Re: “Married by America”
There’s a lot of hoo-ha over this show. The premise is that a group of good-looking, single American young people agree to be matched (in the old-fashioned sense) with a person of the opposite sex chosen, based on the number of call-in votes, by the viewers of the show.
Besides the frighteningly enormous level of trust these people seem to have in the American public, I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with what these people are doing.
Perhaps this has something to do with my cultural perspective. My grandparents’ marriage was arranged. They were married for sixty-one years, raised seven economically, emotionally, and spiritually successful daughters on very little income, and managed to live in reasonable harmony for that whole time. They’d known each other for a week before they were married.
The way I look at it, it all comes down to what you want to do with your life. My grandparents felt that getting married and having a family was a huge part of their mission in life. Their goal was to get married, and they were dedicated to supporting each other, no matter what. So the arranged thing worked out well for them. It’s certainly not for everyone, but if the kids on MbA are of the same mindset, more power to them.
Obviously, not every match is going to be made a success by determination and a good attitude. It never has been that way, and there were plenty of poorly matched arranged marriages that dissolved in one way or another. However, despite what we like to believe, marriages aren’t made on love alone. There are such factors as shared values, cultural harmony, financial stability, the maturity of the people involved, and so on. My grandmother used to say, “Love comes after.”
10:56:10 AM 
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