Aside from ample evidence from real life couples, there are plenty of literary and movie examples of how marriage has nothing to do with romance. In fact, avoid longing for romance or love if you are married. You will be disappointed.
I remember watching a Pakistani serial once where a son was arguing against arranged marriage. “How will I know I’ll be happy?” he asked. His father informed the boy that he had had an arranged marriage and was quite happy. “But you are the 1% that are happy,” the boy argued. “Everyone else is miserable.” And the father said, “Hopefully, you will be in the 1%. Otherwise, you will learn to live like the other 99%”. Yikes.
Hence, if love marriages ended badly, chances are that arranged marriages also end unhappily. Some argue, however, that this is not the fault of arranged marriage. They say the fault lies in the idiot that thinks marriage has anything to do with love. These folks argue that marriage is about security. It is about material things. A good marriage is one where you are safe from hardships. If you have such a marriage, then you would be stupid not to be happy. If you yearn for love on top of this, and you don’t get it (chances are, you won’t) then you’re an idiot and you deserve your yearning-fueled sorrow.
I would argue that there are other things that make arranged marriages sorrowful. They are based on concrete things—wealth, education, lineage, shared values, the promise of progeny—so if these are not delivered, then the marriage has not made good on its promise. This could result in bride-burnings, for example, or the milder solution: divorce. Furthermore, women are plucked from their homes, where—maybe—they had been nurtured with love, and placed into hostile environments where mother and sister-in-laws torture them and their husbands are powerless to stop them (or maybe unwilling to). To this argument against arranged marriages, my grandmother said: life sucks when you are a woman.
There are some happily-ever-after themes for arranged marriages, too, of course, (remember that 1%?) and I can imagine some romance novels written about their happily ever after. I have such a novel in the works. But they are not the usual source for romance novel themes.
What about Bollywood? Read my next blog for that breakdown!