arranged marriages

In our culture arranged marriages are very popular; my parents and my grandparents all had an arranged marriage and even a lot of my cousins now are having arranged marriages. My older cousin and his family were looking for girls for marriages for him and in January they met a girl, the family and my cousin all liked and they got engaged within a week. In mid May they got married.

I always knew that most of my family had arranged marriages but I finally thought about it after my cousin got married about the whole concept. I couldnt grasp the whole idea of how you meet someone and within a week decide that you are willing to spend your whole life together. My parents were engaged for two years before they got married, but I feel that is still not enough time to choose whether you want to get married to someone and spend your whole life with them. However my parents have been married for 27 going on 28 years and my grandparents were married for 51 years before my grandmother passed away.

For myself I would want to be friends with someone and then get to know them for at least 3-4 years before getting married to someone. I feel that after 3-4 years you get to know a person really well and you truly get to see if you can adjust with the person after marriage. Obviously things change a lot after marriage even after knowing someone for 4 years but I feel thats a whole lot better than just knowing someone for 6 months and just going out on the weekends to get to know the other person.