At the risk of being the person who argues with the empirics of every post: it is a stretch to say that most evidence suggests love marriage and arranged marriage end up with similar marital quality. One of the studies you link to is N = 52; obviously it can't find a significant difference.
"For every real life story of love you’ve heard, you have watched ten times as many fictional examples and they are ten times more emotionally potent."
This is a key point. Modernity is a constant battle against super stimuli: stuff that hijacks our evolved reward systems and leads us to bad outcomes.
Male-coded super stimuli are well known and rightly coded as dangerous and low status. These include excessive use of, or addiction to, video games, porn, and drugs.
However, female-coded super stimuli are more insidious as they're not widely recognised as such. No man would openly read Playboy magazine on a train. But many women openly read 50 Shades of Grey, which depicts much more graphic sex than Playboy does (a stronger super stimulus arguably), albeit with words rather than pictures.
Romantasy novels and TV are seen as harmless fun, but may actually be screwing up some women and impeding their ability to form sustained happy relationships. People don't like to make this point as it sounds fuddy duddy and Victorian to fulminate against "morally corrupting novels". But who really thinks the effect of repeated exposure to unrealistic depictions of intense romance has zero impact on women's ability to appreciate more realistic (and hum drum) relationships? Lifestyle influencers on social media are perhaps another case of a more insidious female coded super stimulus that sows unhappiness through comparisons between a fabulous fantasy life and duller reality.
In a sense, men are lucky that their super stimuli are widely seen as paths to an unhappy, low status life.
"The sexiest men often have traits that make them very good cavemen but kind of sub-par actuaries."
Excuse me, my husband is both very sexy and a very good actuary!!!
More seriously though, i dont think lessons from arranged marriages can be neatly ported over to love marriages. Firstly because (outside of the kind of environments that force arranged marriages), there is a strong selection effect. Someone who accepts an arranged marriage is fundamentally different in many ways (cultural, personality, family, likely religious) than someone who doesn't. And secondly, I also think an arranged marriage requires a certain environment to hold, and without that, it won't work.
I don’t think that’s true in cultures where arranged marriages are common. (Obviously comparing a secular westerner to a very religious person has a big difference). But love matches and arranged marriages are not that different in the cultures that do both
You obviously do expect there to be some differences, but that’s why lots of people measure ‘degree of choice’ rather than binary arrange/not arranged.
Ooo this hits closer to home than I’d like to admit. I’ve been in this situation many times where I’ll go on a couple of dates with someone and I’ll still feel mildly indifferent about them. I liked them enough to keep hanging out but not enough to keep going on dates with them. As a result I’ve come to the conclusion that for blind dates, unless we “click” on the first date I probably won’t see them again, even if rationally they seem like the best option.
But still I want to push back on the idea that you can just system 1 think your way into this. I have experienced the spark with one or two people before and the passion and motivation to do stuff with or for them is much easier. And the fact that I know it exists makes it hard for me to give up.
I guess my argument ends up being that it feels like the right path is some where in between. Maybe a system 2 pre-condition before a System 1 evaluation.
Idk though lol. Being in my mid-20s and never having a relationship doesn’t make me the most reliable narrator here.
"Court like you're arranging your own marriage" is a great quote, loving this series.
It's very necessary: marriage and kids are great, and so many people I know have approached it half assedly and now it's basically too late.
At the risk of being the person who argues with the empirics of every post: it is a stretch to say that most evidence suggests love marriage and arranged marriage end up with similar marital quality. One of the studies you link to is N = 52; obviously it can't find a significant difference.
The other is a bit better, at N = about 600, but that's... still not amazing. Another N = ~500 study finds the opposite result: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3711098/.
"For every real life story of love you’ve heard, you have watched ten times as many fictional examples and they are ten times more emotionally potent."
This is a key point. Modernity is a constant battle against super stimuli: stuff that hijacks our evolved reward systems and leads us to bad outcomes.
Male-coded super stimuli are well known and rightly coded as dangerous and low status. These include excessive use of, or addiction to, video games, porn, and drugs.
However, female-coded super stimuli are more insidious as they're not widely recognised as such. No man would openly read Playboy magazine on a train. But many women openly read 50 Shades of Grey, which depicts much more graphic sex than Playboy does (a stronger super stimulus arguably), albeit with words rather than pictures.
Romantasy novels and TV are seen as harmless fun, but may actually be screwing up some women and impeding their ability to form sustained happy relationships. People don't like to make this point as it sounds fuddy duddy and Victorian to fulminate against "morally corrupting novels". But who really thinks the effect of repeated exposure to unrealistic depictions of intense romance has zero impact on women's ability to appreciate more realistic (and hum drum) relationships? Lifestyle influencers on social media are perhaps another case of a more insidious female coded super stimulus that sows unhappiness through comparisons between a fabulous fantasy life and duller reality.
In a sense, men are lucky that their super stimuli are widely seen as paths to an unhappy, low status life.
"The sexiest men often have traits that make them very good cavemen but kind of sub-par actuaries."
Excuse me, my husband is both very sexy and a very good actuary!!!
More seriously though, i dont think lessons from arranged marriages can be neatly ported over to love marriages. Firstly because (outside of the kind of environments that force arranged marriages), there is a strong selection effect. Someone who accepts an arranged marriage is fundamentally different in many ways (cultural, personality, family, likely religious) than someone who doesn't. And secondly, I also think an arranged marriage requires a certain environment to hold, and without that, it won't work.
Hahhaa
I don’t think that’s true in cultures where arranged marriages are common. (Obviously comparing a secular westerner to a very religious person has a big difference). But love matches and arranged marriages are not that different in the cultures that do both
You obviously do expect there to be some differences, but that’s why lots of people measure ‘degree of choice’ rather than binary arrange/not arranged.
Yeah, I finally healed myself (with help) from falling in love with BPDemons now.
Aria knows so well what she's talking about it's kinda scary!
Ooo this hits closer to home than I’d like to admit. I’ve been in this situation many times where I’ll go on a couple of dates with someone and I’ll still feel mildly indifferent about them. I liked them enough to keep hanging out but not enough to keep going on dates with them. As a result I’ve come to the conclusion that for blind dates, unless we “click” on the first date I probably won’t see them again, even if rationally they seem like the best option.
But still I want to push back on the idea that you can just system 1 think your way into this. I have experienced the spark with one or two people before and the passion and motivation to do stuff with or for them is much easier. And the fact that I know it exists makes it hard for me to give up.
I guess my argument ends up being that it feels like the right path is some where in between. Maybe a system 2 pre-condition before a System 1 evaluation.
Idk though lol. Being in my mid-20s and never having a relationship doesn’t make me the most reliable narrator here.
If what you’re doing hasn’t worked yet, you probably should change something.
A couple of dates isn’t that many to rules someone out in my opinion.