Lorenzo Atkins
10.4K posts

Lorenzo Atkins
@Zeus24th
Social commentator, Realist, and a believer.





















I'm not actually sure if I buy this line of thinking. Years ago, my mother used to spend a lot of time with Nepalese and Karen Thai refugees, who practiced arranged marriage. My mom asked them: "isn't that awful? Don't you want to marry for love?" They said that marrying for love seemed stupid to them, because the particular feeling of love you get at the beginning dissipates quickly. They said they suspected that's why Americans were always getting divorced; because they had expected an endless fairy tale. And they explained that in an arranged marriage, both parties just make the best of it at first, they may or may not be "compatible" or "in love," but that over time, the kind of commitment this type of marriage requires leads them to fall into a deeper, quieter, more enduring kind of love that sustains them across all of their life. So my mother used to tell me that who you marry shouldn't matter so much; it is about how you both approach the idea of marriage more than anything. And I think this is probably right. Refuse divorce at all costs; insist on deepening the connection, shape each other over time, and you will develop a symbiosis so deep it is unbreakable and un-changed by the vicissitudes of sentiment or "compatibility."













