Before I try to convey to you the similarities between free dating and arranged marriages, I want to inform you that I by no means am against arranged marriages as I believe they work for certain cultures.

So while I was writing my previous article about how long distance dating can be perilous to your social life, I realized that online dating is akin to arrange marriages. How so you ask? Read on.

When it comes to arrange marriages, the mother and father base their decision on certain factors like education, employment, family wealth and background. The same goes with free dating sites and other types of social sites and the only difference is we’re in charge of who’s being chosen as a partner but the same elements are present, namely that we’re making choices based on these aforementioned credentials. Of course there are also many more items of interest we use to determine if a partner would be a good match - height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, astro-logical sign. I’m sure you get my point.

So what do we have here? It looks like in the end the idea of arranged marriages was indeed a good idea but now, rather than the parents being the choosers, the people in question get to choose.

Now, as usual, I feel compelled to bring to light an adverse affect that the participants of online dating sites experience compared to those involved in arranged marriages and that is the success factor. Online dating does not have a high success rate. Statistics can show that there is a high turnover rate on dating sites and we all know there is a very low divorce rate among arranged marriages.

Maybe our parents were right?

Original Article