Arranged marriage and love

This is an extract from my One Body book. I defend arranged marriage as a morally acceptable option, though of course only in the case where both members of the couple freely consent (without that, there is no marriage). But yet it seems that one ought to have a romantic love for the person one is going to marry. I respond:

[L]ove is always a duty, and the love needs to be appropriate to the relationship. Thus, it is one’s duty to love the person whom one is to marry, and it is a duty to love the person in the way appropriate to the person whom one is to marry. Of course, if one does not know anything about this person, the love cannot be very specifically developed. But it can involve the three aspects of all love: one has a disposition to benefit this person (should one find out what the person needs), one appreciates the other at least as a person, a creature of God, a fellow human being and someone with whom one can engage in sexual activity, and one intends such a union with this person. (The sexual aspects of this union may be the easiest to intend for a young and sexually curious person!) All the while, one can remain open to the mystery, the surprise of the other person. And in this way, the arranged marriage is not so different from an unarranged “love match”. In a love match, too, one must remain open to the enfolding mystery of the other person, traditionally including a lack of sexual knowledge of the other person. In any case, marriage and sex themselves can change people in unpredictable ways, and some of the knowledge of the person prior to marriage is likely irrelevant. Every love must involve a willingness to adjust its form to changes in the beloved and in the relationship, and must remain open to new things.

It is not so much wrong to marry someone that one does not love, as it is wrong not to love the person one marries. Love is required of us always, under all circumstances. It is wrong not to love the person one with whom one shakes hands, the person one sentences to two years in jail, the person one gives a free meal to, or the person one marries. Of course a different form of love is required in each case. However, what primarily distinguishes the different forms of love is the type of real union toward which the love is directed and the aspects under which the beloved is appreciated. If one marries, one ought to have a directedness toward sexual and personal union with the other person, and an appreciation of the other person insofar as this person can be united with. But for this one needs only to know the other person as a fellow human being of the opposite sex with whom one can unite sexually.

Chesterton, the Internet, the family and arranged marriage

There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge. - G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, Chapter XIV

Thus the very thing that gives joy to many, including me, about the Internet, the availability of specialized, congenial social groups, is what is wrong with the Internet, according to the Chesterton. Chapter XIV of Heretics is an argument in favor of the moral importance of social groups--such as the family--whose membership we do not choose. It is, thus, an argument in favor of random associations. For in such groups we must simply bear with people--and, oh, how much sometimes there to be borne--whom we would not have chosen to be with, and this broadens the mind, pulling us out of complacency.

I have earlier argued that there is nothing wrong with arranged marriage. But Chesterton lets one go further. The very thing that people object to about arranged marriage, that it does not let one choose someone congenial to oneself, is its value. A marital selection based on congeniality lets each minimize the amount of required change and growth. But an arranged marriage, where a match in religious views is ensured by the parents, but otherwise personality characteristics may be wildly different forces one to broaden one's mind, at least in contexts that do not allow an easy way for the spouses to separate (of course, it is important to allow separation in extreme cases, such as abuse, even if remarriage is wrong).

This advantage is not very great, because the closeness of association in marriage is such that even in a love match, the negative, self-congratulatory effects of congeniality are mitigated by the myriad of differences, and sometimes annoying similarities, that one had no way of knowing about, and that make for growth as a person. Moreover, marriage itself changes a person, and so what one knew about the other prior to marriage will in part be irrelevant, thereby making a love match somewhat more like an arranged marriage.

This is not, of course, a blanket endorsement of marrying people who are utterly different from one. Congeniality in itself may not be so valuable, but if one is going to marry, one should marry someone with a modicum of virtue and moral sensitivity. Moreover, one should already have developed some virtue and moral sensitivity oneself to be mature enough for marriage. So there is a similarity in the fact of the possession of virtue, valuable not because of the similarity but because of the virtue, that it is good to have. Moreover, it's probably not a good idea to marry someone who is so far uncongenial to one as to impede moral growth, by changing love to disgust. And so on. At the same time, the evidence that a practice of love matches is better than a practice of arranged marriage at avoiding these problems is weak.

Finally, it must be reemphasized that the above defense of arranged marriage only works in contexts where it is not easy to separate from one's spouse, or where at least there are significant costs of such separation, such as a lifetime of sexual abstinence (as in the case of Christian marriage, where it is permissible for spouses to separate in circumstances of abuse and maybe even adultery, but they remain married in fact if not in law, and hence cannot marry anyone else). Chesterton talks of how scary it would be to be snowed in one's street. What is scary about it is that one would be forced to socialize with people one had not chosen for oneself. But it is essential that there be an element of forcing here--that one be stuck in marriage.

