The Perfect One..

Arrange Marriage with 20questions

2011-05-01T12:16:00.001Z

lovely presentation. I guess we just have to believe. sometime stupidity n however irrational process it may be.. can work.. may work.. will work.. now I will work on 20questions.;)

http://vimeo.com/22309808

Crimes and Misdemeanors

2011-04-19T18:00:00.002Z

from Professor Levy played by Martin S. Bergmann, a New York University clinical professor in psychology, in the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) by Woody Allen.

“You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that when we fall in love we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand we ask of our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. So that love contains in it a contradiction, the attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

But we must always remember that when we are born we need a great deal of love to persuade us to stay in life. Once we get that love, it usually lasts us. But the universe is a pretty cold place. It’s we who invest it with our feelings. And under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn’t worth it anymore.

We’re all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.”

Happy Women's Day

2011-03-08T13:53:00.007Z

Happy Women's Day for all those lovely smart independent ladies and for to all gents trying to support them in every step of the way...

Lord, I have a problem."

"What's the problem, Eve?"

I know that you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of

these wonderful animals, as well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I'm

just not happy."

And why is that Eve?"

"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples"

"Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you."

"Man? What is that, Lord?"

"A flawed creature, with many bad habits and traits. He'll lie, cheat and

be vain; all in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger,

faster and will like to hunt and kill things. I'll create him in such a

way that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be witless and will

revel in childish things like fighting and kicking a ball about. He won't

be as smart as you, so he will also need your advice to think properly."

"Sounds great," says Eve, with ironically raised eyebrows, "but what's the

catch, Lord?"

"Well...You can have him on one condition."

"And what's that, Lord?"

"As I said, he'll be proud, arrogant and self-admiring...So you'll have to

let him believe that I made him first. And it will have to be our little secret..."

Pratically Arranged

2010-12-01T01:29:00.000Z

Being single only means constant questioning and my lovely tier-1 friends & well-wishers keep sending me interesting forwards/articles/link..anything and everything related to relationship/marriage. one below was the recent and very nice written article to got. I can totally relate..

Twenty nine years old(In my cases couple of years more.:) and smugly single, I consider myself to be a part of the niche clan of people who have never quite achieved their potential(may be I did or rather maximize very possible opporunity), are lazy(which iam..some what), know they can do much better and aspire only for the best. We are that clan of people who can talk sense and are always open to trying out new things.

We also have aspirations of meeting the perfect one who looks like Monica Belluci and can talk intelligently on literature, music and movies and also be an ideal woman at home. Yes, we aspire nothing less than the superwoman(translation: i can admit i also do have sometime/on somethings/. unrealistic expectations ) but we are rational and practical enough to know our limitations ( oo yes that we do)- that we are mostly Clark Kents and Peter Parkers (without any superpowers).

Over-zealous Aunties/Uncles Inc:
Thanks to the over-zealous aunties and uncles and of course, my dad, who believes that I need to be tied in the "bonds" of holy matrimony and thus fill the void in my life and thus prove my mettle as a man... I am in the dreaded place that is more commonly-known as "the arranged marriage process".

The eagerness of the "concerned" elders, I believe is more to absolve themselves of any remaining responsibilities towards me. I have felt the entire gamut of emotions ranging from despair to desperation thanks to these aunties and uncles especially the ones who have grey hair, bald patches or both. The most common question they put across to me is "What type of girl do you want? ", which is usually followed by, "Do you want a working-type girl or housewife?"( that is such irratating questions) The fact remains that such questions drive me away from the sight of grey hair in any function. Ironically the older these uncles get, they tend to be more sensible in their advice as they mention about waiting for the right girl and going slow :)

Arranged Marriage, a Compromise?
Honestly, arranged marriage is a compromise one makes. You have little time to analyse the stakes or the nature of the opportunity; you are usually sold on the pros, and accepting the cons is a step which is very difficult to make. The time factor becomes the sword of Damocles hanging over your head - so you don't have a choice but to make your decision quickly!

Bearing the above, one must remember that my generation is a confused lot for starters. We find it difficult to let go of Doordarshan serials and admire their simplicity but still want to live a life like Barney Stintson or Robin Schebartsky of How I Met Your Mother! Hope however makes us believe that we can evolve the arranged marriage process and tune it to our constraints.

Achieving "status quo"
With the little experience I have, (thanks to my observation and listening skills), arranged marriage seems to work when you have made up a sketch in your head. Of course, this sketch becomes relevant only after matching horoscopes and family compatibility verification - which is another litmus test and usually is purely subjective. Post that, most men are scrutinised under the following criteria:
a) Decent job with a decent profile and good money (has to be more than what the woman earns for sure!) irrespective of industry or domain.
b) Presentable looks and speaking skills.
c) Reasonable bad habits (Read: Drinking at pubs, etc allowed but not to be publicly declared, smoking a strict no-no at least for appearance sake).

So, if someone fulfils all three above categories, he is a potential life partner. Rest of the parameters are "give or take" wherein all things considered compromises can be made. Lack of common interests can be usually negated, newer tastes magically acquired and pursued in order to achieve status quo. The key aspect being that major points are ticked off and the rest you go with an objective of adjusting and reconciliation.

Screening Prospective Brides
Of course, the trend ensures that men also usually judge the girls on the following parameters only:
a) Looks.
b) Relative smartness.
c) And finally, the ability to make the man feel that he is the hero of her dreams and the apple of her eye.

The irony today lies more in the prevalent lack of faith that all things will fall in place and this makes the prospect of arranged marriage seemingly more archaic and painful.

Things to Consider
I sympathise with the women who are getting their marriages arranged as well. Why? Because they are brought up on par with men like me and enjoy all the freedom and experience similar to their counterparts. Marriage thus demands that they make a much greater sacrifice than the modern man. This is something men have to understand deeply and thus gauge a person not only through their parameters but also do their best to balance the expectations of their future wife and their parents. Having said that, the women of today have to be clear in their head about the level of responsibilities that marriage brings on their shoulders where the presence or absence of the in laws result in equally big responsibilities. The numerous constraints put on us by our culture and to a certain extent, the crazy real estate prices make it difficult to start a life post marriage easily in a new setup.

Arranged Love, Anyone?
I feel for today's women I meet but at the same time can't help but expect her to be a superwoman. I am not hypocritical when I say the above as I can definitely assure that whether she remains a Louis Lane rather than a Bat Girl, I would definitely become the best Bruce Wayne that I can be. One thing that still remains unchanged is the aspect of love which makes a Louis Lane live with all the quirks of Superman and still trust him when he flies away at night:) The key is to try and fall in love with the person you are arranging your life with( provided you have arranged someone who has those potentials/"It could work" feeling otherwise I feel it won't). The rest, as they say, will fall in place.

Dating: Avoiding a bad Equilibrium

2010-09-20T10:28:00.000Z

Very interesting post from Dan Ariely's blog post

When going on a first date, we try to achieve a delicate balance between expressing ourselves, learning about the other person, but also not offending anyone — favoring friendly over controversial – even at the risk of sounding dull. This approach might be best exemplified by an amusing quote from the film Best in Show: “We have so much in common, we both love soup and snow peas, we love the outdoors, and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about.” Basically, in an attempt to coordinate on the right dating strategy, we stick to universally shared interests like food or the weather. It’s easy to talk about our views on mushroom and anchovies, and the topic arises easily over dinner at a pizzeria – still, that doesn’t guarantee a stimulating conversation, and certainly not a real measure of our long-term romantic match.

This is what economists call a bad equilibrium – it is a strategy that all the players in the game can adopt and converge on – but it is not a desirable outcome for anyone.

We decided to look at this problem in the context of online dating. We picked apart emails sent between online daters, prepared to dissect the juicy details of first introductions. And we found a general trend supporting the idea that people like to maintain boring equilibrium at all costs: we found a lot of people who may, in actuality, have interesting things to say, but presented themselves as utterly insipid in their written conversations. The dialogue was boring, consisting mainly of questions like, “Where did you go to college?” or “What are your hobbies?” “What is your line of work?” etc.

We sensed a compulsion to avoid rocking the boat, and so we decided to push these hesitant daters overboard. What did we do? We limited the type of discussions that online daters could engage in by eliminating their ability to ask anything that they wanted and giving them a preset list of questions and allowing them to ask only these questions. The questions we chose had nothing to do with the weather and how many brothers and sisters they have, and instead all the questions were interesting and personally revealing (ie., “how many romantic partners did you have?”, “When was your last breakup?”, “Do you have any STDs?”, “Have you ever broken someone’s heart?”, “How do you feel about abortion?”). Our daters had to choose questions from the list to ask another dater, and could not ask anything else. They were forced to risk it by posing questions that are considered outside of generally accepted bounds. And their partners responded, creating much livelier conversations than we had seen when daters came up with their own questions. Instead of talking about the World Cup or their favorite desserts, they shared their innermost fears or told the story of losing their virginity. Everyone, both sender and replier, was happier with the interaction.

What we learned from this little experiment is that when people are free to choose what type of discussions they want to have, they often gravitate toward an equilibrium that is easy to maintain but one that no one really enjoys or benefits from. The good news is that if we restrict the equilibria we can get people to gravitate toward behaviors that are better for everyone (more generally this suggests that some restricted marketplaces can yield more desirable outcomes).

And what can you do personally with this idea? Think about what you can do to make sure that your discussions are not the boring but not risky type. Maybe set the rules of discussion upfront and get your partner to agree that tonight you will only ask questions and talk about things you are truly interested in. Maybe you can agree to ask 5 difficult questions first, instead of wasting time talking about your favorite colors. Or maybe we can create a list of topics that are not allowed. By forcing people to step out of their comfort zone, risk tipping the relationship equilibria, we might ultimately gain more.

Arranged Marriage

2010-09-07T03:38:00.000Z

Thanks to Angie, I landed on this wonderful piece from NewYorker

Theirs was the second-to-last house on the road. The road ended in an asphalt circle called a cul-de-sac, and beyond the cul-de-sac was a field of corn. That field had startled Amina when she first arrived—had made her wonder, just for a moment, if she had been tricked (as everyone had predicted she would be) and ended up in a sort of American village. She’d had to remind herself of the clean and modern Rochester airport, and of the Pittsford Wegmans—a grocery store that was the first thing she described to her mother once she got her on the phone. When Amina asked about the field, George explained that there were power lines that couldn’t be moved, and so no one could build a house there. After she understood its purpose, Amina liked the cornfield, which reminded her of her grandmother’s village. She had been born there, back when the house was still a hut, with a thatched roof and a glazed-mud floor. Two years later, her parents had left the village to find work in Dhaka, but she had stayed with her grandmother and her Parveen Auntie until she was five years old. Her first memory was of climbing up the stone steps from the pond with her hand in Nanu’s, watching a funny pattern of light and dark splotches turn into a frog hiding in the ragged shade of a coconut palm.

Nanu had had five daughters and two sons, but both of Amina’s uncles had died before she was born. The elder one, Khokon, had been Mukti Bahini during the war, while the younger, Emdad, had stayed in the village so that her grandmother wouldn’t worry too much. Even though he was younger, it was Emdad her grandmother had loved the best: that was why she’d kept him with her. When you tried to trick God in that way, bad things could happen. Emdad had died first, in a motorbike accident on his way to Shyamnagar, delivering prescription medicines for her grandmother’s pharmacy. Two months later, Khokon had been killed by General Yahya’s soldiers. Those deaths were the reason that Nanu had become the way she was now, quiet and heavy, like a stone.

