Understanding life partner choices - the cultural differences of East and West
One can find tons of information related to the subject of finding the ideal partner. In fact, you will find many articles written about this subject on this Jumpdates blog. With the divorce rate on the rise and more people choose not to marry, these are obviously not encouraging news for anyone who want to settle down.
Married couples - east and west
The problem stems from our lack of appreciating the complexities and nuances of personalities that make up an individual. Of course when we go dating with the person, we generally don’t always see the negative side of things as both are trying to impress. This is one of the reasons why the West generally do not understand how the East can marry someone without having met them as the so called ‘arranged marriages’. The Jumpdates ThinkTank Labs have conducted some research on this subject and have come across some insightful trends and patterns that can explain some of these explicable differences.
Although we understand the nature of ‘arranged marriages’ and some may be critical about it’s practice but it is safe to say that the length of marriage would be determining factors for the match.
On the face of things it looks like the East has an upper hand on the longevity of the marriage over their Western counterparts. One should ask why this would be the case.
There are marked differing ideologies related to marriage when we compare the West and the East. Firstly, the communion of marriage between two persons in the East have a wider encompassing reach amongst members of the families. That is to say, the extended families do not move away once the marriage has taken place, in fact, they become an integral part of the future of the coupole. On the opposite side, the Western values are different where a sense of ‘space and independence’ is granted to the couple by families even though they will be still part of their lives. There are advantages and disadvantages to both of these differing family ideals and we will only touch on a few.
When couples of the East generally have trouble adjusting and coping, they can almost always turn to their family members for support. Also, in the Eastern culture, families tend to live together in a bigger household, if not, then not very far from where the couple would live. The advantage of this setup is that couples who are green in the understanding of marriage and cooperation will get a good dose of wisdom, daily checks to make their marriage successful.
The West as we know have a very different viewpoint of how marriages work and the focus is always on the couples to work things out without much outside help. As such the tensions can be high between the couple and without any obvious close support the marriage can deteriorate. Generally marriages in the West happen at later ages unless families have been an integral part of both the couples. It is difficult to say which is better than the other since they both garner human qualities which the other party would not necessarily possess. For example, the couples from the West can be more self-reliant, independent, strong and more driven to pursue their own dreams. Couples from the East may have a cooperative ability to solve problems and can be less self-preserving and look to a wider group for progress.
You the readers can decide what values can be picked from the two different cultures. Maybe a balance of the two can provide a more healthy and a longer lasting relationship.
Tags: arranged marriage, eastern marriages, marriage east & west, western marriages
