average of 19.4 years.
 
These individuals identified 11 factors that contributed to the growth of their love, 10 of which dovetailed beautifully with the scientific research I reviewed in my course. The most important factor was commitment, followed by good communication skills. The couples also identified sharing secrets with a spouse, as well as accommodation---that is, the voluntary altering of your behavior to meet your partner's needs. Seeing a spouse in a vulnerable state (caused by injury or illness) was also singled out.
 
There are many possible lessons here for Westerners, among them: do things deliberately that make you vulnerable to each other. Try experiencing danger, or thrilling simulations of it, as a couple. [For more tips based on U.S. research, see yesterday's Marriage Tip.]
 
The results conflicted with those of American studies in only one respect: several of the couples in arranged marriages said their love grew when they had children with their spouse. Studies in the U.S. routinely find parenting to be a threat to feelings of spousal love, but perhaps that tendency results from the strong feelings and unrealistic expectations that launch our relationships. The stress of raising children tends to disrupt those expectations and ultimately our positive feelings for each other.
 
Creating Love
 
A careful look at arranged marriage, combined with the knowledge accumulating in relationship science, has the potential to give us real control over our love lives. Americans want it all---the freedom to choose a partner and the deep, lasting love of fantasies and fairy tales. We can achieve that kind of love by learning about and practicing techniques that build love over time. And when our love is fading, we can use such techniques to rebuild that love. The alternative -- leaving it to chance -- makes little sense.
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