Little by little, over the six months that they’d spent e-mailing each other, Amina had told George about her life. She’d said that she came from a good family, and that her parents had sacrificed to send her to an English-medium school, but she had not exaggerated her father’s financial situation or the extent of her formal education. She’d explained that she’d learned to speak English at Maple Leaf International, but that she’d been forced to drop out when she was thirteen, because her father could no longer pay the fees. She’d also confessed that she was twenty-eight, rather than twenty-seven years old: her parents had waited a year to file her birth certificate so that she might one day have extra time to qualify for university or the civil-service exam. Her mother had warned her to be careful about what she revealed in her e-mails, but Amina found that once she started writing it was difficult to stop.

She told George how her father’s business plans had a tendency to fail, and how each time one of those schemes foundered they had lost their apartment. She told him about the year they had spent living in Tejgaon, after having to leave the building called Moti Mahal, and how during that time her father had bought a single egg every day, which her mother had cooked for Amina because she was still growing and needed the protein. One night, when she had tried to share the egg with her parents, dividing it into three parts, her father had got so angry that he had tried to beat her (with a jump rope), and would have succeeded if her mother hadn’t come after him with the broken handle of a chicken-feather broom.

Sometimes she got so involved in remembering what had happened that she forgot about the reader on the other end, and so she was surprised when George wrote back to tell her that her story had made him cry. He could not remember crying since his hamster had died, when he was in second grade, and he thought it meant that their connection was getting stronger. Amina responded immediately to apologize for making George cry, and to explain that it was not a sad story but a funny one, about her parents and the silly fights they sometimes had. Even if she and George didn’t always understand each other, she never felt shy asking him questions. What level did the American second grade correspond to in the British system? What had he eaten for dinner as a child? And what, she was very curious to know, was a hamster?

It felt wonderful to have someone to confide in, someone she could trust not to gossip. (With whom could George gossip about Amina, after all?) It was a pleasure to write about difficult times in the past, now that things were better. By the time she started writing to George, Amina was supporting her parents with the money she made as a tutor for Top Talents; they were living in Mohammadpur, and of course they had plenty to eat. She still thought the proudest moment of her life had been when she was seventeen and returned home one day to surprise her parents with a television bought entirely out of her own earnings.

The other benefit of tutoring, one that she hadn’t considered when she started out, was the access it afforded her to the computers that belonged to her wealthy pupils. She saw one of those students, Sharmila, three times a week; Sharmila’s parents both had office jobs, and they encouraged Amina to stay as long as she wanted so that their daughter wouldn’t just sit around with the servants all afternoon. Sharmila’s mother confided that she thought Amina would be a good influence on her daughter’s character; Sharmila was very intelligent but easily distracted, and was not serious enough about saying her prayers. “She has been raised with everything,” her mother said the first time Amina arrived, a sweep of her arm taking in the marble floors of the living room and the heavy brocade curtains on the picture windows overlooking the black surface of Gulshan Lake, which was revealed, even at this height, to be clogged with garbage, water lilies, and the shanties of migrant families. “She doesn’t even know how lucky she is.” Amina nodded politely, but she knew that Sharmila’s mother’s complaints were a performance. She would put on the same show when her daughter’s marriage was being negotiated, exaggerating Sharmila’s incompetence at preparing a simple dal or kitchuri, so that the groom’s family would understand what a little princess they were about to receive.

Amina had sworn Sharmila to secrecy on the subject of AsianEuro.com, and then they’d had a lot of fun, looking through the photos in the “male gallery.” Sharmila always chose the youngest and best-looking men; she would squeal and gasp when she came across one who was very old or very fat. More often than not, Amina had the same impulses, but she reminded herself that she was not a little girl playing a game. Her family’s future depended on this decision, and she could not afford to base it on some kind of childish whim.

According to her mother, the man should not be divorced and he certainly shouldn’t have any children. He had to have a bachelor’s degree and a dependable job, and he should not drink alcohol. He should not be younger than thirty-five or older than fifty, and he had to be willing to convert to Islam. Her mother also insisted that Amina take off her glasses and wear a red sari that she had inherited from her cousin Ghaniyah for the photograph, but, once it had been taken and scanned into the computer (a great inconvenience) at the Internet café near her Auntie No. 2’s apartment in Savar, her mother would not allow her to post it online. “Why would you want a man who is interested only in your photograph?” she demanded, and nothing Amina could say about the way the site worked would change her mind.

“But the men will think you’re ugly!” Sharmila exclaimed, when she heard about Amina’s mother’s stipulations. They were sitting on the rug in Sharmila’s bedroom, with Sharmila’s “Basic English Grammar” open between them. Amina’s student was wearing the kameez of her International School uniform with a pair of pajama trousers decorated with frogs. She looked Amina up and down critically.

“Your hair is coarse, and you have an apple nose, but you aren’t ugly,” she concluded. “And now no one is going to write to you.”

And although Amina had the very same fears, she decided to pretend to agree with her mother, for the sake of Sharmila’s character.

As it happened, George did not post his picture online, either. He and Amina exchanged photos only once they had decided to become “exclusive” and take their profiles down from the site. When he saw her photograph, George wrote, he became even more convinced that she was the right person for him—not because of how pretty she was but because she hadn’t used her “superficial charms” to advertise herself, the way so many American women did.

Amina hadn’t believed that there was a man on earth—much less on AsianEuro.com—who would satisfy all of her mother’s requirements, but George came very close. He was thirty-nine years old, and he had never been married. He had a master’s degree from SUNY Buffalo and had worked as an aeronautical engineer for the I.T.T. Corporation for the past eleven years. He liked to have a Heineken beer while he was watching football—his team was the Dallas Cowboys—but he never had more than two, and he would think of converting to Islam, if that was what it would take to marry Amina.

Both of Amina’s parents had hoped that she might someday go abroad, but it was her mother who had worked tirelessly with her at every step of the four-year journey that had finally led her to Rochester. If you counted their earliest efforts, it had actually been much longer than four years. When Amina was a girl, her mother had hoped to make her a famous singer, but once she discovered that Amina hadn’t inherited her beautiful voice she’d switched her to the classical Bengali wooden flute. Amina had found it easy to work diligently at her studies, but could somehow never make time for the flute; she had abandoned it in favor of “The Five Positions of Ballet,” and then “Ventriloquism: History and Techniques,” both illustrated in manuals that she and her mother checked out from the British Council library.

Amina’s parents’ first really serious idea had been to apply to American universities; Amina had written to ten colleges, six of which had sent letters back. The University of Pittsburgh had encouraged her to apply for a special scholarship. Even with the scholarship, however, the tuition would have been six thousand dollars a year—that was without considering the cost of living in America. Her parents had read the letter from Pittsburgh over and over again, as if some new information might appear, and they had shown it to all the Dhaka relatives, who had, of course, begun to gossip. According to Ghaniyah, they were accusing Amina and her parents of “sleeping under a torn quilt and dreaming of gold.”

A few weeks after the letter came, Amina was listening to the Voice of America. She and her mother had got into the habit of tuning in to the broadcasts in Special English, and even after those became too simple for Amina they continued to turn on “This Is America.” One day the program was dedicated to the different types of student and work visas, and the S.A.T., G.M.A.T., and TOEFL tests that foreign students might use to qualify for them. Amina was only half-listening (these were strategies that she had already considered, and all of them cost money) when the announcer said something that made her look up from her book. Her mother also paused, holding the iron above her father’s best shirt and trousers, which were arranged on the ceramic tile as if there were already a man inside them.

“Of course, the easiest way to come to America is to find an American and get married!”

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought of this; ever since she was a little girl, she had loved everything foreign. When other girls traded their dresses for shalwar kameez, Amina had gone on wearing hers: she’d had to put on a white-and-gray shalwar kameez in order to go to Maple Leaf, but when she got home from school she changed back into a dress or a skirt. Her mother shook her head, but her father laughed and called her his little memsahib. Whenever he had money, he’d buy her a Fanta and a Cadbury chocolate bar.

Most of all, she had always loved fair skin. Her father was brown, and before she was born he had worried that she would be dark. But her mother was ujjal shamla, and Amina had come out golden, too. Once, when she was about eight or nine, she had said how much she loved fair skin in front of her father’s business partner, who was as black as the fishermen who worked on the boats near her grandmother’s house. Farooq Uncle had only laughed, but his wife had told Amina seriously that she had once felt the same way, and look whom she had ended up marrying. If you wanted one thing too much, she said, you sometimes wound up with the opposite.

Amina had never forgotten that advice. It was a species of Deshi wisdom that she knew from the village, and it was powerful, as long as you stayed in the village. The farther away you got, Amina believed, the less it held. It was possible to change your own destiny, but you had to be vigilant and you could never look back. That was why, when she heard the announcer’s joke on Voice of America, the first thing she thought of was the Internet.

The thing that had impressed her about AsianEuro.com was the volume of both men and women looking for mates. When Amina joined, there were six hundred and forty-two men with profiles posted on the site, and, even without a photograph, Amina’s profile got several responses right away. As it turned out, the problem was not making contact but staying in touch. Sometimes (as with Mike G. and Victor S.) a man would correspond for months before he suddenly stopped writing, with no explanation. Other times she would be the one to stop, because of something the man had written. In the case of Mike R., it was a request for a photo of Amina in a bathing suit; for “John H.,” it was the admission, in a message sent at 3:43 A.M., that he was actually a Bengali Muslim living in Calcutta.

Her father had used these examples as ballast for his argument that the people who joined those sites could not be trusted, but her mother had weathered each disappointment along with Amina, and her resolve to help her daughter had seemed to grow stronger as the years passed and her father’s situation failed to change. They had never been like an ordinary mother and daughter, partly because Amina was an only child, and partly because they’d spent so much time together after she had to leave school, studying the textbooks they borrowed from the British Council: “Functional English” and “New English First.” When Amina and George began writing to each other, she and her mother had discussed the e-mails with the same seriousness they had once devoted to those textbooks. She had not hidden anything from her mother (not even the Heinekens), and eventually they had both become convinced of George’s goodness. They had been a team, analyzing every new development, and so it was strange for Amina, once things were finally settled, to realize that her mother would not be coming with her.

Amina had been e-mailing with George for three months when he came to Dhaka to meet her family. Their courtship had more in common with her grandparents’—which had been arranged through a professional matchmaker in their village—than it did with that of her parents, who had had a love marriage and run away to Khulna when her mother was seventeen years old. Her grandparents hadn’t seen each other until their wedding day, but they had examined photos. She had thought of her grandmother the day she received George’s photo as an e-mail attachment. The photo wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but once she’d seen it she couldn’t remember the face she had imagined. That face had been erased by the real George: heavy-cheeked and fleshy, with half-lidded, sleepy eyes. His features were compressed into the center of his face, leaving large, uncolonized expanses of cheek and brow and chin. His skin was so light that even Amina had to admit that it was possible to be too fair.

She had put her hand over half the photo, so that only the eyes and forehead were visible. They were blue eyes, close together, with sparse blond brows and lashes. Could I love just those eyes? she asked herself, apart from anything else, and, after a certain number of minutes spent getting used to them, she decided that she could. She covered the eyes and asked the same question of the nose (more challenging because of the way it protruded, different from any nose she knew). She had slept on it, but the following day at the British Council (an agony to wait until the computer was free) she’d been pleased to discover that the photograph was better than she remembered. By the end of the day she thought that she could love even the nose.

Her father went to meet George at the airport, and her mother came to her room to tell her that he had arrived—although, of course, she had been watching from the balcony. The taxi had stopped at the beginning of the lane, which was unpaved. Her mother had worried about George walking down the dirt road to their apartment complex (what if it rained?), and they had even discussed hiring a rickshaw. But they would have had to hire two rickshaws, with the bags, and hiring two rickshaws to take two grown men less than two hundred metres would have made more of a spectacle than it was worth. Even from her hiding place on the balcony, behind her mother’s hanging laundry, she could hear the landlady’s sons, Hamid and Hassan, on the roof, practically falling over the edge to get a glimpse of Amina’s suitor.

“What is he like?” she asked, and her mother reassured her.

