People in Arranged Marriages Share What It's Really Like: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Though it's true that some forced marriages end up being arranged marriages, many people incorrectly use the two terms interchangeably. In fact, marriage arrangements often involve the inputs of prospective brides and grooms.

Many men and women who participate in arranged marriages prefer the traditional "marrying for love" method. At the end of the day, they can say no if it doesn't feel quite right.

Users on internet forums like Reddit and Quora share their personal experiences with arranged marriages.

Reddit user Drdontlittle shared that he and his wife, both doctors, got together from an arranged marriage. He married someone he'd never try to ask out on his own because of it, saying, "I panicked when it started and I nearly ended the engagement because I thought we were so different how this could ever work."

"She awakened my sleeping lively side," he continued. "She brings joy and fun to my life to the extent that I get depressed if I don’t see her face in the morning. I love her totally."

"Now our life is looking up as I just got a residency and I tend to think that is due to the luck brought to me by her.  I had an arranged marriage freaked out a bit in the beginning now she is my life."

That's not to say that an arranged marriage is better than choosing a partner on your own, but for some, it worked out a lot better.

An anonymous user talked about how he married a woman, but they got divorced after a few years.

"Well a year from then, my parents told me about this girl they knew and thought if I’d be open to considering her for marriage, the user wrote. "I decided to give it a try and my family approached her for marriage and we are so happy now."

There are actually hundreds of matchmaking sites and apps for prospective spouses to weed out potential matches (oftentimes with the help of their parents). This is just one of the ways that the process has been embraced in the 21st century.

An anonymous user shared how their friend was actually tricked by a woman he'd met on a matchmaking app. The user said they "Got married and brought her to the US and she divorces him in 2 months."

"Turns out, the girl married him only because he was from the same city as her boyfriend who couldn’t afford or wasn’t able to get her a visa. He used him to get into the country and then split."

While many women feel empowered through arranged marriages, some become subject to families' really strange expectations. For instance, some women needed to "prove" their literacy skills.

The Talko highlighted a number of these kinds of stories.

"One of them asked to me to read a few lines from the book they had gotten along with them. Logic: To check whether I stammer, check my voice, and see if I am educated enough or am I lying about my credentials! Sigh!"

"On the day of visit, they were allowed to talk separately. After few questions, he became suspicious of her educational background," the user wrote.

"To validate it, he took out his mobile, opened one newspaper app (The Hindu), and asked her to read top story for him. To avoid getting rude, he made excuse of forgetting his spectacles somewhere."

"After asking her to remove her shoes to check her real height, the boy's family asked Rohini to write a page long essay on her job. They wanted to check if she had good handwriting. Plus they wanted her to fill out the page to check its consistency," a separate user shared.

A user shared how their friend, Kruti, was rejected from a family for being left-handed: "‘Kruti is lefty, we don't want a lefty progeny.’"

The user shared how their family and a guy's family were setting up a marriage, only for the guy's family to cancel: "When asked for the reason, they say that the girl had 'GLASSES' and the girl wasn't wearing them when they met.

"Apparently, she was wearing them when she Skyped with the guy and the guy had mentioned the same to his parents. WTF! We often laugh when she puts on her glasses."

A user was told that she'd have to stay in a separate room while menstruating, and wouldn't be allowed to work. "She was even subjected to hilarious trivia quizzes before being asked to ‘gift’ a car and jewelry because, apparently, only houses and money are counted as dowry."

An anonymous Quora user shared how, growing up in a sheltered home, he agreed to an arranged marriage just to make his parents happy. But when they married, he wasn't very attentive to his wife at first.

But she remembered his, and even made him a special dinner. "I was both overjoyed and ashamed. Ashamed because I never remembered her birthday and overjoyed cause, she is a good cook and the romantic touch added extra flavor to everything," the user wrote.

