Modern Lessons from Arranged Marriages, a recent New York Times article, weighs in on arranged marriage, and concludes that parental involvement may be very helpful to choosing a spouse.
Robert Epstein, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavior Research and Technology , finds the parental screening for “deal breakers” can be very helpful. Love can emerge in arranged marriage after the initial introductions. He has studied how love can emerge in arranged marriages in different cultures, and has developed new tools for rapidly increasing emotional intimacy in both new and existing relationships.
According to Epstein, feelings of love in arranged marriages tend to gradually increase as relationship continues. To the contrary, in “love marriages”, where attraction is based on passionate emotions, a couple’s feelings for each other typically diminish as time goes on. According to Epstein’s data, the love feelings are reduced by as much as fifty percent after only eighteen to twenty-four months of marriage. According to a study conducted in India, arranged marriages appear to surpass love marriages in intensity at the five year mark, and to be twice as strong as love marriages within ten years.