“He’s just like his picture. Nothing is wrong.”

George said that he had known when he received her first e-mail that she was the one. When Amina asked how he had known, he was offended, and asked whether this was some kind of test. But Amina hadn’t been testing him: she really wanted to know, because her own experience had been so different. With the men who had contacted her before George, she had wondered each time if this was the person she would marry. Once she and George started e-mailing each other exclusively, she had wondered the same thing about him, and she had continued wondering even after he booked the flight to Bangladesh. She wondered that first night as he ate with her family at their wobbly table, covered with a plastic map-of-the-world tablecloth, which her father discreetly steadied by placing his elbow somewhere in the neighborhood of Sudan, and during the excruciating hours they spent in the homes of her Dhaka aunts, talking to each other in English while everyone sat around them and watched. It wasn’t until she was actually on the plane to Washington, D.C., wearing the gold-and-diamond ring they had bought in a hurry at Rifles Square on the last day of George’s visit, that she finally became convinced it was going to happen.

Her visa required her to marry within ninety days of her arrival in the U.S. George wanted to allow her to get settled, and his mother needed time to organize the wedding party, so they waited almost two months. Amina’s mother understood that it wouldn’t be practical for George to pay for another place for Amina to live during that time, and she certainly didn’t want her living alone in a foreign city. She agreed that Amina could stay in George’s house for those months, but she made Amina promise that she and George would wait to do that until after the ceremony. She talked about the one thing that Amina could lose that she would never be able to get back.

In Dhaka, Amina had intended to keep her promise, although she didn’t entirely agree with her mother. Especially after she got to America, and had time to think about it, it seemed to her that there were a lot of other things that could be lost in an equally permanent way. Her father had lost his business partner, for example, and he’d never found another full-time job; after that, they had lost their furniture, and then their apartments in Mirpur and Savar, and only Ghaniyah’s father’s intervention—securing the apartment in Mohammadpur at a special price, through a business associate—had kept them from becoming homeless altogether. These setbacks had taken their toll on her mother, who suffered from stomach ulcers and persistent rashes; Amina thought her mother was still beautiful, with her large, dark eyes and her thin, straight nose, but her mother claimed to have lost her looks for good. Worst of all, her grandmother had lost Emdad and Khokon, and nothing she could do would ever bring them back.

Compared with those losses, whatever it was that Amina lost on the third night she spent in George’s house was nothing. George had agreed to her mother’s conditions, and had set up a futon bed for her in the empty room upstairs. On the first two nights, they’d brushed their teeth together like a married couple, and then George had kissed her forehead before disappearing into his room. There were no curtains on the window of the room where Amina slept, and the tree outside made an unfamiliar, angled shadow on the floor. Everything was perfectly quiet. Even when she’d had her own room at home, there had always been noise from the street—horns, crying babies, the barking of dogs—not to mention the considerable sound of her father snoring on the other side of the wall.

Ordinarily she wore a long T-shirt and pajama bottoms to bed, but on the third night she experimented by going into the bathroom in only a kameez. “You look cute,” George said, and that emboldened her; when he bent down to kiss her forehead, as usual, she looked up, so that they actually kissed on the mouth. (This was something that they had done downstairs on the couch during the day, but not yet at night.) Amina tried to imagine that her plain, machine-made top was a hand-embroidered wedding sari, and, when she pressed her body against her fiancé’s, a strange sound escaped from him. It was as if there were another person inside him, who’d never spoken until now. That small, new voice—and the fact that she had been the cause of it—was what made her take George’s hand and follow him into his bedroom.

She was surprised by how unpleasant it was, how unlike that kiss in the bathroom, which had given her the same feeling between her legs that she sometimes got when watching actors kiss on television. It didn’t hurt as much as Ghaniyah had said it would, but she was too hot with George on top of her, and she didn’t like the way he looked when he closed his eyes—as if he were in pain somewhere very far away. On the other hand, it was sweet the way he worried afterward, anxiously confirming that it was what she wanted. He asked her whether she minded having broken her promise to her mother, and the next morning, waking up for the first time beside someone who was not a member of her family, she was surprised to find that she had no regrets at all.

She told George that she didn’t need a wedding dress, that she was happy to get married in the clothes she already owned. She had ordered three new dresses before coming to Rochester, because tailoring was so much less expensive back at home.

“That’s why I love you!” George said, slapping his hand on the kitchen table, as if he’d just won some kind of wager. “You’re so much more sensible than other women.”

Amina thought that it was settled, but later that night George talked to Ed, from his office, who reminded him that they would eventually have to show their wedding photographs to the I.N.S.

“Ed says a white dress is better for the green card,” George said. “My cousin Jess’ll take you shopping. Go get something you like.”

Her mother wanted her to get married in a sari. Amina argued that that kind of wedding, with the gold jewelry, the red tinselled orna, and the hennaed hands, was really more Hindu than Muslim, and that as long as she was going to wear foreign clothes they might as well be American ones.

“No need for a red sari,” her mother conceded. “How about blue? Or green?”

“It has to be a white dress,” Amina said. “It has to be a real American wedding.”

“Even a white sari,” her mother said. “Some of the girls are doing it. I saw it on Trendz.” Since she’d left, her mother had been spending hours every day in the Internet café in Savar. It was amazing to Amina that her mother could navigate even English sites like the Daily Star, where she knew how to get to the Life Style page, with its features on “hot new restaurants” and “splashy summer sandals,” its recipes for French toast and beef Bourguignonne, and its decorating tips (“How about painting one wall of your living room a vibrant spring color?”).

“A dress,” Amina said firmly. “That’s what the I.N.S. wants.”

Of course her mother didn’t really care about the dress, just as she would never consider visiting a restaurant (where who knew how dirty the kitchen might be) or painting one wall of the room where she brushed her teeth, chopped vegetables, and did the ironing “a vibrant spring color.” The white dress was a way for her mother to talk about a concern she had had ever since the beginning—that Amina and George were not going to be properly married, by both an American civil servant and a Muslim imam.

The wedding dress was sleeveless white organdie, with white satin flowers appliquéd on the neck and the bust. She and Jessica compromised by eliminating the veil, but even without it the dress cost more than three hundred dollars, not including alterations. Amina stood on a wooden box with a clamp like a giant paper clip at her waist, and tried not to cry.

“Smile!” the saleswoman said. “A lot of girls would kill for a figure like yours.”

“No kidding,” Jessica said. “I wasn’t that skinny when I was fourteen years old.”

“Don’t you like it?” the saleswoman asked.

“She’s dumbstruck. Wait until George sees you in that.”

Jessica chatted happily with the saleswoman as they paid for the dress with George’s card, but once they were in the car she asked Amina whether everything was O.K.

“Everything is fine,” Amina said. “Only it was so expensive.”

“George doesn’t mind,” Jessica said. “Trust me, I could tell. Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

Ordinarily when Amina felt homesickness coming on, she was able to distract herself with some kind of housework. Vacuuming, in particular, was helpful. Now, sitting in the car next to George’s cousin, she was unprepared for the sudden stiffness in her chest, or the screen that dropped over everything, making Rochester’s clean air and tidy green lawns, and even the inside of Jessica’s very large, brand-new car, look dull and shabby. George’s cousin was so kind, and still there was no way that she could explain to her what was really wrong. When they stopped at a red light, Jessica turned to Amina and put a hand on her arm.

“Because if something was wrong between you and George, I want you to know that you could tell me. I’m a good listener.”

“Oh, no,” Amina said, “George is no problem,” and Jessica laughed, although Amina wasn’t trying to be funny. She could tell that Jessica wasn’t going to allow her to be silent, and so she searched for a question.

“What is the meaning of ‘dumbstruck’?” she asked, feeling slightly dishonest. She had encountered that word for the first time in an exercise in a conversation primer, a dialogue between a Miss Mulligan and a Mr. Fredericks—“ ‘Your manners leave me dumbstruck, Mr. Fredericks,’ Miss Mulligan exclaimed”—and for some reason that phrase had lodged itself in Amina’s head. Often, when someone spat on the street in front of her, when a woman elbowed her out of the way at the market, or when she ran into one of her old classmates at the British Council and the girl inquired sweetly whether her father was still unemployed, she had thought of Miss Mulligan and how dumbstruck she might have been had she ever found herself in Bangladesh.

“Oh, um—surprised. It just means surprised. I bet you wondered what I was talking about!”

But it didn’t just mean surprised. It meant so surprised that you could not speak. As Cousin Jessica continued to talk—about her weight and Amina’s, about the foods she ate, didn’t eat, or intended to eat—Amina concentrated on nodding and making noises to show that she understood. It was possible to be struck dumb by all sorts of emotion, not only surprise, and as they drove back toward Pittsford Amina thought that there ought to be a whole set of words to encompass those different varieties of silence.

At the bridal shower, Aunt Louise had wanted to know Amina’s favorite flower, and had listened politely as Amina explained about the krishnachura and the romantic origins of its name. She felt silly when Aunt Louise showed up at city hall on the morning of the wedding, carrying a bouquet of lilacs and apologizing because there were no krishnachura to be found in Rochester. Then George’s mother arrived with her own wedding veil, which she shyly offered to Amina for the ceremony.

“She didn’t want a veil,” George said, annoyed with his mother, but Amina took her mother-in-law’s side, just as a bride would at home. Jessica gathered up a few of the ringlets the hairdresser had created and pinned the veil so that Amina could wear it hanging down her back. Then the small party—Jessica, George’s mother, Aunt Louise and Uncle Dan, Ed from George’s office and his Filipino wife, Min, and George’s college friends Bill and Katie—followed them into the office, where they completed the paperwork for the marriage certificate. Amina thought that this was the wedding itself, so she was confused when the clerk ushered them into a smaller, carpeted room with a bench and asked them to wait.

“Is there some problem?” she asked George, but he was distracted by his friends, who were snapping pictures and laughing. “Is something wrong?”

“Sit down,” George’s mother said, but Aunt Louise grabbed her arm and jerked her upright.

“Careful!”

“What is it?” Amina said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. For weeks she had been convinced that something would get in the way of the ceremony; this morning she had prayed—not that nothing would go wrong but that she would be prepared enough to see it coming and resourceful enough to find a way around it.

“If you sit, your dress will crease,” Aunt Louise said.

“Come on,” George’s mother said, putting her hand on Amina’s back. “It’s your turn.” And Amina was relieved to see that a door had opened on the opposite side of the room, and a short, bald man in a suit, a man who looked as if nothing on earth had ever disturbed his composure, was gesturing for them to enter. She understood that the wedding was continuing as planned, and she looked carefully around the room because she knew that her mother would want to hear exactly what it looked like. There were potted trees with braided trunks on either side of the window, and three rows of white plastic folding chairs, half-filled by George’s family and friends. The deputy city clerk stood behind a wooden lectern underneath two certificates framed in gold. With the light from the window shining on his glasses, Amina couldn’t see his eyes.

She had not expected to be nervous. George had told her what her cue would be, and Amina allowed her mind to wander while she waited for it. When she’d left Desh, there had still been the possibility that her parents would be able to come to Rochester for the wedding. Ninety days had seemed like enough time to plan, but when George went online to check the tickets they were almost fifteen hundred dollars each, even if her parents made stops in Dubai and Hamburg, Germany. George had been willing to help pay for the tickets, but she could tell that he wasn’t happy about it, and so she had called her parents and given them her opinion: it would be a waste of money. The whole wedding would take maybe an hour and a half (including driving time), and Amina and her father agreed that to fly twenty hours in order to be there for something that took less than two hours didn’t make a lot of sense.

In the end, as she’d expected, the problem was not her father but her mother. Her mother had agreed at first, and they’d even made another plan: as soon as Amina and George could come back to Dhaka, they would buy wedding clothes and Amina would go to the beauty salon; then they would go to a studio and take wedding photographs. Once they had the photographs, her mother could look at them all the time: it would be no different than if they’d all celebrated the wedding together for real.

