I was talking about arranged marriages. In modern arranged marriages the couple gets married when they are mature and when they already have developed their dreams, their imagination of the future and when they already have an idea how a partner, boy or girl, should be like. And as their family arranges their marriage for them they mostly do not have any choice to interfere. They have to accept it and compromise because there is no way out. Some people are very happy with it and others accept it as their destiny. Their ideas and imagination of the prince who will come on the horse to get them often break when they see the reality and this can hurt.

In a modern arranged marriage the sexual relation also starts without really knowing each other. The emotional relation has not developed yet. Of course it takes time to establish this relation but the thrill of establishing a sexual relation also has a special charm. I know many people who were looking forward to this with enthusiasm. You can imagine when somebody didn’t have sex for the whole 25 or 30 years of their life, how curious he and also she will be. And they know, in this night they are going to have this. Their friends are making jokes, the family prepares everything and this night is just called ‘my first night’.

Maybe the scene was a bit different in older times. From the generation of my grandparents we heard that when they got married, it was also fully arranged and organized but they married in an age in which they didn’t really know about sex. They got married, lived together, played together and grew up together. With the physical development their emotional development took place and their love was growing. All their expectations, dreams and ideas were not built in the sky. Their prince did not come from the sky, they saw him in just real and in front of their eyes. And thus there were not many chances to break these dreams because they were already focused on somebody. They grew up in this way that they could not even ever imagine to be separated from each other. The foundation of their relation and love was very strong so it could really last a whole lifetime. This doesn’t mean that I am in favour of child marriage. I just want to compare the situation and the success of these arranged marriages from the past and the present.