The Case for Marriage Not Based on Love

I am in favor of marriage not based on love, like arranged marriage. While I am still in favor of love marriage (who isn't?), non-love marriage has something going for it as well.

Here's why.

It would be wonderful if a woman met the most handsome, caring, successful man, who is ready to sweep her away on his white horse to his castle in the clouds. He would be athletic, tall, with a sense of humor, and all the qualities that women want.

The reality is hardly that. Nobody's perfect, and most men are far from it. Someone once wrote that he's more likely to show up in an older car, and brandishing a payment coupon book.

And so are most women, for that matter. It doesn't help that society has conditioned women to want to marry up, that is, marry someone of a higher social, educational, financial, and other factor standing than they have.

So, while women hate it that they are judged desirable due to their body parts (face, breasts, legs, lack of abdomen, lack of thighs), men are equally under pressure from the traits that women look for (face, lack of abdomen, muscles, earning power, vehicle, house, etc.).

This makes a love match extremely difficult. Both genders have grown up with unrealistic expectations right off the bat, and they have to keep meeting these expectations for the rest of their lives, if they hope to catch and keep their ideal mate.

Multiply the difficulty if you are much less than ideal. If you are older than this youth-crazed demographic, have kids, are less than incredibly financially well-of, are disabled, are obese (which a majority of Americans are, by the way), you're in trouble. America is getting older, and yet everyone is still stuck on that twentysomething ideal image.

There has to be a better way.

Arranged marriage, or a marriage that needn't be based on love or attraction, frees the couple from the crushing demands of love marriage. They can start out as friends, and, who knows, love can come eventually.