Amina thought that her mother was satisfied by this, but a few nights later she got a call. Her mother was crying, and it was hard to understand her. Her father told her not to worry, but when she asked why her mother was crying he said, “She’s crying because she’s going to miss your wedding. She’s going to miss it because I can’t afford the ticket.”

“No!” Amina said. “We decided—it didn’t make sense. Three thousand dollars for one party!”

“Your wedding party. What kind of terrible parents don’t come to their own daughter’s wedding?”

She started to argue, but her father wasn’t listening. Her mother was saying something in the background.

“What does she say?”

Her father paused so long that she would have thought the call had been dropped, if it weren’t for the sounds in the background. It was morning in Mohammadpur, and Amina thought she could hear the venders calling outside the window: “Chilis! Eggs! Excellent-quality feather brooms!”

“She says it would have been better if you’d never been born,” her father said finally.

“Do you, Amina Mazid, take this man, George Barker, to be your lawfully wedded husband?” the city clerk asked.

“I do,” Amina said.

The question was asked of George, and then the clerk pronounced them husband and wife. “You may kiss each other,” he said.

George leaned toward her and Amina leaped back. From the folding chairs, Cousin Jessica made a hiccupping sound. George’s face tightened like the mouth of a drawstring bag, and when Amina glanced behind her she saw an identical contraction on the face of her new mother-in-law. She hurriedly stepped toward George, smiling to let him know that it had been a mistake, that of course she wanted to kiss him in front of his family and friends.

Many hours later, after cocktails at Aunt Louise and Uncle Dan’s, the reception dinner at Giorgio’s Trattoria, and then sweets, coffee, and the opening of gifts at the house of George’s mother (who now insisted that Amina call her “Mom”), when they were home in bed together so much later than usual, George asked her why she hadn’t wanted to kiss him.

“You didn’t tell me,” she explained.

“You didn’t know there was kissing at a wedding?”

Amina had to think about that for a minute, because of course she had known. She had known since she was nine years old and her Auntie No. 2 had bought a television. She had seen it on “Dallas” and “L.A. Law” and “The Fall Guy,” and then, more recently, on her own television at home. There was no way to explain her ignorance to George.

“I did know. I guess I just didn’t believe it would happen to me.”

“You’ve kissed me a hundred times,” George said, in a voice that suggested to Amina that they might be about to have their first fight. She wanted to avoid that, especially tonight, because if there was anything she believed about marriage it was that arguing the way her parents did was a waste of time.

“Not only kissing. The marriage in total.”

“You didn’t believe we were getting married? What did you think we were doing?”

“In Desh, you can make your plans, but they usually do not succeed.”

“And in America?”

“In America you make your plans and then they happen.”

To her relief, George finally smiled. “So you planned to kiss me, but you were surprised when it actually happened.”

Amina hesitated, but her husband was patient until she found the right words.

“Not only surprised,” she said. “I was dumbstruck.”

Documentary: Remembrance of Things Present

2010-06-23T16:19:00.000Z

..Point of View..

Synopsis: How to deal with a marriage arranged when one was a child of twelve? What are the answers to the whys and what-ifs of one personal history in a context of general female disempowerment? How to resolve the key conflict of a displaced life after years of nomadic life abroad? Chandra Siddan, a Canadian immigrant, returns to Bangalore, India after 12 years' absence with these questions. Long divorced and newly remarried, she enquires into the reasons for her early first marriage arranged in the mid 70s by her Hindu urban middle-class family and confronts her parents and relatives with her lost childhood, while also presenting them her new husband. Reuniting with her daughter, Smruthi (now in her twenties), Chandra finds her refreshingly liberated. But the life of her parents’ teenage servant, Sudha, shows that that the past is anything but over. Simultaneously a family drama and a social history, "Remembrance of Things Present" rejects a reactionary notion of "home" and theorizes global female migrant labour as an anti-odyssey, a journey without a return.

One more reason to Divorce

2010-06-13T10:00:00.002Z

Now many or any reason is good enough for divorce. but then when someone decides to divorce- do they really need a reason!?

Marriages are no longer made in heaven, nor are they ‘Fevicol ki jodis’. Our society and socio-political structures have changed. Relationships are no longer defined by love or commitment alone. They have Unique Identification Criteria of their own; therefore, I shall desist from making blanket statements on what makes for a good/bad relationship or marriage.

Our parents of course can’t even identify with the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the same breath as ‘marriage’. A marriage, they say, is a bond, not just between two individuals, but between their ‘aatmas’ according to the Sanskrit slokas that we’re expected to repeat after the pundit as we sweat and cramp before the ‘homagni’. So, how can something that God proposes and parents arrange be bad? After all, marriages are still arranged based on astrology, caste, creed, religion, gotras, looks, colour of skin and blood, as well as culinary, housekeeping, and pampering skills, the kind of job you hold and your bank balance, amongst a laundry list of other criteria.

Sadly though, none of the above proves good enough for a marriage to last forever.

Most marriages these days are either a compromise or an abscess that you nurse till it splits open and oozes pus. And that’s when it gets really messy these days. There are theories and conspiracy theories about why marriages don’t work. The most common one being ‘stress’— professional stress, stress at home because the maid didn’t turn up and the ‘man of the house’ won’t lift a finger to help, parenting stress—just name it and it’s stressful. Look at what it did to the supposedly perfect marriage of Al and Tipper Gore, even after 40 years of togetherness. And stress is often the easiest excuse to slip up on commitment leading to emotional infidelity, sometimes even the physical kind and for stoking the killer instinct in you. So, the two supposedly mature adults scream, shout, yell, fight, and hurt each other till they decide they’ve had enough and should now part ways, amicably or otherwise.

When things don’t work, we call it a ‘breakdown’, right? And we need a mechanic to either repair it or tow it away, if it can’t be fixed. That’s where the Indian divorce laws come handy. http://www.indlaw.com/display.aspx?2739
Source: Yahoo

I loved you first: but afterwards your love

2010-06-01T09:27:00.000Z

I loved you first: but afterwards your love by Christina Rossetti

I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

Why do some Relationship Fail?

2010-05-31T22:51:00.000Z

Landed on this.. .thought its interesting to share here..

The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman lays out a relatively simple but profound theory based on a very straight forward framework that may have broad relevance.

He believes that there are 5 primary love languages and everybody has a primary (usually one, maybe two) love language which makes them feel loved. Importantly, their primary love language is not necessarily the way they communicate love to others – but it’s how they feel loved by others. The 5 languages are:

Physical Touch – hugs, kisses, physical play, affection, etc.
Words of Affirmation – words of praise, encouragement, adoration, admiration, etc.
Quality Time – focused, attentive time in a joint activity, conversation, etc.
Gifts – self explanatory: meaningful, thoughtful gifts
Acts of Service – helping out with projects, responsibilities, homework, tasks, etc.
So, that’s the framework. The theory on why some relationships are strained is pretty straight forward:

Everyone has a primary love language – which is how they receive love.
People tend to communicate love to others with their own primary love language.
But, if the other person has a different primary love language, they will not feel loved.
For example – your primary love language may be words of affirmation. But, if your child’s love language is physical touch – no amount of verbal praise will replace your child’s need for hugs, physical play, and so forth. Or your love language may be physical touch, but your spouse’s may be acts of service. So, no amount of affection will replace the love communicated through service acts like cleaning up the house, cooking a meal, or taking out the garbage. That’s why two people in a relationship can be trying hard but not communicating love to each other because they don’t recognize the distinction in each person’s primary love languages.

The book gives more insight into how to determine someone’s primary love language, practical ideas around each love language, and more insight and detail on what each love language means. OK, I never thought I’d write a blog post with the word “love” in it 25 times.

10things Women should know about Men

2010-05-01T10:22:00.000Z

10 Things Every Woman Should Know About a Man's Brain
Most popular notions about the male brain are based on studies of men ages 18 to 22 — undergrads subjecting themselves to experiments for beer money or course credit. But a man's brain varies tremendously over his life span, quickly contradicting the image of the single-minded sex addict that circulates in mainstream consciousness.
From his wandering eye to his desire to mate for life, here's what you need to know about guys' minds:
10. More emotional
9. More vulnerable to loneliness
8. Focused on solutions
7. Hard-wired to check out women
6. Must defend turf
5. Embraces chain of command
4. Matures over time, really
3. Primed for fatherhood
2. Daddy-play
1. Covets wedding bells, too

for more : http://www.livescience.com/culture/male-brains-100409.html

Having More Dating Choices Makes Us Shallower

2010-04-16T14:40:00.002Z

Question: Is it better to have more choices when it comes to love?
Sheena Iyengar: What's interesting is that the way we go about finding our marriage partners today is quite different from the way it used to be in this culture. When you look at… I’ve done a number of studies with speed dating and Match.com and what's interesting is that you know we still walk into a speed dating event, you know, thinking about what it is we’re looking for in a mate and so you ask people, like women will say "I’m looking for somebody who is really kind and sincere and smart and funny." And guys will say looks matter, but they’ll also say things like "Well, she should be smart and kind." And you know those are... so the typical responses and if you give them just a few options, like five or six, then they will rate them on the very characteristics that they said were really important to them. You know if they said kindness or funniness was really most important to them then they will be more likely to say yes to the person that they thought was kind and funny. Now if you expand their choice set–say you give them 20 different speed dates–everything goes out the window. Everybody starts choosing in accordance with looks because that becomes the easiest criteria by which to weed out all the options and decide "So who am I going to say yes to?"

to ruin a Perfectly good Marriage

2010-04-10T23:08:00.001Z

check this funny page..;) HOW TO RUIN A PERFECTLY GOOD MARRIAGE

LET'S FACE IT. THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST YOU: MORE THAN HALF OF ALL MARRIAGES END IN DIVORCE.

"FOR BETTER OR WORSE" CAN GET A LOT WORSE. YOUR MARRIAGE MAY DO EXACTLY WHAT THOSE ANNOYING STATISTICS EXPECT FROM IT. IT MAY SELF-DESTRUCT.

IF YOUR MARRIAGE IS DESTINED TO FAILURE, WHY WASTE TIME WITH IT? WHY NOT GET TO THE INEVITABLE QUICKLY, SO THAT YOU CAN GET ON WITH FINDING THE TRUE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE?

SOME OF THESE TIPS MAY ALREADY BE CHISELING AWAY AT YOUR MARRIAGE. IF SO, CONGRATULATIONS! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning by Haruki Murakami

2010-04-08T23:47:00.001Z

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning by Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can't recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It's weird.

"Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl," I tell someone.

"Yeah?" he says. "Good-looking?"

"Not really."

"Your favorite type, then?"

"I don't know. I can't seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts."

"Strange."

"Yeah. Strange."

"So anyhow," he says, already bored, "what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?"

"Nah. Just passed her on the street."

She's walking east to west, and I west to east. It's a really nice April morning.

Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and - what I'd really like to do - explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world.

After talking, we'd have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.

Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.

Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards.

How can I approach her? What should I say?

"Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?"

Ridiculous. I'd sound like an insurance salesman.

"Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?"

No, this is just as ridiculous. I'm not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who's going to buy a line like that?

Maybe the simple truth would do. "Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me."

No, she wouldn't believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you're not the 100% boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I'd probably go to pieces. I'd never recover from the shock. I'm thirty-two, and that's what growing older is all about.

We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can't bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She's written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she's ever had.

I take a few more strides and turn: She's lost in the crowd.

Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.

Oh, well. It would have started "Once upon a time" and ended "A sad story, don't you think?"

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.

One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street.

"This is amazing," he said. "I've been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you're the 100% perfect girl for me."

"And you," she said to him, "are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I'd pictured you in every detail. It's like a dream."

