INDIA, October 19, 2008: The ideal of arranged marriage — in which individuals wishing to find a spouse welcome the chance to meet prospects suggested by their parents and other elders, while retaining veto power — is starting to make sense to more and more Westerners.
The West’s high divorce rate gives weight to Reva Seth’s argument in her recent book, “First Comes Marriage,” that the haphazard dating method is not the best way to find one’s spouse.
Marian Salzman, New York trend spotter and partner at PR firm Porter Novelli, says the economic downturn is helping to convince people of the importance of finding the right spouse to form a sustainable marriage. She says the cost of courtship–and divorce–is so high that people increasingly want their marriage to have a stronger foundation. “In these hard times, lust wears thin.” Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Varkha Chulani agrees that the arranged marriage could become a popula in the West because it is based on shared values and similar backgrounds, which are more likely to sustain a union than romantic love, which–though heady–is often short-lived.