Are arranged marriages more appropriate than love marriages?

In this article, I present my own views.

I would like to say that success of marriage life does not depend on the fate of the person. Marriage of course is two loving hearts getting together for their lifetime. Marriage life depends on caring, sharing, understanding each other, it also depends on love for each other. There is really no fulfilled marriage life, if we only miss one single of these aspects. What I take into consideration in love most, is respect. And in this regard, I do not believe, that differences of ethnic group, caste and dowry matter much!!!

Traditionally, in our common marriage it is popular to judge persons according their caste. And even today, in modern times, a dowry is exchanged during our marriage arrangements. Especially the man receives a dowry from the woman’s family, which is a capital money for their basic marriage life. In the Asian culture we expect such a dowry, but developped Western societies disagree with the dowry practice. Nevertheless, Westerners for example love giving gifts to their children. So in my view we could say, quite similar things happen everywhere in the world, but in different ways.

In Sri Lanka marriages are depended by ethnic caste and riligion.So there is no reason to stop marriage between two ethnic groups. When there is a marriage with differant cultures, riligion or ethnic caste the childerns are luckly interligent.

For an educated family it is important to have a good and decent girl or boy as their daughter in low or son in low respectively. Those persons who think dowry. There is no education in the marriage life it would be started domestic violance. The persons who face their situation should be educated, whatever job they do. But there are persons who get married only to safisfy their parents. Those who do such things will suffer lot and only start quarelling each other. But there are persons who nevertheless will not separate, because of their children. If you happen to get married leaving the one you loved most, the situation would be even worse, you might regret your marriage. The real love comes from the bottom of the heart. But most love affairs begin at first sight. But most people do not show their true face to their partners, at first sight we can not understand each other. Some couples are simply afraid to loose the partner.

We can see the true self of a person only after marriage. In a love marriage we see the person, so we have a chance to study his or her attitudes.  

If you have an affair without getting married for years, love becomes old, although we do not like to admit this, this is the reality. Once you get married and family problems arise, we tend to forget about love. If it is an arranged marriage, most of the time you are new to both marriage life and love.

Nobody can say that one type of marriage is better than the other. Many Sri Lankans think marriage depends on fate. Even today there 50% of arranged marriages in Sri Lanka.

How do people in our culture arrange marriages? They often help themselves by advertising in newspapers. Contact ads of honarable persons can be found in Lanka deepa, Silumina, Gnanartha Pradeepaya and other English newspapers. Other ask for the assistance of particular matchmakers called Magul Kapuwa in Sinhalese.