They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle.

As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one's dreams to come true so easily?

And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, "Let's test ourselves - just once. If we really are each other's 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we'll marry then and there. What do you think?"

"Yes," she said, "that is exactly what we should do."

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.

The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season's terrible inluenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence's piggy bank.

They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love.

Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.

One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% perfect girl for me.

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fouteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.

A sad story, don't you think?

Yes, that's it, that is what I should have said to her.

Research: Wife should be smarter & younger than you

2010-03-31T00:30:00.000Z

The Swiss study, romantically entitled Optimizing the marriage market: An application of the linear assignment model, offers solutions to life's biggest problem. The abstract begins by taking all thoughts of love and passion and tossing them down the chasm of objectivity: "Research shows that the success of marriages and other intimate partnerships depends on objective attributes such as differences in age, cultural background, and educational level."

The highlights are, indeed, a joy to behold, squeeze tightly, and never, ever let go. The perfect wife is five years younger than her husband. She is from the same cultural background. And, please stare at this very carefully: she is at least 27 percent smarter than her husband. Yes, 35 percent smarter seems to be tolerable. But 12 percent smarter seems unacceptable. In an ideal world--which is the goal of every scientist--your wife should have a college degree, and you should not. At least that's what these scientists believe.

I know your bit will already be chomped with your enthusiasm for learning these learned scientists' methodology. Well, they interviewed 1,074 married and cohabiting couples. And they declared, "To produce our optimization model, we use the assumption of a central 'agency' that would coordinate the matching of couples." Indeed.

This optimization led research leader Nguyen Vi Cao to speak with some certainty to the Telegraph: "If people follow these guidelines in choosing their partners, they can increase their chances of a happy, long marriage by up to 20 percent."

Up to? Couldn't they be a little more exact? That 27 percent thing seemed pretty exact.
Still, let me tell you about one of these guidelines: marrying a divorcee makes it far more unlikely that you will be happy. I know, I know. It doesn't seem fair, does it? But science has spoken. And when science speaks, you bow your head until your nose tickles the frigid floor tiles.

Freakonomics: Economic Model of the rise in Premarital Sex

2010-03-29T20:38:00.001Z

Interesting working paper called “From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and its De-Stigmatization” by Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Jeremy Greenwood, and Nezih Guner.

Summary: Societies socialize children about many things, including sex. Socialization is costly. It uses scarce resources, such as time and effort. Parents weigh the marginal gains from socialization against its costs. Those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale indoctrinate their daughters less than others about the perils of premarital sex, because the latter will lose less from an out-of-wedlock birth. Modern contraceptives have profoundly affected the calculus for instilling sexual mores, leading to a de-stigmatization of sex. As contraception has become more effective there is less need for parents, churches and states to inculcate sexual mores. Technology affects culture.

There is something worth unpacking in just about every sentence there. Also worth reading is the authors’ take, empirical and otherwise, on the sexual revolution:
In 1900, only 6% of U.S. women would have engaged in premarital sex by age 19. Now, 75% have experienced this. Public acceptance of this practice reacted with delay. Only 15% of women in 1968 had a permissive attitude toward premarital sex. At the time, though, about 40% of 19-year-old females had experienced it. The number with a permissive attitude had jumped to 45% by 1983, a time when 73% of 19-year-olds were sexually experienced. Thus, societal attitudes lagged practice. Beyond the evolution and acceptance of sexual behavior over time, there are relevant cross-sectional differences across females. In the U.S., the odds of a girl having premarital sex decline with [Ed.: increased] family income. So, for instance, in the bottom decile, 70% of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 have experienced it, versus 47% in the top one. Similarly, 68% of adolescent girls whose family income lies in the upper quartile would feel “very upset” if they got pregnant, versus 46% of those whose family income is in the lower quartile.

In SuperFreakonomics, we relate a parallel statistic concerning men and the sexual revolution:
At least 20 percent of American men born between 1933 and 1942 had their first sexual intercourse with a prostitute. Now imagine that same young man twenty years later. The shift in sexual mores has given him a much greater supply of unpaid sex. In his generation, only 5 percent of men lose their virginity to a prostitute.

I guess India in future, will show similar stats..

Marriage vs Ph.D

2010-03-29T10:56:00.000Z

Research: Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men!

2010-03-26T22:32:00.000Z

Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups. The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband.
..
Researchers admit that looks are subjective, but studies show there are some universal standards, including large eyes, "baby face" features, symmetric faces, so-called average faces, and specific waist-hip ratios in men versus women.
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Past research has shown that individuals with comparable stunning looks are attracted to each other and once they hook up they report greater relationship satisfaction. These studies, however, are mainly based on new couples, showing that absolute beauty is important in the earliest stages of couple-hood, said lead researcher James McNulty of the University of Tennessee. But the role of physical attractiveness in well-established partnerships, such as marriage, is somewhat of a mystery.
..
Men who are more attractive than their partners would theoretically have access to partners who are more attractive than their current spouses, McNulty said. The "grass could be greener" mentality could make these men less satisfied and less committed to maintain the marriage. Physical attractiveness of husbands is not as important to women, the researchers suggest. Rather, wives are looking for supportive husbands, they say. So it seems the mismatch in looks is actually a perfect match. "Equitable is unlikely to mean the same on every dimension," Ariely said during a telephone interview. "It just means that overall two people make sense together."

Full Article @ LiveScience

Research: Google tells what men and women want

2010-03-24T23:09:00.003Z

Given that Mark Zuckerberg has explained to you that privacy is no longer a social norm, your first thought this morning was probably, "How can I get more of my information to be public on Facebook?"

Your second might well have been something to do with improving your current relationship with your beloved.

In a heartwarming analysis of Google searches, Dan Ariely, author of the beautifully named "Predictably Irrational," revealed just how different boyfriends and girlfriends are, when it comes to asking the Google oracle for ways to solve their relationship problems.

Taking the search "How can I get my boyfriend/girlfriend to..." structure, Ariely showed that girls most want to know how to get their boyfriends to propose. Truly, this is one of the most treacherous areas in human life, and I have many deep and forceful opinions on the subject.

Girlfriends are also very keen to know how to get their boyfriends to spend more time with them, love them, and generally be more romantic and less stinky.

Boyfriends, on the other hand, are most concerned to discover how to get their girlfriends to perform oral sex. This revealing bucket of angst is closely followed by the need to get their girlfriends to sleep with them, lose weight, and trust them. Shaving and forgiveness also make an appearance.

While Ariely's discoveries are, well, predictably rational, I decided to take things a step further and discover how these relationships change, once the girlfriend has learned how to get the boyfriend to propose. So I went for the "How can I get my wife/husband to..." paradigm. The last time I enjoyed this much simultaneous fun and tragedy was when I read a Russian novel in a Croatian bar.

You will be moved to tears, or perhaps St. Petersburg, when I tell you that husbands' most frantic search is, "How can I get my wife to love me again."

Before you reach for your handkerchief to dry your eyes, might I tell you that the next most popular googling suggestion is, "How can I get my wife to swing."

You will feel that your world has been temporarily righted when I tell you that the next two pleas involve losing weight and shaving. However, the list is completed with wanting to know how to get your wife to trust you again, love you and, that perennial source of friction, shut up.

What of the wives? Once they are betrothed, do they come to terms with their man's foibles and failings?

Well, the prime Google search for "How can I get my husband to..." is followed by the words "fall in love with me again." Yes, husbands and wives apparently want to be loved by their partners but have no idea how to achieve it.

This plea is followed by wanting their husbands to be "more affectionate" and "to love me again." Forget the "falling in love" part; just give me the basic love thing, these searchers seem to say--the one that involves a little thought and kindness.

Soon, though, the googling warts are exposed. For the next most popular is the need to know how to get the husband to help around the house. This is followed by more intimate needs, like romance and conversation. However, it is rounded out by a need to get husbands to leave the house and stop drinking.

What does this analysis tell us about the state of human relations? Well, there is little hope, isn't there?

Perhaps the planets Mars and Venus will, one day, be the homes of unisexual communities. Once men and women have finally stopped searching for answers even Google can't give them, that is.

Research: Using Math to choose a wife

2010-03-22T22:45:00.006Z

Perhaps the subject most fascinating to me at the moment is the gamble that is involved in choosing a life partner.
Perhaps I have been unnecessarily haunted since research revealed that Facebook destroys romantic relationships. Still, it was quite odd that a man whom I have chosen to follow on Twitter for his remarkable erudition in social psychology (oh, alright, his name is Dominic Johnson) passed along a quite extraordinary article from New Scientist, one that has made me ponder more deeply than I usually care to.

While the article begins by discussing the mathematical ways in which you can improve your chances in Vegas (or, if your taste and eyes have deserted you, Atlantic City), it goes on to discuss the marriage problem. Apparently, mathematicians have tortured themselves over marriage for some years. I did not know this. I figured that perhaps mathematicians only ever had one girlfriend, whom they married very soon after sex.

May I go down on one knee and admit how wrong I was?
Mathematicians have racked their brains and abacuses, for the good of society, in order to help us all choose wisely the person who shares our king-size. According to New Scientist, the law of diminishing returns has long been thought to be a marvelous indicator of when to stick, rather than turn another card.
Naturally, scientific laws have certain suppositions. And at first glance, I considered the idea of having a mere 100 choices a little unrealistic.

However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a little more natural than it might have appeared. We march our way merrily through life, meeting people and declaring them a "yay" or a "nay."

Oh, we have some supposed criteria in our heads about what makes a "yay"- body type, nose shape, or some such nonsense. But commitment is a very hairy creature, one that barks at us more often than it sings.
So for a long time, mathematicians believed that, given 100 choices (each of which has to be chosen or discarded after the interview) you should discard the first 50 and then choose the next best one. (The assumption also is that if you don't choose the first 99, you have to choose number 100, which, again, seems rather realistic to me. I know so many people who have chosen the last resort out of perceived necessity rather than, say, happiness.)

The "Discard 50 then Choose the Next Best" method apparently gives you a 25 percent chance of choosing the best candidate.

However, then along came John Gilbert and Frederick Mosteller of Harvard University. I do not believe they were married. However, they came upon the idea that the magic number is, in fact, 37. Yes, you should stop after 37 candidates and choose the next best one. This number was apparently derived by taking the number 100 and dividing by e, the base of the natural logarithms (around 2.72). And it apparently increases your chances of the best choice to 37 percent.
Here's the real beauty of this calculation, though. You don't have to limit yourself to 100. This optimization works for any population. So if you have a world of 26 potential life partners, simply divide by 2.72 and choose the next best one.
Now, I know it is sometimes hard to know exactly how many potential partners are in your firmament. But it is surely not beyond some calculation.

We need a little more stability in this world. We need more happiness. And we need just a little more good judgment. It seems that only math can save us.

There is a small word of warning, however. Some psychologists, such as JoNell Strough at West Virginia University, believe that the more we invest (in a gambling and, one supposes, marriage context), the more likely our decision will be attached to disaster.

However, I would be interested whether any of you number-conscious geniuses out there have also used mathematical principles to choose your betrothed. Perhaps you have done it more than once, but we would still love to hear your number-based criteria.

Source: Cnet

Research: Living together Doesn’t make Marriage Last

2010-03-07T10:03:00.004Z

Couples who live together before they get married are less likely to stay married, a new study has found. But their chances improve if they were already engaged when they began living together.

The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first, the study found.

The study of men and women ages 15 to 44 was done by the National Center for Health Statistics using data from the National Survey of Family Growth conducted in 2002. The authors define cohabitation as people who live with a sexual partner of the opposite sex.

“From the perspective of many young adults, marrying without living together first seems quite foolish,” said Prof. Pamela J. Smock, a research professor at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “Just because some academic studies have shown that living together may increase the chance of divorce somewhat, young adults themselves don’t believe that.”

