George Blair-West

In the USA today, people are avoiding marriage entirely more than any other time in history.

Single parent families are more common after love marriages.

Birth rates are of particular importance to governments because they underpin long-term economic growth.

In the USA today, birth rates are below population replacement levels.

In a study done on modern arranged marriages in the US, where partners had some input into partner selection, they looked at four factors that determine marital satisfaction.

Loving, loyalty, shared values and issues around finances.

The average duration of the marriage was more than 11 years, and each individual filled out their questionnaires separately.

Two points of note.

Maybe surprisingly, the reports from the women were no different from the reports from the men.

But the finding that fascinates me is that greater involvement in partner selection did not improve marital satisfaction scores.

And just let that sink in.

Getting each partner to factor in who they were more attracted to

did not increase love or marital satisfaction scores.

So it would seem that not finding the one or more specifically having somebody else find them for you is the secret to marital bliss.

Professor Robert Epstein is an American researcher who has studied this phenomenon in some depth and he's found the crossover, the point at which love in the arranged marriages exceeds that in the love marriages occurs around five years.

By ten years, the levels in the arranged marriages are significantly higher.

What's going on?

Well, my take on it is that when people marry for love, they hope the love carry them through the tough times, the conflict, the life stressors.

But romantic feelings do not coexist well beside the feelings that go with stress and conflict.

They get pushed aside, such that the couples I work with who've had repeated problems tell me they have now fallen out of love.