Love Marriage - Arranged Marriage - A path in between

This was the original blog that I was interested in. In order to justify myself I had to write 3 lengthy blogs, Evolution Theory, Marriage Now-A-Days and Horoscopes - A mystery.

Having proven that using horoscopes is justified from the parents' point of view, the next question arises amongst youth is how to enjoy the luxury of love marriage and still get it arranged. That is, how can we choose the partner of our choice and still not make our older generations unhappy. How can we become "so-called" liberal and still remain traditional.

These questions are more relevant to those whose families and society are very rigid in terms of marriage. If your society is not liberal enough to accept a love marriage, then you should either leave them (if you feel so) or should try to find the answer to the above questions.

From now onwards, I shall discard those families (resp. societies) which are open to inter-caste, inter-religion marriages. I shall also discard those who are of the opinion of leaving their families for the sake of love. These two are cases fully supportive to love marriages. They could be studied separately. In paragraphs below, I will try to propose a solution to those who want to exercise love without sacrificing their rigid families.

The only feasible solution to the conflicting constraints between love and society is to choose the boundary between the two. The boundary defines the extent to which you can utilise your freedom of choice and still be acceptable to the family. Since we are trying to address the problem from the rigid family side, the condition is like this.

Love Marriage

• Can love anybody

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Middle Path

• Can love people with certain criterion
  

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Arranged Marriage

• Cant love anybody

Criterion
Person you love should be acceptable to your parents (resp. family described as depth of family tree)

This criterion is subjective. Let me illustrate one example. The person should be of same caste. (Forget about inter-religion marriage!) The person should have decent family background. The person should be have traditional values.

Now the bigger trouble is how to love somebody who matches this criterion. Some say "Love just happens. You dont have control on it". Some say "Love is not governed by laws of the society". For them I ask "How do you know that you are in love?" Isnt it your self belief that you are in love. So if you dont believe you are in love then you arent. Let me explain my understanding of love.

You feel that you are in love with a person when
you care for that person more than anybody else
you want to be in his/her company and miss the person very much
you know that you understand the person very well

For each of above three reasons to be valid, you need to spend some time with the person. "Some time" may actually be few days, months, years. So when you spend some time with a person, after that you realise that you are in love. In fact, you accept that the person is your friend much prior to this. It means that friendship preceed love. (I dont believe in love at first sight)

This implies that, there is a time gap between acceptance of friendship and realisation of love. In fact, friendship is the state when you start understanding the person and wish to be in his/her company. On maturity of friendship, you start caring for one another. Even further is the stage of love, when the person becomes more important that others. It should be noted that at the stage of close friendship, when you care for one another, there still could be many friends equally close. On the contrary, at the stage of love, there is only one you love.

My theory of loving a person with some criterion is based on the above proven time gap. We all have many friends. We all have few close friends. When we feel that some person among our close friends satisfies the criterion, we shall allow the feeling of love to build. This self imposed restriction is very rigid and requires mental strength. If you dont have enough mental strength then the easiest way to resist the feeling is to keep some distance.

Methodology

1. Keep your eyes open - To find the person satisfying the criterion
2. Befriend the person
3. Let the friendship mature
4. Express yourself to your parents
5. Get parents consent
6. If parents agree then goto next step else let the relationship to close friendship and goto step 1
7. Express yourself to the person - This step is delayed so that you are not hurt if the previous step doesnt succeed
8. Build the relationship till love is achieved from both sides
9. If love stage is reached then all is fine else bring the relationship to close friendship and goto step 1.
   

Note: This methodology is neither tested nor is it known to work on any testcase. In my case I am still at step 1. I didnt have the opportunity to go beyond that.