There is a formula for marriage. There must be. There is a formula for everything. And love – being quite unquantifiable – plays no part. Dollars, not sense. Class, not preoccupation. Convenience, not elopendipity.

And no, don’t bother looking it up. I made it up. I arranged it. Because it contained the required emotions of desperation, serendipity and heart-rending emotion.

As a counterpoint to the pragmatic emotion-free sterility of the concept of an arranged marriage.

There’s a new television show in Britain, you see – or so it says in Singapore’s Straits Times – called Arrange Me A Marriage. It’s presented by Aneela Rahman, a Scottish Asian from Pakistan.

Rahman tells a series of unhappily single 30-somethings to find a long-term partner by focusing on a potential partner’s money and class – otherwise camouflaged as education, background and relatives.

Just like the aristocracy in Old Blighty have always done.

And apparently it’s caused a bit of a stir. Some people, it seems, don’t fancy the idea of a formula for marriage… even if it’s one that their superiors have applied for centuries.

‘You’ve got to be quite pragmatic and open about what you’re looking for in somebody because it’s a lifelong decision,’ says Rahman.

Ms Denise Knowles of Relate, Britain’s largest relationship counselling network, noted an increasing focus on consumerism in society. She said it meant that many people focused on material gains at the expense of relationships.

The rise in prenuptial agreements – formulas for future inevitabilities – says she’s right.

Ms Knowles also suggests that modern innovations such as online dating and marriage agencies are ‘arrangements’ in just the same way as the 16th century Tudor royals arranged marriages.

One critic accused the show of practising match-making on ‘live, human guinea pigs’.

Well… could that not also be said of romantic love, date rape and childhood sweethearts? I mean, Rahman says herself that many of the people on her show had pursued relationships with incompatible partners whose family backgrounds and aspirations did not tie up with their own. How sloppy is that?

Divorce rates in the UK are currently at a 30-year low. Experts say this is because many prefer cohabitation over marriage.

I think it’s simply that they failed math at school. Forget the schmooze. Apply the formula, and calculate the odds. Then you’ll know exactly where your life is at, now and in the future.

Oops. Another reviewer, Ms Poorna Shetty, said ‘Fact: arranged marriages in Asian communities have a high success rate because the family pressure to stay together is so intense.’

Family pressure. Now there’s an outrider. But after all – who is this marriage for? The couple, or the inlaws?

Sometimes, I wonder.

Do you have a formula for marriage?

Forced Marriage Begets Poverty

Filed under: Marriage

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!