"For the first time, someone apart from my parents did something special for me," he continued. "I hugged her and told her this. I saw she was happy to hear this. That day I truly felt to be married to her. Then I also realized, I was in love with her."

"Love in arranged marriages often happens after marriage but in my case, it happened after we became parents," a user named Yashodhra Dahiya wrote.

Her in-laws were also quite rude to her. The user explained that her marriage started off very rocky, and initially got worse once she had kids.

And when she asked her husband for a maid, he refused.

But things changed after she'd gone to see her sick mother, and he followed and begged her to come back. From there, their marriage was happier than ever.

An anonymous Quora user shared how she met her husband through a matchmaking site: "By the time we decided to be life partners, something went wrong. Our parents were unhappy with the proposal. They had their own reasons - some valid ones, some insecurities. And, ultimately, the parents decided not to get us married."

"It took us more than an year to fix everything up - right from wedding arrangements to making our parents happy," she continued.

"But all the efforts are worth taking. We are 3 months married now! Happy that we could make it. Happy that our parents are also glad with our marriage."

A Reddit user on a throwaway account shared, "After I had finished school my parents approached me and asked if I was ready to marry, I disagreed and so they left it (I was 18 - almost 19) When I was 21 I was approached by my parents again asking me if I was ready, this time I said yes."

"... I rejected two without a meeting because from what I heard I wasn't interested the third I said yes to, he and his family came to our house and sat and talked with my family over lunch, I however wasn't in the same room as them as I felt too awkward."

"After a about a week or so he proposed through family I wasn't sure so I didn't give a reply for about 3 weeks after that and when I did it was a yes."

"We're like any other couple now we're completely happy with each other. And we're scarily really compatible in the things we both like or don't like and agree or disagree with," she said.

A user named Rachna Seth shared her story to Quora, mentioning how she'd been on a matrimony site after being encouraged by her brother. But, she wasn't really into the process and angrily responded to all of her potential matches.

"But one reply stood out… due to its sheer simplicity," she wrote. "It was a two liner. Just a thanks for my interest and a brief intro."

"When did I fall in love? When I first spoke to him and realized that he’s a genuine, honest soul? Or when he went down on his knee to propose to me… after our marriage was finalized?"

"Being in his life, sharing ups and downs with him and facing challenges together brings immeasurable happiness," she said. "... Some joys just have to be felt.

For Reddit user mrsheikh, the marriage worked really well. He shared that he entered an arranged marriage due to his mother's insistence: "My Mom had been eyeballing my future wife for years since her family was friends with our family. I knew that my Mom had been looking at this girl for me, but I never took it seriously and played it off."

The user lives in the US, but is Pakistani. At 21, he met his wife, who was 18 at the time. His parents asked if he wanted to marry her, but the user was hesitant at first due to being so young.

"The NEXT day...we had a engagement ceremony. We then found out that in order to get the paperwork for her visas and stuff to come to the US, we had to be married...so SIX days later, we get a court marriage for the paperwork."

"Been 21 years, two kids, and three house...still more love with her each day. We still laugh at each others jokes, we miss time apart. We are still crazy for each other to this day."

A user called wazzem33 shared their parents' story, mentioning how they were in a strange, arranged marriage.

"The process was you go to South Korea, get separated into your age groups, and Rev. Moon (the guy everyone was following, the leader of the church) would simply point to two people. You, and you. Boom. Together for life," the user said.

"I am one of four kids, my parents have been together 28 years, they never fight, they get along and balance each other out well."

Some ended up in unhappy marriages, while others married people who didn't speak the same language as them.

"So all up I say my parents got lucky, they work at their relationship hard and have found success," the user said. "It didn't work out for all so easily."

User ittakesaredditor shared how their aunt and cousins were each set up in arranged marriages, and it involved the user's grandmother finding matches for them.

"Basically, from what I remembered since I was involved in my aunt's many attempted arrangements, a matchmaker would show up and basically give grandma and aunt a photo book of guys with details like age, where he lived, occupation, his family background, number of family members, if he were the oldest/youngest in the family," they said.

