I had read this quote years ago : "You can't marry the person you love, and you can't love the person you marry". I was a love-bitten troubled teenager then. I thought to myself, yeah, that must be so right. Years later, today, after being in and out of relationships, in and out of love, in and out of family, in and out of friends circles, and all of that, innumerably, I think differently. I know that there is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. I know that I can say "I love you" to anyone; but I can say "I'm in love with you", to one person only, the one person I'm attracted to and I'm in love with, too. So, I think, it's quite possible to love the person you marry. Even if it's an arranged marriage, the more the time you spend together, the more you start getting used to his/her presence, and the more the dependence, in short, more the love. Attraction? That depends on a various other factors. That's one issue over which I have felt being possessive in a relationship is justified. If you never allow your spouse to meet new people, or interact with new people, there's comparatively less possibilty that he/she might get attracted to someone else, and have an extra-marital affair. What one must remember is that attraction has very little to do with love. The laws of attraction often defy the laws of love. I'm not asking you to watch those movies on extra-marital relations, where the "off-track" spouse eventually returns to the "family", for the sake of love, children etc. I'm asking you to imagine yourself in the accused person's shoes. You might be in a happy and healthy relationship with someone, when you meet someone, who is like no one you've ever met before. Is it your fault? No. Is it your relationship's fault, that couldn't keep you committed? You should know, that the answer is no. Destiny is, as you shape it. But there are few things that are beyond your grasp, your mind-power. So, love always exists, no matter how troubled or less-happening a relationship might be. Love breeds with time, and attraction is an accessory to love in such cases. So, there's no need to feel that love-marriages are better than arranged marriages. If you are in love, and you can marry the person you love, of course, you should. Parents do agree with time ("time" might refer to a decade as well as a week), even the so called "society", which is treated as a fearful entity, consists of mere human beings, who, eventually forget their differences in their own course of life. So, I have nothing against love marriages. But, if you're not in love, or you can't marry the person you love for personal or impersonal reasons, you shouldn't have any problems with arranged marriages. Marriage, after all, is a way of mankind to keep itself going. Marriage isn't a necessity, not with the world already being over-populated. But marriage isn't something to be scared of. Not even if it's arranged. It's just about having one more friend, who can be more than a friend!