The authors found that the proportion of women in their late 30s who had ever cohabited had doubled in 15 years, to 61 percent.

Half of couples who cohabit marry within three years, the study found. If both partners are college graduates, the chances improve that they will marry and that their marriage will last at least 10 years.

“The figures suggest to me that cohabitation is still a pathway to marriage for many college graduates, while it may be an end in itself for many less educated women,” said Kelly A. Musick, a professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell.

Couples who marry after age 26 or have a baby eight months or more after marrying are also more likely to stay married for more than a decade.

“Cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first co-residential union formed among young adults,” the study said. “As a result of the growing prevalence of cohabitation, the number of children born to unmarried cohabiting parents has also increased.”

By the beginning of the last decade, a majority of births to unmarried women were to mothers who were living with the child’s father. Just two decades earlier, only a third of those births were to cohabiting couples.

The study found that, over all, 62 percent of women ages 25 to 44 were married and 8 percent were cohabiting. Among men, the comparable figures were 59 percent and 10 percent.

In general, one in five marriages will dissolve within five years. One in three will last less than 10 years. Those figures varied by race, ethnicity and sex. The likelihood of black men and women remaining married for 10 years or more was 50 percent. The probability for Hispanic men was the highest, 75 percent. Among women, the odds are 50-50 that their marriage will last less than 20 years.

The survey found that about 28 percent of men and women had cohabitated before their first marriage and that about 7 percent lived together and never married. About 23 percent of women and 18 percent of men married without having lived together.

Women who were not living with both of their biological or adoptive parents at 14 were less likely to be married and more likely to be cohabiting than those who grew up with both parents.

The share who had ever married varied markedly by race and ethnicity: 63 percent of white women, 39 percent of black women and 58 percent of Hispanic women. Among men in that age group, the differences were less striking. Fifty-three percent of white men, 42 percent of black men and 50 percent of Hispanic men were married or had been previously married at the time of the survey.

By their early 40s, most white and Hispanic men and women were married, but only 44 percent of black women were.

Source: Nytimes.com

Relationship Traditions of tribe in India

2010-02-19T22:42:00.000Z

This documentary (video is in tamil without subtitles) explains very old tradition of tribe in south part of India(from the region where I came from) about their live-in relationships and how people there give less importance for marriage. They believe its important to be with someone who they love and all other things are not mandatory. They have no religious beliefs & they have rejected modernity. Its very interesting to learn about their love, trust, acceptance and simplicity of the lifestyle.

And To me- its yet another eye opening, joyfully experience of learning yet another culture & tradition of India and her diversity.

Love explained

2010-02-18T22:31:00.005Z

Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropologist, is a Research Professor and member of the Center for Human Evolution Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site, Chemistry.com, a division of Match.com. She has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love. Helen Fisher's full Interview

Question: What are the three brain systems for love?

Helen Fisher: I do think that we’ve evolved three distinctly different brain systems for love. One is the sex drive, the craving for sexual gratification. The second one is romantic love, that elation, the giddiness, the euphoria, the obsession, the craving of passionate, obsessive love. And the third is attachment. That sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.

And rather than being stages, these three brain systems can operate, really in any kind of combination. I mean, you could walk into a party, you’re ready to fall in love, you talked to somebody, they say just the perfect joke and they’re the right size and shape and height and background, and boom. You trigger the brain system for romantic love. And then, once you’ve fallen in love with them, you feel very sexually drawn to them. Or, you can start out with a sexual relationship with somebody and then fall in love with them. Or, you can know somebody for many years. Maybe it’s a boyfriend of a friend of yours and you’re married to somebody else and then times change, people become available and suddenly you’ve fallen in love with somebody who you’ve had a deep and very nice friendship with. So, any one of these brain systems can happen first; attachment, romantic love, or the sex drive.

Question: What does the brain look like when it’s in love?

Helen Fisher: Everybody’s always wondered what happens in the brain when you’ve fallen in love, and we all know actually how you feel when you fall in love. But actually, what happens in the brain is, a tiny little factory near the base of the brain called the ventral tegmental area become active, and in some particular cells, called the A10 cells, they begin to make dopamine. Dopamine is a natural stimulant. And from the ventral tegmental area it’s sent too many brain regions, particularly the reward system; the brain system for wanting, for craving, for seeking, for addiction, for motivation and in this case, the motivation to win life’s greatest prize, which is a good mating partner.

Question: Can casual sex trigger love?

Helen Fisher: I think that all three of these brain systems can interact with one another, particularly when you have sex with somebody. Any kind of sexual stimulation of the genitals triggers the dopamine system in the brain and can push you over that threshold into falling in love with that person. And in fact, with orgasm, there’s a real flood of oxytocin and vasopressin, other chemicals in the brain associated with the feeling of deep attachment. So, casual sex is really never casual unless you’re so drunk you can’t remember it; something happens. As a matter of fact, in one study of over a thousand people, over 50% of both men and women reported that their first kiss of somebody was sort of the kiss of death. They had begun quite attracted to a person sexually and romantically and then when they kissed them, it was so horrible for them that it turned them off completely. So, casual sex is just plain old not casual. Something can happen. You can either fall madly in love with this person, or you can begin a deep sense of attachment to them.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been working with a graduate student named Justin Garcia, and he and I believe that people go into hookups, or one-night stands hoping to trigger a longer relationship. And in fact, in a study that he did of 515 men and women in a college in the northeast, he asked them why they went into this hookup; this one-night stand. Fifty percent of women and 52% of men reported that they went into the sexual experience hoping to trigger a longer relationship, and in fact, 1/3 of them did.

So, consciously, when people go into the one-night stands, they probably aren’t thinking, oh, I’m going to trigger the brain system, or the dopamine system in the brain and make this person fall in love with me, but somehow, intuitively, they know that sex is powerful and that it can trigger powerful feelings of love.

Question: Can we learn to love people that off the bat might not seem like they’re for us?

Helen Fisher: Yeah. I think you can learn to love people who you absolutely would reject if you saw them on paper, or even looked at them in a picture because people grow on you. And if they fit within your love map, your unconscious list of what you’re looking for in a partner at all, the data shows that the more you see them, the more you like them, and the more you regard them as similar to yourself.

So, that’s one of the big problems in courtship is we give up too fast. We overweight what we don’t like about a person and don’t proceed to overlook that and move on and find out what we really like. As a matter of fact, I often say to people who are dating, “Stop looking for what’s wrong with this person and start looking for what’s right, and then focus on that.”

Question: Is everyone born to love?

Helen Fisher: In my reading, I have found that occasionally there is a human being that has never felt intense romantic love. I personally have met two people who had never felt it until their mid-50’s. Both of them were happily married, one man, one woman, both of them had children with their partner; both had built a very nice social life, and personal life, and good marriage. But they had never felt that intense romantic love. And both of them actually said the same thing to me. They said, “I would go to something like Romeo and Juliet, and I just didn’t understand why people would be killing themselves over this.” And then both of them fell in love with somebody in their mid-50’s. On both cases, it was not their spouse. In both cases, they chose not to pursue the relationship with the other person, and stayed with their partner with whom they were feeling deep attachment. So, there are people who have never felt romantic love, but the vast majority of us do.

I and my colleagues have put 49 people who were madly in love into a brain scanner, 17 who had just fallen love, 15 who had just been rejected in love, and 15 who reported that they were still in love after an average of 21 years of marriage. And in all cases, we found activity in parts of the brain that are so primitive, so primordial, so old. As a matter of fact, I think that no only all human beings, or almost all human beings, around the world love and always have. But I think that other animals too fall in love also. I mean, you can see a fox in the beginning of the mating season. He will focus on a particular female. He’s got intense energy, the way you do when you fall in love. He doesn’t eat or sleep. He’s constantly nuzzling up against her and licking her face and patting her body. If you saw this on a park bench in New York City, you would think that this was romantic love. And in two species they’ve actually measured some of what happens in the brain during that moment of attraction and you see the same dopamine activity. Different parts of the brain, but you see an elevation of dopamine activity in other animals the way you do in people.

So, we inherited the drive to love. It is a drive. It’s a basic, not even mammalian, you see it in birds. As a matter of fact, Darwin described love at first sight among two ducks.

Question: What is love?

Helen Fisher: Love is a lot of things to a lot of different people, but I do think that we all have inherited these three basic brain systems for mating and reproduction; the sex drive, romantic love, and deep feelings of attachment. But when you take a look around the world at world poetry, I think poetry is a very good litmus test. I think poetry is a very good indication of the emotions. And all over the world you see the same descriptions of romantic love. For example, the first thing that happens when you fall in love is a person takes on what I call “special meaning.” As George Bernard Shaw said, He said, “Love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another.” And indeed, we do. And then you focus on this person. That person’s car is different from any other car in the parking lot. The street they live on is different, the music they like is different. Everything about them is special and you focus on it. In fact, before I began putting people into the brain scanner, I would ask them, what do you not like about your sweetheart? And they would list what they didn’t like and then they would sweep that aside and just focus on what they did like.

Another basic characteristic of romantic love is intense energy. You can walk all night and talk til dawn, real mood swings, elation when things are going well, crashing into terrible despair when you don’t get an email, or don’t get a call, real possessiveness, it’s called “mate guarding” among animals. Most people don’t care if they’re casually sleeping with somebody. They don’t care if that person is sleeping with somebody else, but when you’re in love, you really care.

But the three main characteristics of romantic love are: intense craving for emotional union with this person. You like to sleep with them, but real emotional union with them, and intense motivation to win them, what people will do when they’re in love. And last, but no least, obsessive thinking. You can’t stop thinking about this person. Somebody is camping in your head. It’s also quite uncontrollable. Stendahl once said, “Love is like a fever. It comes and goes quite independently of the will.” And indeed it does. It just visits you. The brain system becomes triggered and you’re off to the races.

Question: Does passion diminish after a certain amount of years?

Helen Fisher: I think that most people believe that romantic love dies after a certain number of weeks, months, or years. But my colleagues and I have actually proved that wrong. The first author on our most recent brain scanning study is Bianca Casavedo. And Bianca, and the rest of us, wanted to see what happens in the brain among people who report that they are still in love, not loving, but in love with somebody after an average of 21 years of marriage. And so, in New York, we put 17 people who said they were still in love with their spouse into the brain scanner and we found exactly the same activity in this tiny little factory near the base of the brain that we found among those who had just fallen madly in love in the ventral tegmental area.

So, you can sustain romantic love long-term. But we did find one difference. When you just fallen in love, we find activity in a brain region associated with anxiety, and among those who were in love long-term, that has disappeared, and instead you now feel a sense of calm. And so what I think is going on among people who are in love long-term is they still want that man to come home for dinner and they still want to sit down and talk about the day and they still want to go on that vacation together, and they want to share their lives, they’re not thinking of divorce, they feel that sense of romance and tingling sensation. But if they don’t get a phone call at lunchtime, they don’t crumble in a corner and cry. That anxiety is replaced with calm.

Question: What are the differences in relationships that start in high school versus later in life relationships?

Helen Fisher: I haven’t studied the differences in the brain between those who met in high school and those who met later in life. But I do think that those who met in high school have some wonderful advantages. And that is that they know each other’s parents, they knew the dog that she grew up with and his younger sister, and the fact that he was a high school star and that she was wonderful at the Jitter Bug, at dancing. You know, they have all those memories that are wonderful. This is one of the reasons I think that, there’s a real trend right now of older people divorcing and then finding their first love on the Internet and falling in love with somebody who they really were in love with in high school. And they do have that advantage of this understanding of the house they grew up in, the kind of car that he drove, etc., etc.; the kinds of things that really bring continuity.