"Aunt ultimately settled for the one guy she could tolerate, he's soft spoken and bends over backwards for her and their kid."

Of that cousin, the user wrote, "they dated and married like most normal couples so it was essentially an introduction."

Meanwhile, "The other cousin seems to live pretty much independently of her husband, but it works for them."

Reddit user DNA_ligase shared, The success of an arranged marriage depends a lot on the two parties' relationships with their parents. If your parents are close to you and know you very well, and are honest about your good points and bad points, it can go at least as well as any other marriage, or even better."

The couple's parents knew each other, but not well. Still, the user said that, "[The mom] liked my dad enough, and they had tons in common." So, they got married.

The parents fought a lot when immigrating to America, but still got along really well. They even endured when the mother had a stroke.

"Arranged marriages can go wrong, but recovery can happen if the families recognize that the marriage was a mistake--not everyone shuns the divorced," they said.

The friend was misled by her husband's family, and ended up in an abusive marriage. She ended up getting a divorce.

The user ended by saying, "Don't get me wrong, divorce is still a major taboo in the South Asian community, but many of us don't take too kindly to abusive situations."

User AK840 shared how he was pressured into pursing an arranged marriage after having left a serious relationship. But it worked out for him, and he's happily married with a child.

He did, and described his experience as follows: "We met and chatted for a few hours and then spoke maybe a couple of times on the phone before we agreed to get married."

"At that time, I had a lot of doubts about this working out, but we seem to be very compatible in many ways, more so than in any of the relationships I'd had."

Redditor stripedglasses shared how she and her husband got engaged after only having spoken to one another twice.

They lived on opposite ends of their country, and had to compromise a lot in order to make their engagement work.

"I am 19 years old and when I tell people I'm married they are very taken aback. Just yesterday a girl told me that my life is over. But I have to say that I have never been happier," the user said. Though, they'd only been married a month at the time of writing.

While people typically think of South Asian and Muslim cultures when they hear of arranged marriages, there are so many more cultures that use the practice. Reddit user Yserbius shared how the process goes in Orthodox Jewish communities.

The user shared how "Dates are arranged by family/friends with the explicit purpose of checking each other out to see if they are viable marriage partners without any physical contact."

"It varies from family to family, but there are some people that are expected to decide after only a date or three," they wrote.

They continued, "I am not sure if there are still fully arranged marriages, since Jewish law explicitly forbids it, but I do know that back in Europe, many families would arrange for the bride and groom to meet once on the day of the wedding to get around the restriction."

While divorces still do happen, the user claimed that the vast majority of marriages in their community are happy.

User craniocaudal was honest when assessing their parents' marriage, which was arranged decades prior.

"They'd see each other several times over the coming year or two (writing love letters too!) and finally an engagement was set," the user wrote.

The user continued by saying, "Are they happy? Honestly, yes and no. They still enjoy each other's company but they've sadly nevertheless become two very different people."

Arranged marriages are supposed to emphasize compatibility, but that doesn't mean every couple will get along. A Redditor using a throwaway account shared, "We actually don't [get] along. Our personalities are complete opposites."

"I personally like it [quiet] around home and have time to myself, but my husband likes to have guests all the time and it is really annoying," the user said. "Not to mention that he is messy while I like to keep stuff clean and organized."

A woman named Zarghuna Kargar shared her story with The Guardian, discussing how her arranged marriage did not work out nearly as well as she'd hoped.

She shared that, as a young woman of Afghan descent living in the UK, her parents expected her to go along with an arranged marriage. "So I decided, I'm a good Afghan girl, I'm going to do it the Afghan way," she said. "And we got married. The whole time it was a horrible feeling."

She recalled it beginning poorly, because she did not bleed during their first night together. Zarghuna was afraid that her husband didn't believe she was a virgin before marriage.

