There is a big difference between western and eastern marriages: while one side of the planet falls in love, have a relationship and marry at the peak of their love, the other part chooses to arrange the marriage barely knowing each other.
Can we say one is better than the other? Read on as we go through the differences and similarities in different ways of seeing the world.
Western Way
Michael Novak of “The Myth of Romantic Love”
Western way is deeply related to love, to the western conception of love. On that side of the planet, what couples normally do is to build up until they reach the peak of their love and then think about marriage as a way of solidifying an existing bond. Marriage is the peak of love, the symbol of love for many and the dream of more than one girl.
The western way is what we call “Romantic Love” and was arguably invented by western culture. It is a common line of research to think that what we call modern or romantic love was invented and pushed forward by the Catholic Church to make the sacrament of marriage an important one and gaining more power.
The church´s statement about love was that with marriage, what was physical would turn into spiritual; in fact, for the Catholic church, true love is what comes out of a marriage and not a prerequisite.
Michael Novak in his “The Myth of Romantic Love” says it very clearly:
“Romantic love is a Western invention, a near-obsession, supposedly the key to all happiness.”
He goes on to say that because of this invention, romantic love is in the center of western life and is both: the cause and the consequence of most actions in life. For western people, romantic love is the highest goal in life and hence, getting married is the biggest step possible towards that goal.
Eastern Way
Catholicism didn´t make it that far as to change the way Eastern people think about romantic love.
Catholicism didn´t make it that far as to change the way Eastern people think about romantic love. It is an ancient tradition in many countries to arrange marriage because of other reasons, different than love.
For example, in countries like India, people marry with the choice their parents make for them. Once they have a selected partner, then they will marry barely knowing each other and try to form a family.
There are exceptions like everything in life, but mostly marriages are arranged at a young age and children obey their parents by marrying that person and not another one.
Lesbian Way – All Girl Massage
Maybe there is away to keep two parties in relationship happy? Well, the experiment ideas are out there and why not to try something portrayed in the famous series of girls and lesbian massage parlors? The series debuted back in 2012 and it is showing what kind of chemistry you can achieve when you put two women together in some intimate situation. Could this be solution to all divorce problems? Who knows.
The Results Of Each Approach
It is just a pros and cons kind of match.
Taking the latest results of marriage/divorce ratios in different countries in the world we see a very diverse array of numbers. For example, a country like the USA which is one of the most powerful in the world and believes in romantic love has a divorce ratio of 46% while in India that number comes down to only 18%.
Does this mean that one approach is better than the next? Well, it is kind of a rushing conclusion because there are more factors to divorce than just love.
What we can say based on this data is that there isn´t one that is better than the other, it is just a pros and cons kind of match.
Conclusion
Whether we build towards marriage or from marriage is a cultural thing. What is important about marriage is that it is the act of bringing people together in the hope of a better, shared future.