Being in an arranged marriage is taboo nowadays. You are forced to marry, love, and get intimate with someone you havent seen all of your life. The real question when youre in the situation is if youll ever be happy again. Well for some arranged marriages, the setup worked, but for others, they live a life of an escapist. Weve gathered stories from people on AskReddit which we found to be both amusing and revolting.
Comments have been edited for clarity. The source can be found the end of the article.
My parents had an arranged marriage. Neither of them got married because they wanted to. It was just something they were told to do. They’re good Indian children and so they did. It started out as a miserable marriage. They’ve worked through it and have been together 30 years. It isn’t my idea of a happy marriage but they’re friends and respect each other. My mother is really uncomfortable with the sex or any kind of intimacy even today. I’ve seen her cringe at the thought of kissing my father. I sometimes feel like she almost thinks it unnatural and dirty. It’s incredibly sad that both my parents have been denied this simple pleasure (for want of a better word). What’s surprising is that for the longest time, she wanted an arranged marriage for me. I straight up said no.
Athi_thi
I had an arranged marriage almost a year ago, but it was a modern arranged marriage in that our parents introduced us and left us to it. We began to chat, then a few months later decided to meet. We dated for about a month before deciding we liked each other enough to marry.
We were engaged for 15 months before we got married, and were totally in love by then.
Making love was not awkward – in fact (don’t tell our parents!), we had did it about a year before we got married, about three to four months into dating. It was the first time for both of us, and it wasn’t awkward at all, probably because we’d been fooling around for weeks before that and were comfortable with each other.
Now at almost a year, I still love him to bits, we’re best friends, and we still have make love three to four times a week.
apple_crumble1
My girlfriend’s parents were arranged. She always said that love between the two is almost non existent. They want to kind of set her up, too. They don’t know about me yet…and I’m white, so…. fun times ahead.
Defeatarion
I had a mother come to the pharmacy once about her daughter. The girl was in an arranged married and was too scared to make love with her husband. The mother came to speak to me (pharmacist) to ask if she can get something to relax her like Valium. I was shocked. The worst thing was that she didn’t care that her daughter was uncomfortable. She said its the wife’s role to please her husband and its embarrassing for the husband that he isn’t getting that. Unbelievable.
snazzicles
My Indian aunt and uncle had an arranged marriage and it was actually pretty miserable. They hated each other for years and then had two kids. My uncle essentially became a business mogul and was always on business trips while my aunt stayed at home with my cousins and was a big part of an Illinois Indian community within their suburban area.
But when the kids grew up a bit and my uncle had a heart attack, they rediscovered each other and are pretty friendly to each other. I don’t know if they have a deep love but there’s a mutual respect that has kept them going for 40+ years.
firenoodles
My parents got an arranged marriage, but it was different in the fact that both my grandparents on mum and dads knew each other quite well, so there was no awkwardness after the first week of dating. As for my uncles, they describe arranged marriages as a dating site like Tinder, where your parents choose the people and you say yes or no. 18 years later and my parents are happily married and are best friends 😀
HazeemTheMeme
My grandmother had an arranged marriage when she was about 15/16. The guy was older than her, in his mid-twenties, and from what my mom told me, when my grandmother gave birth to their first child (she was probably 16/17) he said he was ‘too young to be a father’. I can empathize all I want with his situation, but I still think he’s complete TRASH.
I don’t know the details, but they ended up divorcing and my grandmother married my grandfather and they had four kids – that marriage didn’t turn out well either, and they divorced. My grandmother didn’t remarry after that, but my grandfather got married a couple more times. To clarify, my family comes from a country in eastern Africa.
martybd
My family is a bunch of German farmers from Pennsylvania (not Amish, but f you go back a few generations, pretty conservative). When my great grandfather died, my great grandmother married his brother, who had been a widower for several years. They were both in their late seventies at the time, so it wasn’t exactly an arranged marriage, but it was clear they did it to keep the different parts of the farm/family together and to support one another in their old age.
For the most part they married out of a sense of duty, I think, and because that was a common thing for widows and widowers in farming communities for a long time. It was all very practical. Turns out they couldn’t get along at all. My great grandmother had been running the family farm for years and refused to give up any of her independence when her new husband (who was a townie with no farming experience past childhood) tried to take over the operation himself. He expected my great grandmother to keep to the kitchen and housework even though he had no idea what he was doing.
Eventually it got so bad that they stopped speaking regularly. When her step-father/uncle suffered a stroke, my grandmother tried to bring her mom to visit him at the hospital, but she refused to go. Eventually he died. She lived another 15 years — a few more on the farm and then the rest in an apartment in town — happy and independent until she died just shy of her 101st birthday.
Dr_Merkwurdigliebe
I got married when I was 29, I actually asked my parents to initiate the search sequence because I was unable to find a suitable mate for myself.
The reason for that was just the lack of suitable dating opportunities, I was just starting off my modest enterprise and had to work at all odd hours, left me with very little opportunity to woo women, in spite of the fact that I was reasonably good looking and smart, it was not a easy task getting a suitable wife.
Even the arranged marriage thing was quite a challenge because I hailed from an orthodox community that generally didn’t approve of entrepreneurs, finally I met a charming girl, we met twice and then remote dated for around six months before I got married to her.
We have two kids now and are very much in love with each other, the point I was trying to make is that arranged marriage is consensual 99% of the times, forced marriages will always fail.
horusporcus
My cousin had an arranged marriage.
I need to preface this by saying that certain portions of myfamily live in extremely remote third world areas. Like going there is a bitlike time travelling back to the 16th century. Wells for water, farm animalsroaming around, outdoor toilets kind of thing. People can knock on living inconditions like that, but believe it or not many of the people living thereseem perfectly content and happy with their way of life. Anyway, my cousin getsin an arranged marriage with the son of a guy who scales relatively high on thevillage hierarchy scale.
They meet for the first timeon their wedding day. I had uni exams to finish, so I couldn’t make it – but Idid travel to see her after I got married so that part of the family could meetmy husband.
She assumed my husband and Iwere also not intimate before we got married, because even though I’m ‘modern’I’m still a ‘good girl’.
So husband meets the family, menfolk retire to their area of the house, me and my cousin hole up in the ladies section and she excitedly asked me what my wedding night was like. I keep it vague (looool) and she tells me about how she and husband just lay in bed talking to each other all night.
It honestly sounded so sweet.She said they didn’t realize the sun had risen until the housemaid knocked ontheir door asking if they wanted breakfast.
It had never occurred to me before, but obviously the guy would be feeling just as awkward about having a girl in his bed for the first time (ever). All told it took them about three months before they, uh, buttered that sandwich, and they’ve been pretty happy since.
Her husband for the record (according to my husband anyway – I didn’t really talk to him) is apparently one of the nicest, chillest people he’s met. Super warm and welcoming.
So yeah, provided they got to know each other before they did the deed, I guess it wouldn’t be as awkward as the average peoples first time.
On the flip side: aunt had an arranged marriage when she was 16 and he was 18 (this was some fifty years ago). Never saw a woman happier then when her husband passed away. She’s pretty happy now.
detonatingorange
So I’m a white person whose grandparents had an arranged marriage, he was mid 20s and she was 15. She actually ran away from the marriage the first time, then came back and they got married. Apparently they made good partners (he’s been dead since before I was born, so I wouldn’t know) but he wasn’t exceptionally loyal.
HailstheLion
My grandparents had an arranged marriage. He was mid 20s and she was 15. She actually ran away from the marriage the first time, then came back and they got married. Apparently they made good partners (he’s been dead since before I was born, so I wouldn’t know) but he wasn’t exceptionally loyal.
HailstheLion