Zarghuna's husband was not abusive, and neither was really that interested with the other to begin with. She eventually asked her husband to leave.

But in the end, they divorced, and Zarghuna's ex husband ended up getting remarried. For Zarghuna, the entire marriage was a nightmare.

A Redditor named extremely_apathetic shared her own story, noting that, as an Indian-American girl, she had trouble getting the attention of boys in her area.

Eventually, her father sent her a profile that he thought she'd like. "I was not at all interested," she said. "So, I pretended to be my dad and sent an email to his dad. His dad (who ended up being him) responded to my dad (me) that we should talk."

According to the user, he wanted to start the New Year of 2010 with her, so he waited to respond. "We talk on email for a bit. Then the phone. Visit in February. Married in March."

"We have a six-year-old son and he and my husband are my world. So, quasi arranged. And I’m so grateful to my father for finding this man for me."

A Reddit user named lexcorp_shill shared her own experiences. While she didn't end up in an arranged marriage, as an Indian-American, she had been part of the process.

"My issues as a whole with arranged marriage are with how the family is always involved and there’s no room for me to be myself," she wrote.

She continued, "You’ve got to always be alive to the possibility that anything you say will be discussed by their whole family and they will talk about it with yours."

She met and fell in love with a non-Indian man, and they eloped. She ended her story by saying, "I guess everyone ends up justifying their choices to themselves irrespective of what it was, so I don’t know. But it feels unlikely I would have found happiness with arranged marriage."

A user called ambrn shared how her family set her up with a family friend: "My family and my husband’s family had been friends for almost 10 years, but because both of our families are of the conservative-Muslim type, we never met or spoke to each other."

Next thing the user knew, she was engaged to the man. They were married six months after that.

"I liked him well enough and I knew that I would fall in love with him given time," she said, also noting that it was strange to be intimate with him at first.

"I wouldn’t change a thing about how I got married because whatever happened, it’s led to the beautiful, supportive, and loving relationship we have today," she wrote.

A user named city_of_stars wrote, "We’ve been married for close to twenty years. Both of us are very happy in our marriage."

"Obviously nothing is 100% perfect, we argue from time to time like any other couple. But she’s been a supportive, wonderful companion for all of those years and I like to think I’ve been the same."

A Reddit user called Samip19 shared that he was against the idea at first: "I grew up in the US and was so AGAINST an arranged marriage. It’s been 10 years this Dec 26 since I met her."

"You learn to love this new person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. I’m Hindu, [I] drink [and] at meat, but my wife does none of that, yet we find common ground to meet on."

"I am always learning new things about her even to this day. It’s definitely a plunge worth taking. It’ll never be perfect, but it’s way better than I thought it would be."

A Redditor who goes by masoomDon shared a story of someone they knew: "The guy pretends to be very well off and swimming in money, when in reality, they were barely scraping by, gave false information about business and stuff ..."

Somehow, he managed to scam a woman into marrying him, and their wedding happened quickly. But according to the Redditor, things ended up pretty badly.

"Turns out, the girl was scamming the guy as well – she has a bunch of life-threatening illnesses which require very expensive medical care ..." It seems it didn't work out for either of them.

For many of us, the idea of having to settle is pretty scary (and some might rather just be alone). While some arranged marriages work really well (or really poorly), other couples simply settle.

A Redditor named _onthebackburner shared their parents' story, and it didn't seem great.

"Since they lived in India at the time, and arranged marriages were the norm, I don't think they thought too much of it," the user said. "Well, my dad does say he really didn't want to get married and was sort of forced into it."

He couldn't move his mom with him, so she stayed behind for a few years. But the user shared that they're still married.

"I wouldn't say they're in love by the standard Western definition but they do respect each other," they wrote.

"Sometimes they hold hands but pretty sure they only had sex to procreate and they never kiss. But they think it's the best and that they have a great relationship."