As a matter of fact, I’ve interviewed some of these people who had reconnected much later. And one of them was a couple, they were probably both in their 60’s, and I asked him whether she had changed at all. And he said, “Not at all.” And then I saw photographs of the two of them in high school standing in front of a Christmas tree and I could see them clearly now. And they were so dramatic – I mean they both gained 100 pounds, they were so dramatically different. But once you get a vision of who this person is, if you can hold on to this, you will create a happy relationship.

Question: What are the similarities and differences between how men and women define intimacy?

Helen Fisher: I’m working with the dating site, Chemistry.com, which is a division of Match.com. And I’ve put a questionnaire on that dating site and 5 million people have taken that questionnaire. Any way, about 12,000 take that questionnaire every week. And so, about a month ago, I put an intimacy scale onto that dating site to see whether there were some gender differences, and with the different types of personalities regarded intimacy differently. And I found no gender difference on two questions. Ninety-five percent of both men and women agreed that they felt it was extremely intimate to go off and do something adventurous with their partner. And 95% agreed, men and women, that having a deep conversation about the relationship was intimate.

So, I’m beginning to think that we don’t understand men anymore than we understand women. As a matter of fact, men fall in love faster than women do because they are so visual. Men are more dependent on their girlfriends and wives because they’ve got fewer intimate connections with other men. Men are two and a half times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship is over, and men are more likely to remarry after a spouse has died or deserted them. So, I think as we come to understand women, I think we are also going to come to understand men.

There’s one difference in intimacy between men and women that I think comes out of our evolutionary past. Women tend to get intimacy out of face-to-face talking. We swivel until we are right in front of each other, we lock eyes with what is called “the anchoring gaze,” and we talk. And we regard that as intimate.

And men tend to sit side-by-side and look straight forward and not look at each other at all and regard that as intimate. And I think they both come from our evolutionary past. I think women’s intimacy comes from millions of years of holding their baby in front of their face, cajoling it, reprimanding it, educating it with words. And so words and face-to-face contact is intimate to women.

Whereas, I think for millions of years, men had to sit behind a bush on the grasslands of Africa and keep their eye on the grasslands hoping a zebra is going to come by so that they can hit it in the head with a rock and they can’t be sitting there talking with somebody like this. They’ve got to talk while they’re looking forward. And I think this can complicate relationships. You’ll see a man and a woman on a park bench and the man is talking looking straight ahead, and the women has moved every single part of her body around in order to have eye contact.

As a matter of fact, I’ve had various men in my life who talk to me with their eyes completely shut and I think it’s because it’s too intimate for them. I mean, for millions of years men faced their enemies, they really sat side-by-side with friends. So, one of the things that I do with a man to make him comfortable is sit side-by-side with him and look straight ahead; particularly if I’m going to have a difficult conversation with him.

Question: Is it true that men have a propensity for cheating more than women?

Helen Fisher: I’ve looked at adultery in 42 societies and you see in every single place, even in cultures where you can get your head chopped of for it. So, there’s every reason to think that we’ve got some biological propensities for it. Now, people say, no, to adultery. We don’t have to be adulterous, but it’s remarkable how many people are. And the newest data that in people under age 40, women are just as adulterous as men. And so, I suspect that the last 10,000 years of keeping women in the kitchen and the home has – and the very strict rules against female adultery in many societies has curbed female adultery so that we think that only men do it. But the bottom line is that every single time there’s a man who is sleeping around, he is quite often sleeping around with a woman. And so just doing the math you begin to assume that women are probably just as adulterous as men.

But I actually think that men and women are in a sort of collusion about this. Men want to think that men are more adulterous than women and women want men to think that men are more adulterous than women. So, we’ve got ourselves believing that men are more adulterous.

There’s a great deal of data over the last, oh the data goes back to the 1920’s anyway, that men are more adulterous. And what’s interesting is that the degree of adultery hasn’t changed a great deal. Today, the indication is, for the general population, about 1/3 of men will be adulterous at some point during their marriage, and about 15% of women will be adulterous at some point during their marriage. But as I say, among people under the age of 40, it seems to be the same amount for women as well as men.

Question: Do you agree with phrase, “once a cheater, always a cheater?”

Helen Fisher: I don’t think a person is always a cheater. No, there’s always variations here. I study personality types. And the kind of person who is very expressive of the dopamine system, I call them the explorer, they tend to be novelty seeking, risk taking, curious, creative, spontaneously generous. They’re the kind who will walk into a bar and buy everybody a drink, irreverent; they don’t follow the rules unless they make sense for them, quite liberal, very adaptable and flexible. And I would guess that this particular personality type would be more inclined to adultering.

However, when you find the right person, I would guess there’s a lot of people who have been adulterous for a good deal of their lives and then they get tired of it. They find the really the right person for them, the kind of person that will get off the couch and go straight to Saudi Arabia on vacation, or straight to Ireland for a particular song festival, or they finally find somebody who can play as hard and fast and is a sexual as they are, or they find somebody who they respect so much that they don’t want to risk it. I do think people change.

You know, some people have a tendency towards alcoholism and they give up drinking. Some people certainly have a tendency towards smoking cigarettes and they give up cigarettes. Some people succeed in giving up gambling, or losing weight. We do all kinds of thing with our lives that we biologically might no be inclined to do. And I think adultery is one. People can give up adultery. However, I do think that this evolved, this restlessness in long relationships evolved and we do, as a species have a tendency towards adultery.

Question: Why are we attracted to some people and not others?

Helen Fisher: Nobody knows. This is what we do know. This is what psychologists know. They do know that we tend to fall in love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same ethnic background, same general level on intelligence, same general of good looks, same religious and social values. We tend to be drawn to somebody who can give us the lifestyle that we are looking for. Our childhood certainly plays a role, and we are now beginning to find some biological things that draw you to some people rather than others. New data shows that women with a particular immune system are drawn to men who have an opposite immune system. So, there’s a lot of factors. Timing plays a role, proximity plays a role. There’s many factors in who you love, who you choose.

But I began to – I mean, you can walk into a room and everybody is from your background, same general level of intelligence, same general level of attractiveness and you don’t fall in love with all of them. So, why is it that we’re almost chemically pulled to one person rather than another? So, I wanted to see if I could figure out the role of basic body chemistry. And so I looked through a whole lot of biological data and there’s a lot of chemicals in the brain, but most of those keep the eyes blinking, or help with swallowing, or keep the heart beating, etc. Not many of them are linking with personality traits.

Four chemicals, actually six chemicals are related to personality traits. So, I wrote down on separate sheets of paper all of those traits associated with the dopamine system, the serotonin system, the testosterone system, and the last being the estrogen and the oxytocin system. And then I decided I would create a questionnaire to see to what degree you express these four basic biological systems. We all express all of them, but we express some more than others. And then I would watch on this dating site, Chemistry.com, and see not only what you’re chemistry was, but who you were naturally drawn to. And as it turns out, people who are very expressive of the dopamine system go for people like themselves. If you are high energy, very curious, have a lot of interests, love novelty, willing to take risks to do new things. You want somebody like yourself. And It’s not just jumping off mountains. I mean, it’s somebody that will go to the opera with you, the theater with you, art exhibits with you, etc.

So, the “explorer,” what I call the explorer, the high dopamine type, tends to go for people like themselves. So does the high serotonin type. I call these people the “builder,” Plato called them the “guardian.” That’s a better term. These people are cautious, but not fearful. They’re conventional, traditional, they are calm, social, they’re very managerial, they’re very thorough, orderly, conscientious, and loyal. They want somebody like themselves. Serotonin goes with serotonin. But the last two types, people who are expressive of the testosterone system go for people who are expressive of the estrogen system.

But the last two types, those of who are expressive of the testosterone system, both men and women, tend to be attracted to those who are their opposites; those who are expressive of the estrogen system. I think a very good example is Hillary and Bill Clinton. She is, I think, very expressive of the testosterone system; direct, decisive, tough-minded, certainly very ambitious, self-contained, and what does she go? She goes for Bill; very much of the high estrogen. He’s probably got high testosterone too, but he’s certainly high estrogen. I mean, he cries when Hillary makes a speech, he feels everybody’s pain. He sees the big picture. The whole world knows he can’t stop talking; his linguistic skills are in the estrogen system. He’s got wonderful people skills. I’m glad the government sent him into North Korea to get those two girls out rather than his wife.

But anyway, the high estrogen and the high testosterone tend to be attracted to each other. And what I think they’re doing from a Darwinian perspective is pooling very different resources. I think the tough-minded high testosterone, what I call the “director,” needs the compassion and the empathy and the people skills of the high estrogen type. And I think the high estrogen type needs the decisiveness, the directness, the ambitiousness of the high testosterone type. So, I think we’ve evolved three really different way of playing the mating game. I think that the high testosterone and high estrogen are pooling very different resources to raise their babies. They’ve got very find strength between the two of them. I think that the very traditional type, what I call the “builder,” is capitalizing on very powerful strengths for raising babies when they marry another builder. This other person is going to respect the rules, they’re going to follow traditions, and they’re going to be loyal. It’s a very strong combination for raising babies.

But I wondered, why is it that two of the explorer types, the high dopamine types, if they’re both great adventurers, who’s going to take care of the baby while they race off to climb Mt. Everest? It began to occur to me, maybe, and I don’t have the data on this yet, maybe these people are more likely to have a series of marriages. What I call serial monogamy and have children with each different marriage, in which case they’re creating more genetic variety in their young. So, there are three different ways of passing your DNA onto tomorrow.

Question: Is technology like online dating changing the way we fall and stay in love?

Helen Fisher: I think that online dating is just the newest way of doing the same old thing. As a matter of fact, I think it’s actually a little bit more natural. First of all, people are doing it and a lot more people are going to do it and they’re going to do it because we are no longer marrying the boy we met in high school. We’re not marrying the girl we met in college. We’re not even marrying in our early 20’s, and by your late 20’s you sort of know everybody in the office and you’ve gone through all of those boys. You know, you’ve met everybody in your social circle. Where are you going to meet people? And also with a very high divorce rate, there’s a lot of people who are back in the dating game in their mid-30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and higher. And you can’t stand in the middle of Park Avenue in New York City and flap your dress up and down. I mean, at some point you’ve to go find a new way of social networking and all of these dating services are doing that. And among the young people it’s Twitter and Facebook and other social networks. So, I think that the human animal loves. We’re born to love. And we do it all our lives. It’s the same brain system whether you’re 10 years old, or whether you’re 90 years old. Children do fall in love. The sexual component might not be there, but they will become intensely attracted to another child. And certainly older people fall in love. There’s good data now the brain system does not change with age. And we’ve got a society where people are very peripatetic and almost nomadic, and all of these Internet dating sites are a way to meet new people.

And in many respects, I think that it’s actually more natural. I know that sounds odd because we’re used to walking into a bar and going up and talking to somebody who we don’t know anything about them, we don’t know if they’re married, we don’t know if they’re in town for the night. We know nothing about them and yet we seem to think that’s natural. But actually, it’s much more natural to meet somebody having already known what they do for a living, how old they are, what some of their goals are, what their interests are.

You know for millions of years, we traveled in these little hunting and gathering bands on the grasslands of Africa. And a young girl might not know that cute boy over in the next fireplace, but her father knows his uncle, her mother knows his niece, and there’s so many gossip circles that she can find out probably in an hour whether he’s a good dancer, whether he’s got a good sense of humor, whether he’s likely to be a loyal partner. And so with these new networking sites, you do get to know some basic things about somebody before you meet them, and that’s more natural.

Question: When it comes to the brain, are there differences between heterosexual and homosexual love?

Helen Fisher: I’ve always maintained that it’s exactly the same brain system. I mean, gay or straight have the same brain system for fear. They’ve got the same brain system for curiosity. They’ve got the same brain system for stubbornness. And I think that the brain system for romantic love is exactly the same. Who you fall in love with, that’s different. But how you feel when you love, that I think is the same. And I did a questionnaire study of 800 people; 400 in the United States and 400 in Japan. And I had quite a significant homosexual sub-population who took my questionnaire and I didn’t find any difference at all in the basic characteristics between those who expressed romantic love and were heterosexual and those that were homosexual.

