marriage by contrat ( Archived) (14)

If your talking about pre-arranged marriages:I think its absolutely deplorable and archaic.I youg man or woman should be able to pick and choose their future wife/husband,not who your parents want you to marry.

In the legal sense of the word, marriage IS a contract (and in religous venues,...a covenant).

xactly

Jewish approach to finding a mate.

Choosing a mate is a complex undertaking.

Only too often, after their initial infatuation wears off, men and women find that they have made a serious misjudgment. They wonder what happened to all those qualitites that each thought the other possessed. Even when two people go out together for years, spend countless evenings together, and come to know each other thoroughly, the effort often eventually seems to have been of no avail.

Inevitably, they discover that they did not understand each other's characters at all. Even if they are satisfied with their marriage, not once will they find that their partner is exactly as they had imagined him or her to be.

Common sense would argue that when people select mates entirely on their own and know each other for a relatively long period of time before marriage, the frequency of divorce should be lower than it was fifty or sixty years ago, when parents had a voice in choosing mates for their children. Precisely the opposite is true. Today's divorce rate is significantly higher than it was in the recent past.

The primary cause of today's failed marriages is people's inability to judge a prospective marriage partner with even a semblance of objectivity. Most men and women are unaware of the subconscious drives and inclinations, both good and bad, that pull them in many directions. They ignore the difficulty of perceiving things clearly in areas as volatile as love and human relations.

Once they feel attraction to another person, they rarely pause to consider whether this attraction is rooted in an objective appraisal of that person's qualities or in prejudice, a desire which projects virtues onto the person. With a fool's confidence, they let their captivated hearts lead them into marriages in which they are sure they will live happily ever after. Unfortunately, this is not often the case.

Wise people realize they cannot depend on their own judgment in matters that involve their emotions. At such times, they rely on others to tell them what is right and what is wrong. They know that if they do not ask others for help, they are likely to commit major errors.

This article is an excerpt from the book "Shidduchim and Zivugim" by Rabbi Yehudah Lebovits, printed by Targum/Feldheim Publishers.