A recorded dialogue (Oct 2010) in which Robert J. Strock and Margie reflect on the nature of love and marriage, contrasting Indian arranged marriages with U.S. romantic marriages. Themes include whether love emerges before or after marriage, the roles of trust and integrity, cultural assumptions about falling in and out of love, and the idea of growing together spiritually versus primarily sexual/cultural attraction.
Robert Recently a woman who works with me asked me if I would marry her daughter and her fiance. And in California, you know, you can do anything. So I was able to be a pastor for a day. And so I said to Margie, I said, what could I say to these young people and these people that could really impact them? And as Margie and I dialogued, she recalled how about a year and a half ago, we were in India, and we had a wonderful young man who toured us around New Delhi, and he told us that he was working here while his parents were back arranging his marriage. In India, there's still about 60, 70% marriages are still arranged. And we asked him, what do you think, because you've toured a lot of Americans, what do you think is the difference between an Indian arranged marriage and a US Marriage? He said, a really interesting thing that I used in the wedding. He said, in India, the assumption is when you get married, over time, you will fall in love with the person you married. He said, my sense about relationships in the United States is that you fall in love before you get married and then you fall out of love in marriage. And Margie found this wonderful quote that after they exchanged their vows and their rings, I held the two kids hands and I said, justine and Greg, my hope and dream and prayer for you is that years from now, you will look back on this important day, this day you got married, and realize it was the day you loved each other the least. And there was this kind of gasp in the congregation and all people, whoa, that's a really powerful thing. And I just wondered, what's your thoughts? You know, because, you know, you deal with couples and, you know, how do we deal with even having them have a nice divorce or how do they do? But that seemed to be resonate about how we have this process in America, falling out of love in marriage. And I've met some Indian arranged marriages since, and I've talked and they smile and they say, yeah, that is the assumption that over time we will fall in love. Yeah.
This very theme of what is love? And is it based on a more classically physical attraction and a sexual attraction and a social attraction where you're just, let's say, have the same customs? Or is there actually an element where you're growing your souls together, where you're actually finding ways to care for each other, to nourish each other, and as you grow individually, you're bringing that into the relationship. And my experience is that in the west, that what we call love really is oftentimes a sexual and cultural attraction to each other that's compatible. And so because it does not include the deeper, soulful questions of how do we care for each other? Do we have a purpose in life individually and collectively? It doesn't engage in those areas. You naturally fall into a certain kind of emptiness because there isn't that element of evolution and growth. And so at first, years ago, I used to feel like the Indian arranged marriages were so stupid. I really, honestly, I didn't have a hesitancy of being a judgmental person about it. I just thought they were kind of lame. But then, as I've experienced seeing couples for 40 years, and I see what they call love many times, and when I present the concept. Oh, you mean you don't trust this person that you love? Isn't trust an important part of love? Isn't integrity an important part of love? That. That is more of first nature in a lot of the parents that are in the East. So I've grown to respect probably pretty equally. I feel like there's a lot of advantages in using the adult wisdom that would select. And there's the potential advantage of, say, young people occasionally getting it right as well.
