This sounds a lot like what my people call “arranged sights”. Families with a boy and a girl of matching age would agree to meet at a social situation so the boy and girl could meet each other. If they didn’t find each other repulsive at first sight, more meetings could be arranged. The “not exactly couple” was expected to get far enough to talk without the families overhearing, but stay within sight.
Even royals got a similar treatment - there are records of king’s brides being very surprised when they were told that they were expected to get to meet their intended and actually decide whether they wanted him or not (after something like a year of living in a different wing of the castle). In the neighboring kingdoms, children of the nobility had no choice whatsoever.
In my case, the biggest problem I had re. getting married before 30 is that my biggest goal was freedom. Boyfriends were a worse pair of shackles than parents, at least the way my HS friends dealt with them! So if my parents had so much as tried to arrange a “sight” I would have found anybody repulsive. Yes, even Brad and Keanu and Val… shudder
(I’m not married, by now I’d be willing to consider it, but I keep running into guys who think that “…and when I make a lot of money you’ll be able to give up your job and just raise our kids…” is some kind of positive remark. Apparently, they think I became an engineer because there weren’t any studs at hand)
If either of my parents (who divorced while I was in college) had arranged my marriage, it would have been a disaster in all likelihood.
I think my dad, in his old age, is finally starting to get a clue about what his son is really about, but he certainly didn’t have a good idea 30-35 years ago when I’d have been in the presumed age range for an arranged marriage.
My mother doesn’t have a clue about any human being on the face of this earth, as best as I can tell, and probably never did.
Yeah, this. As I said in the other thread, I think I know whom my parents would have liked to have picked. Actually, on further thought, that boy’s parents might not have agreed to it, but I think I can figure out their second choice as well. With both of them, I think I would have been rather unhappy in the first years of marriage, but would eventually have settled down and been content. Not particularly happy, but not extremely unhappy either. Perhaps wondering if this was all there was to life. But not getting a divorce either (both the guys I have in mind would be committed to marriage once in it, and so would I). Probably after enough years of living together, even though we might never really understand each other, we’d get to the point where we had enough shared history that we’d have fun together; we’d be able to say, even, that we loved each other.
…I have just described my parents’ marriage exactly. (They had a quasi-arranged one.) On the other hand, I wouldn’t describe my marriage to mr. hunter as a romantic-hearts-flowers romance for the ages; it’s instead a plethora of geeky math jokes and silliness for the ages. Which suits me (and him) exactly, makes me deliriously happy, and is something I don’t think I would have gotten in a marriage my parents had arranged for me.
Nava, eek. I’m surprised by this – most of the (male) scientists and engineers I know don’t think like this, at all. Though to be fair a couple of my friends have told me similar stories about engineers… maybe it’s that my current workplace is mixed scientists and engineers, and the scientist culture has pervaded to a certain extent.
Good lord no! My parents (or at least my father) would have picked someone who would beat the word of god back into me and I might still be in jail for his murder.
I don’t have to imagine. My parents tried to force me to marry one of their choices when I was 18. That was stopped after I told the boy’s parents that if they tried to force the marriage I would stab their son in the femoral artery and laugh while he bled out. Naturally, they withdrew the proposal. First marriage was arranged by the family with my approval, lots of questions and discussion of issues in front of numerous of witnesses which worked in my favor when he tried to change the terms of the marriage. Current husband is also a successful arranged marriage though as in the first, I did a lot of interviewing beforehand.
My parents would have done their best, but I doubt it would have been a good choice. And I honestly have no idea who they would have chosen, since they didn’t know anybody close to my age, really. But I think they couldn’t have done worse than I did for myself the first time.
Weird as it may seem I was thinking of this the other day. It probably would have been with my mother’s friend’s daughter who’s about 10 years younger than me but always had a crush on me when she was a little kid and whose mother had some money and liked me too, so I can see my mother saying “It’s a perfect match!”
Would it have been happy? Who knows. I’m gay and she’s straight, but we both like to read and to write and she grew up to be very funny, very intelligent, and manic-depressive with occasional trips off the deep end in both directions, so it would have had its problems but there would have been some good times too probably. Certainly better than if I’d been arranged to marry some “Whaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaat?” redneck cheerleader type.
Of course the nice thing about arranged marriages is if they’re miserable you can blame your parents.