The above considerations give a powerful response to the following sophomoric argument: "If a couple really loved each other and were really compatible, they wouldn't need marriage. They would just live together, and their love and compatibility, rather than legal ties, would keep them together." Moral transformation hurts. Patients whose are not anesthetized need to be restrained for operations. If the couple is always compatible and their congenial love is sufficient, without commitment, to keep them together, then it is very unlikely that the members of the couple are being morally transformed by their closeness. Thus, leaving aside the case of the already morally perfect (and they might as well be celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of God), a couple is either not going to be transformed significantly by a life-long relationship or else there will be strains that require one to be held down, to be snowed in.

Let me end by noting that perhaps the most serious problem with arranged marriage is that, I think, it tends to be found in cultures where there is a strong pressure to marry. It is important that the marriage commitment be undertaken freely. This is compatible with the parents' choosing the marriage partner, or giving one a short list, as long as one is free to reject them all, free to remain celibate.

Arranged marriage

A common objection to seeing marriage as linked not just to sex and reproduction but also to romantic love is the prevalence of arranged marriages in many non-Western countries at present and in many Western countries in the past. Sometimes the two spouses barely meet prior to the wedding. Since love requires knowledge of the other, it does not seem possible that the couple should marry out of romantic love. Given that there does not seem to be anything morally wrong with such marriages or with sex within them, it follows that sex in the absence of romantic love is morally acceptable and that marriage is not linked with romantic love.

Of course, one might object that such marriages are morally wrong. In fact, insofar as entering into a marriage is an undertaking of serious commitment, those arranged “marriages” where either party does not consent are not really marriages—they are invalid for the same reason that coerced “contracts” are non-binding. But it is certainly possible for a couple to freely undertake to please their parents or to entrust the choice of a marriage partner to parents. After all, one might reasonably think that our own insight into ourselves is often less clear than the insight that others close to us have into us, and so we might reasonably allow that our parents might make a wiser choice than we, assuming they share our values and hence can be counted on to make the decision in light of considerations that we endorse. So it is certainly possible for an arranged marriage to be freely consented to.

On the permissibility of sex without romantic love, it is worth noting that even those who link sex with love, do not argue that sex without fully matured romantic love is impermissible. Romantic love finds its consummation in sexual union, but romantic love can continue to develop past its consummation. The union as one flesh may be complete, but the interpersonal union almost always needs to grow in other respects. A requirement that one marry only when romantic love is fully developed in every respect would prohibit almost every, perhaps every, marriage that has taken place.

At the same time, love is always a duty, and the love needs to be appropriate to the relationship. Thus it is one’s duty to love the person whom one is to marry, and it is a duty to love the person in the way appropriate to the person whom one is to marry. Of course, if one does not know anything about this person, the love cannot be very specifically developed. But it can involve the three aspects of all love: one has a disposition to benefit this person (should one find out what the person needs), one appreciates the other at least as a person, a creature of God, a fellow human being and someone with whom one can engage in sexual activity, and one intends that union with this person (the sexual aspects of this union may be the easiest to intend for a young and sexually curious person!) All the while, one can remain open to the mystery, the surprise of the other person. And in this way, the arranged marriage is not that different from an unarranged “love match”. In a love match, too, one must remain open to the enfolding mystery of the other person, traditionally including even a lack of sexual knowledge of the other person. And in any case, marriage and sex themselves can change people in unpredictable ways, and some of the knowledge of the person prior to marriage is likely irrelevant. Every love must involve a willingness to adjust its form to the changes in the beloved and in the relationship, and must remain open to new things.

It is not so much wrong to marry someone that one does not love as it is wrong not to love the person one marries. Love is required of us always, under all circumstances. It is wrong not to love the person one shakes hands with, the person one sentences to twenty years in jail, or the person one marries. Of course a different form of love is required in each case. However, what primarily distinguishes the different forms of love is the type of real union that the love is directed towards and the aspects under which the beloved is appreciated. If one marries, one ought to have a directedness towards sexual and personal union with the other person, and an appreciation of the other person insofar as this person can be united with. But for this one needs only to know the other person as a fellow human being of the opposite sex.