In An Arranged Marriage, Will You Be Willing To Marry Someone Who Is Not In Perfect Health?

Perfect health in a future spouse is expected in arranged marriages. What about those otherwise wonderful human beings who we consider ‘defective’?

Today, 80% of the youth doesn’t believe in arranged marriages. I’m a part of that 80%. But it isn’t because I think of it as a nonsensical old-school ritual, or that love marriage is the ‘in’ thing today.

To a certain extent arranged marriages do work well. I could give the example of a or example of my cousin. They went out, talked and she said yes. When I asked her, what made you say yes, she said that you get a feeling – it ‘clicks’!

On the other hand, love marriages can also go down the drain, because we are humans after all and we do make shitty decisions sometimes.

The ‘default’ requirement in arranged marriages

But my reason for not believing in arranged marriages is totally different. According to me, the society we live in has this pre-conceived notion about a life partner. Like, “Yes, I’m going to give you my daughter/son but here’s a list of my Terms and Conditions.”

It’s as if there are certain things that have to be there by default (all the wrong things, in my opinion!). As humans, we are shallow and we all wish to be with a partner who is Tall + Thin + Fair = The embodiment of the perfect Indian Dulha/Dulhan. This package is modified as per our situation, if we are fat, we expect our partner to be fat too, and so it goes for the skin color, our weight and our height.

But what I want to highlight is the default factors, like by default the couple can have a child, by default the health of my future partner is at its best, by default all his and her body parts are in working order. Have we ever heard that a perfectly healthy girl/boy is getting married to a someone who is not perfectly healthy?

Let’s take a simple common disease such as diabetes. If a person has this issue at a very young age and god forbid it is announced in the society, we are done. The word spreads like wild fire. People don’t want to accept such a partner in their life.

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I have discussed this topic with my friends several times and they tell me that they don’t have a problem accepting such people in their life. The youth, therefore, may be open to it, but the question is – how do we know if such people, whom we are ready to marry, exist in this world?

Those not in supposed ‘perfect health’ can also be great as a spouse!

So, let’s take matter of these ‘Rishtas’. Before even coming to us, they have been rejected by our parents or relatives.

Our parents want the best for us, I agree. They don’t want us to face any trouble in future. But this perception of arranged marriages needs to change.

Life and people are not perfect. Look at the irony, we say husband and wife should be together in sickness and health. But this only starts applying after marriage.

But again, here is my question, why only AFTER marriage? Why not before? Aren’t we being the same devil before marriage, the devil who we curse, if someone leaves his/her partner after marriage because of a health issue?

Let’s re-look at this issue

It’s time we start changing our perception towards it. It’s time we start looking for the good in people instead of being shallow and judging them on basis of looks or their health status.

All I want to say arranged marriages can be a beautiful concept great way of getting married, only if taken in the right spirit. For sure, our elders and parents want the best for us. But if we need to bring a change in our society, we need to start by explaining this to our parents and help broaden their mindset. Because 20 years later we will be the parents, looking for life partners for our children.

Image source: By Yanajin33 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons, for representational purposes only.

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