I had earlier written about divorce rate in India being pretty low (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/02/divorce-rate-and-cultural-issues.html).
I came across an interesting video (http://vimeo.com/22309808) on arranged marriages.
It's a 12 min video and about 220MB in size.
The man and the woman talking to each other in the video are quite unlike each other in their tastes and in their goals. The woman is a thinker (not presumably only because of her background).
Yet they make it a success. The recipe is the drive in each person and the ability to adjust to make it a success. And if that drive is there it doesn't matter how little the two persons have things in common, that's the message I read from the video. Apparently opposites attract.
If that is the case there was never any need to get to know each other and ask 20 questions. One could have chosen any mate at random with the same result. if the man (or the woman) chose someone very different from the one they chose, could it have failed?
But is the recipe right? Universally valid?
I am inclined to think that there are some basic "things" that have to be match. Imagine a relationship that sprouts on the internet. Let's say I start liking a person on the net. The person has a lovely sense of humor, very intelligent, has a good job etc etc. And then I meet the person in real life and find that the person is the same gender as me. (Hypothetically let's assume both of us were very private persons and never had a phone call and didn't divulge our real names).
Another example (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/04/big.html) is that of the relationship between the leads in the Tom Hanks movie Big. Everything seemed fine. In this case the issue was the unflinching willingness in both parties. Tom Hanks didn't have it and he didn't realize it. How the heck could the female lead have figured that Hanks was a boy in adult clothing and that he wasn't ready for it?
Having common interests is hardly a recipe for success (the video supports my notion). Having something else much more fundamental suiting each each is important.
The issue is: How do we figure out those fundamental things about ourselves and about the other person? Indian astrology suggests a way. But it's quite prone to mistakes. (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2009/07/vedic-astrology.html).
A very interesting way of predicting success in a relationship is brought out in the book Blink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(book)) by Malcolm Gladwell. The analysis of facial expressions from the video tape of a conversation between 2 people in a relationship supposedly can be used to predict the success of the relationship accurately more than 90% of the time. The expressions have been categorized into anger, joy, disgust etc (about 45 different expressions if I remember correctly). The presence of disgust is a sure shot recipe for a breakdown as per the research that Gladwell quotes.
Coming back to the video on arranged marriages which I started out this post with, was there any disgust shown by either party? Hmmm. Well, when the man said his goals were to make money etc, the woman's expression bordered on boredom. Her question was deeper and the man's reply, she felt, was shallow.
How did it work then? A ha. Wouldn't we all like to know?
I must mention here, that even an orthodox religion such as Islam also supports this kind of meeting with the would be better half, but not many follow or perhaps know about it!
ReplyDeleteThe recipe is one where you have to not perfect the recipe itself, but adjust your own taste buds, at least here!