I Had An Arranged Marriage But Am Very Happy

Laughter is a wonderful thing isn't it?

There are occasions, many of them in an average RD day, when I laugh heartily and smile broadly as I do it, as though I'm using all the muscles in my face. It's usually at one of my own jokes.

But there are also those chuckling moments. It's not that they're not as funny as the bigger ones, just that they're a different kind of laughter moment. They involve a gentle chuckle, a sort of laughing inside of myself, often at a joke or something funny that I think other people around me won't appreciate.

And as I looked through the stats for my blog the other day and saw that someone had arrived here by googling the above phrase, I did one of those gentle chuckling things.

"I had an arranged marriage but am very happy"

Is it funny for you too?

For me it's the use of the word "but" that makes this chuckleable, combined of course with the fact that someone's actually had to search the internet for the phrase. It's as if they've been taken by surprise that their arranged marriage is a happy one.

Or is it that the person had an arranged marriage that didn't work out and now they're happy?

Arranged marriages are a phenomenon that I've changed my opinion on over they years. Despite the fact that most of my family on one side have had them, I used to be dead against them. As I've got older and garnered more knowledge and experience I now believe they're perfectly legitimate, though I'm fundamentally opposed to the "forced" ones.

I know, from personal experience, that any marriage can last and any marriage can end in divorce. I think whether it's arranged or not probably has little bearing. The only difference may well be that arranged marriages might be more likely to last because of the western compared to the eastern approach to divorce.

On the other hand there may also be an argument that people might be less happy within an arranged marriage yet more likely to grin and bear it.

Which is worse, which is better?

I know not, I don't think there is, or needs to be a definitive answer.

I do know that the search that got to my blog made me chuckle though.