I grew up in the Unification church, but decided to "leave" last year. Back in the day, like for my parents, Moon used to have everyone in a large room together and pretty much paired people randomly.  My parents are still together and generally get along, but I often question whether they actually love each other in a romantic way. Their personalities totally clash. I wonder if they would have been separated long ago if it weren't for their religious beliefs and my mother's financial dependence on my father. I think my father cares more for my mother than she does for him. The matching process has changed a lot over the years and now the "candidates" have a lot more say in the decision and work with their parents to find someone. My older brother actually just got matched two years ago, married last year, and his wife is now due to give birth to their son in January. I'm not very close to either him or his wife so I don't know what their relationship is like. But a lot of the younger people in the church, who grew up in it without choice, have ended up following its teachings and going so far as to get matched/"blessed," only to have their relationship not work out. Then what are you supposed to believe? Anyway, I guess the whole basis for the arranged marriages in the Unification Church is that marriage should be a completely selfless act; i.e. you shouldn't love someone for what they do for you/how they make you feel, but just because he/she is a child of god; therefore you shouldn't choose who your partner is because you should be able to love anyone. Or something along those lines. I guess it works for some people but in my opinion, putting that kind of pressure on yourself to make your relationship work ends up being self-destructive. You blame yourself for not being able to love your partner. I don't think the divorce rates themselves tell much. A lot of people remain married without loving each other. I'm lucky to have parents with a pretty okay relationship, but I knew a lot of people in the church with separated parents, parents who fought a lot, etc.

@mystery_eggplant@xanga - Wow, thanks for the info. I was kind of wondering why they'd mass marry like that, and your comment is intriguing and informative. Very well written!

I think arranged marriage divorce rates (societal pressure notwithstanding) can be contributed to the fact that they are not in love, but are married for other reasons.  Love is a temporary emotion caused by hormones in the brain.  Getting married solely for love never seemed like a smart idea.  More goes into making a marriage work besides love.  Hell, I refused to marry for love.  When my husband and I agreed to get married, we did so because of financial reasons, lifestyle compatabilities, and because we liked each other.  I figured that love would come eventually and it did.  We have been together for only five years, but it seems like our marriage is devoid of some of the problems that my in-laws and siblings that were married for a similar time have had to deal with.

Arranged marries are okay ... but people should be forced to date like, 12 people before they decide to get married. Dating is great experience for dealing with the opposite sex and figuring out what you like in a person.

My two cents on Indian marriages:

maybe they use threat tactics and might threaten harm to the woman's entire family if she divorces him. she has a choice of remaining poor or marry rich and the guy gives monetary gifts to her family as dowry, so she sacrifices herself for the sake of her family's lifestyle. that's what I've seen in some asian dramas. not india dramas. I mean chinese dramas where the rich family basically buys their son a wife. the dramas were way older than in the 1950's. probably in one of those dynasty eras. I'm not sure which famous dynasty or whatever. they dressed like emperors and such. it works because it was forced to for their own image. the poor want a way into the rich palace of the emperor, but some of the royalty want to escape the restricted life. the grass is greener on the other side for some people. I don't know about the religious arranged marriages that you're talking about. I only know of the arranged marriages of the rich.

@anonymous - my dad's parents are in their 80s now and were the first in each of their families to not participate in arranged marriage. My grandfather is from India-he met my grandmother when he moved to Kenya for work. My dad and his brother and sister were born there and moved to Long Island NY when he was a teenager. People tend to assume that Indians in general are very old-school and stuck in "out-dated" traditions. Totally not true! My dad married my mom-a German/Irish/English woman-because he was taught to be a progressive thinker. Sure his parents are closed-minded in some ways (especially regarding mental illness and LGBT rights. But that could be attributed to the generation gap) but like you said not every Indian is forced into an arranged marriage. AND not everyone who gets one now is FORCED into one and end up unhappy.

It's not so much that the marriages are arranged, as much as it is that the arranged marriage is an artifact of having a fundamentally different view on marriage, and that is what makes those marriages strong.

 In contemporary western cultures marriage is viewed by most people as a long term dating relationship but with some extra legal status added.  The idea behind dating relationships is that they are based on feelings or lust, and whenever that ebbs you are free to bail.

I am going to talk about Indian culture because that is what I know the most about.  In Indian culture they typically don't date, or have sex before marriage, and often do not even move out of their parents house prior to marriage.  Marraige is part of being an adult, and breaking the trust of marriage makes one a social deviant.  They go into it with the expectation that it is permanent, and work around problems or through them rather than bailing on eachother.  Their values and culture is such that divorce is not considered as an option, and a person who does get a divorce has very little chance of ever being able to remarry within their culture. 

Since their focus is on building a lasting permanent relationship they often will have parents or professional match makers search for a spouse, and typically the children have veto power if they do not like the prospective spouse.  But once they find someone and agree to everything, then that's it.

@anonymous - @TheNotoriousGOD@xanga - I apologize if the information I presented was not 100% accurate, and I wish to explain myself so you do not assume that I blindly use stereotypes to guide my beliefs about a certain culture or group of people. 

You are both absolutely right:  one cannot simply speak about another culture as if that person is an expert, particularly if that person is not a part of that culture.

When I was doing research for this article, I came across this news article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/arranged-marriage_n_1560049.html  The article presents a statistic stating that 90% of marriages in India are arranged.  I am not Indian myself, but I do live in an area heavily populated with Indian-Americans (I even teach all Indian students at a learning center, so I have a lot of interaction with these students and their parents.)  Many of parents of the students I teach who immigrated from India are from arranged marriages, and some of the women have mentioned feeling repressed in their society.  I also have friends from high school who went to college there and mentioned the same thing about the repression of women, but now that I think about it, perhaps they may feel repressed compared to the lifestyle they were used to leading in the United States, which is where they grew up.  I therefore made assumptions, based on what this article said coupled with my own knowledge of the Indian people I know, about the Indian culture, and for this I am sorry.

I agree that making assumptions like these is not professional, and I apologize for anybody I may have offended by my assumptions.  That was careless on my part.  I will consider this a learning experience for my writing in the future.

@iamnotyourgrandma - hahaha.  relax.  you can't go through life worrying about whether you're offending people--not to mention this is just the internet.  i assure you other d-ish editors have made much more egregious errors, like when someone posted a 100% plagiarized post and didn't have the decency to publicly apologize when i called him/her/them out on it. 

i certainly am no expert on any culture (save for new york culture, i suppose).  my remarks were intended to be geared toward the whole post, not just your commentary on brown people.  i don't care if people say disparaging things about various cultures, it's not like any one culture is perfect--all i was saying is that you should cite your sources (on all claims that aren't common knowledge), or maybe acknowledge that you're drawing your conclusions only based on what you've seen through your tutoring (for example).  though the other anonymous individual may have complained anyway--there's always some sensitivity about this kind of thing--i wouldn't have said anything if you had linked the huff post article (and similar sources) with your post.  i do research for a living, i call bs on people, even published papers, all the time.  i know you identify as a phd student.  it's our job to do that.

anyway, thanks for responding, and please know that i don't hold any grudge over this.  it takes a lot more to piss me off...only 2 editors in the rich 4 year history of d-ish have really made me hate them, and that's cause they were both arrogant bitches.  if you were headed down that path, i'd have called you out on it already, don't worry, hahaha.