George Blair-West

And to be clear, I'm not talking here about forced marriages, child marriages.

These are a violation of human rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that individuals should be 18 years old before they enter marriage and do so freely with full consent.

But the reason that brought that declaration into being leaves many of us feeling that arranged marriages are old and irrelevant.

At least, I did until I came across some rather compelling research.

Now I'm going to suggest that if we dismiss arranged marriages without considering what I call the modern arranged marriage, then we're throwing out the baby

with the bathwater.

I asked a Pakistani man that I interviewed for my research how he felt about potentially a matchmaker, his mother, his aunts, his prospect's mother, her aunts, all choosing his marital partner.

He said, well, of course all these people should choose my partner.

They know much more than I do of such things.

I'm only 35 years old.

What he was talking about was tapping into a time-honoured collective wisdom around matchmaking.

How do we define the modern arranged marriage?

Well, this is where each partner has power of veto and some input into the choice of their partner and it occurs in a greater culture.

that is supportive of divorce.

So the research we're about to look at comes out of the USA.

So how have the last 200 years, a mere blip in history, gone when it comes to our romantic love marriages?

Divorce rate in love marriages, circa 40%.

Because we're getting married when we're older, when our personality and our values have consolidated,

Divorce rates are falling, but so too are marriage rates.