I think we actually make too much of homosexuality, it’s a little like we made too much of skin color, and now we’re making too much of homosexuality because, as I say, whether you’re a curious person doesn’t mean – whether you’re gay or straight doesn’t add to whether you are curious or whether you’re good at math or whether you’ve got a good sense of humor, or we seem to – I think we way over misunderstood how small the part of the brain that it.

Question: What has been the strangest reaction from somebody who finds out what you do for a living?

Helen Fisher: I’ll never forget the moment, and it’s only happened a few times, and it was a very fancy room full of people with black tie, not that they’re any smarter, but I thought they might be a little bit more educated. And it was a woman, and I don’t know how we got on to what I did, and I started talking about love and the brain. And she looked at me and said, “Why would you want to know?”

I couldn’t understand it at first because I’m so curious about it, and I finally began to realize she felt that knowing more about romantic love would spoil it and she wanted to keep it in the supernatural. And my real response to that is, you know, I do know a good deal about romantic love, but you know, you can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake and then sit down and eat that cake and feel that rush of joy in the same way that you can know everything there is, or a great deal about romantic love and still feel that intense passion just the way anybody else does. But what it’s really done for me is dramatically expanded my sense of unity I think with all humanity.

I will look in a museum at a little bracelet that somebody dug up from 20,000 years ago and I think somebody gave that bracelet to somebody, somebody wore it. Somebody was in love. Poetry from around the world. I mean, I look at a baby carriage now and I say, “Oh boy, are you in for something.” But there’s continuity when you begin to study romantic love. You feel the deep passion of just about everybody on earth.

Valentine's Day Expectations: Men v Women

2010-02-16T22:14:00.001Z

Every year its the same valentine's Day claim of "Love is in the air", but what do the men and women really want from this romantic day? Thanks to the scientific art of making sweeping generalizations and handy old school Excel graphs, it turns out!

;)

Committed

2010-02-05T14:27:00.000Z

I haven't read Liz Gilbert..but I was impressed with Tedtalk about Creativity. Seems like books are creating good debate.

from theSmartSet.com, I find this interesting article.
In 2008, Lori Gottlieb wrote an essay for The Atlantic entitled "Marry Him!: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough." She argued for a lowering of expectations, the deflating of the fairy tale expectation of a Prince Charming. There is no perfect man, and if you reject someone because he does not match your ideal vision — if he's a little short, if he's not as ambitious as you would like, if he doesn't make as much money as you — then you could be missing out on the perfect match. It almost sounds sane, until you start reading Gottlieb a little more deeply.

"Marry Him" the article is now Marry Him the book, and it gives me the creepy crawlies. In it, Gottlieb compares being single at 40 to being thrown out a windshield and lying brain dead on the pavement. She portrays women as their grossest stereotype, of being out to trap men, of being willing to slit the throat of their best friends for a chance with a guy, of being power hungry bitches. Marry Him didn't need to be a book. I appreciate what it purports to say — "Don't be a shallow asshole." After all, no one wants to live a life without love. But Marry Him wants you to be afraid: afraid of being alone, of social shame, of not being perfect. It's two steps away from using the word "spinster," declaring that a life without a man is not worth living and reminding you that if you don't get married, there will be no one to stop your pet dog from feasting on your corpse when you drop dead in your lonely little apartment. They won't even find you until your body fluids start dripping through the downstairs neighbor's ceiling.

Spinster fear is a serious stressor. And it's not just Gottlieb. An entire industry of self-help books, sitcoms, romantic comedies, seminars, scientific studies, magazines, and Web sites are designed to pressure you about your marriagability. "Don't waste the pretty!" He's Just Not That Into You said, reminding us that our attractiveness is an asset with an expiration date. "You're more likely to be killed in a terrorist attack than get married after 40!" Newsweek famously declared. "Better have your babies now, while you still can!" yelled 60 Minutes. And in the middle of all that, one woman cried out, "Fuck this." She decided she didn't want the life of so many women — the ones buying the Gottlieb book — want: the marriage, the house in the suburbs, motherhood. She wanted something else, but she had no idea what that something else was. And that led Elizabeth Gilbert to her bathroom floor, depressed and suicidal, sobbing night after night. But I think that's what some depressive episodes are: the soul going on strike, or yelling, "Fuck this." Gilbert finally made it off the floor, got a divorce, and figured out a way to keep herself alive while she restructured her life. Being a writer, she wrote a book about it. And it sold millions and millions of copies and made Elizabeth Gilbert a household name.

Then the backlash began: I have been having an argument about Elizabeth Gilbert for the past two years. A male friend e-mailed once asking if I had read Eat, Pray, Love, and if I had, what I had thought of it. The argument that started that day still has not ended. I thought it was good, I told him. The first section (Eat, Italy) was great, the second (Pray, India) good, the third (Love, Indonesia) barely OK, but I appreciated that the book existed. It can be extraordinarily painful to rebuild your life from the ground up and not simply use the model you've been provided, and I'm glad a massively bestselling book said that. And him? Oh how he hates Elizabeth Gilbert. And he hates that women are reading her. If a man wrote a book about ogling young Italians and abandoning a spouse back home to run away with a much hotter Brazilian, my friend argued, he would be pilloried for being a misogynist asshole. To which I responded, Do you honestly think that book has not been written in different forms by men, over and over again? Have you read any 20th-century literature?

Six months later we found ourselves at a bar, and out of nowhere he says, "You know, you look a little like Elizabeth Gilbert," and the fight began anew. Maybe it was the whiskey, but his argument changed. "Men have been told for years that women want security and a good husband and kids, and now this! How are we supposed to know what to do?" (My friend, as much as I adore him, does not see the irony in saying this while himself being in his late 30s, traveling the world as his job, unmarried and writing about a beautiful woman he was ogling in India.) How bizarre to hear him echoing the crazy online commenters that show up on Amazon or under interviews with Gilbert on NPR's Web site. "I wont rant against feminism here as I think it has some positive aspects but I will say I think the subject of both books seems incredibly self-serving and shallow. Which I think sometimes feminism mistakes as a quality they wish to emulate of the old male dominated order." It wasn't just the men — women scolded Gilbert as well, suggesting she should just accept her lot, stay at home, and have the babies we should all be having. They had to, so why should she get away with not going through the motions?

These are the accusations against Elizabeth Gilbert I have read: treacly, annoying, feminist, insincere, spoiled. Then there are the more brutal ones: bitch, dyke, cunt. The most common, however, was "selfish." How dare she? How dare she leave her husband to travel? How dare she write a book about it? How dare she fall in love again? And with a Brazilian! How dare she... what? Attain happiness? Or at the very least, put a stop to her death wish? That bitch, that dyke, how dare she walk away from her man?! Doesn't she understand that this is the shameful masculine territory? It's just as bad when men do it — we're not saying it isn't! — but women are supposed to be above all that, all of that free will stuff. Really. How dare she?

Now of course there is the follow-up, a book examining the state of marriage after Gilbert discovered she had to marry her Brazilian lover for him to attain citizenship. As a history of marriage, Committed is a thoroughly unnecessary book. There are a ton of books on the market telling us that marriage is a raw deal for women. Men thrive in marriage, they are healthier, they earn more money, they are happier. These gains appear to be at the expense of women, as they do not thrive in marriage. Quite the opposite. There are the added hours of housework, a decline in earning power, the depressed libido. Then there are the rates of divorce and infidelity, that sticky statistic about the chances of a woman being murdered by her husband. We know all this, and we get married anyway. If this is the paradigm, why do we cling so tightly to it? And why do we freak out when someone rejects it?

But what's good about Committed is what's good about Eat, Pray, Love. While Eat, Pray, Love is the result of a very painful process, Committed is a clear-eyed examination of the negotiation of a relationship and the struggle to create a supportive partnership after coming out of a traumatic one. Sure, both books kind of fall apart, they are not stylistically daring, and Committed is kind of boring and just rehashes a lot of Stephanie Coontz's vastly superior Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. It's value lies in that it's about how we get married despite all the bad news, and how, if we go into it really knowing what we're up against, we can create new types of marriages. Marriages where one partner is not unconsciously lifted at the expense of the other.

Like a lot of people who care about books and writing and sentence structure, I was initially horrified at the success at Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Then I realized what it meant: 80 million people read a book about the removal of femininity from the Catholic Church, about how Jesus liked women and prostitutes and screw-ups and freaks, about how the Bible was edited by men in power, about how Jesus' divinity was not universally accepted. They read the book, and now it's in their brains, like a vaccination against patriarchal monotheism, even if they don't do anything with the information. Even if the people who read Elizabeth Gilbert's books now only toss them away and grumble ''How dare she?,'' Gilbert's sincerity about figuring out a new way to be in the world are now out there. It won't rid the world of its Lori Gottliebs, the fearmongers and the scolds, but the books can create little antibodies in the culture, boosting our immune system against them.

Couple's ReTreat

2010-02-05T11:31:00.000Z

Men Cheat mostly but women do too

2010-01-29T15:06:00.003Z

Like years past, this one has been a whopper for high-profile philanderers. Psychologists aren't surprised, as guys are wired to want sex, a lot, and are more likely than gals to cheat. The behavior may be particularly likely for men with power, researchers say, though they point out that despite the genetic propensity to sleep around, cheating remains a choice, not a DNA-bound destiny.

The list of powerful individuals whose marital transgressions came out this year includes Tiger Woods, David Letterman, former senator John Edwards and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

The obvious question, perhaps most perplexing when it comes to wealthy men who had beautiful wives and seemingly enviable lives: "What were they thinking?"

Turns out, they may not have been thinking consciously about the acts at all.

"I'm guessing these things don't happen at the forefront of their brain," said Scott Reynolds, assistant professor of business ethics at the University of Washington in Seattle. "They aren't things he sits down and calculates out. It's in the background."

Even if their brains did register the infidelities, high-profile philanderers have so much power and control over their lives they likely couldn't imagine getting caught, scientists say. And with past as their guide (wins on the links for Woods and the Hill for Edwards), even if they did get caught, they could control the fallout and stay on top.

Some indiscretions were more surprising than others, with Mr. Family Values — Edwards — coming to mind. The acts are not so surprising for scientists who study this stuff, however. They know that even the most upright, squeaky-clean person can have an extramarital affair, and perhaps they are more likely to do so.

"People don't necessarily practice what they preach," said Lawrence Josephs, a clinical psychologist at Adelphi University in New York. "It's not clear to what extent people's ethical values are actually running what they do or don't do."

Case in point: "The Playboy subscription rate is highest in the Bible Belt," Josephs told LiveScience.

Whatever the cause of each extramarital act, mistresses and multiple romantic partners are here to stay, scientists say.

Sowing seeds

From an evolutionary perspective, men are here to sow their seeds. They desire more sexual partners and even lower their standards when it comes to one-night stands, studies have shown.

"Guys would naturally be more promiscuous if given the opportunity," said Daniel Kruger, a social and evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health.

Add status and power to the mix and extramarital affairs are par for the course.

"These people are not only high in power, but also somebody like Tiger Woods is going to be traveling a lot and have a lot more opportunities to meet women," Kruger said. "Women fawn over these guys."

Guys can get a biochemical boost as levels of testosterone increase when they, say, win an election or a big tournament, Kruger said.

"It's like if they're put on top of the pedestal, they will feel these surges of power and higher levels of testosterone are associated with more promiscuous mating and with more success in attracting partners," Kruger said. "From the individual guy's perspective not only is he going to feel a greater urge, guys in general desire more sexual variety."

The illusion of control

Celebrities and big politicians can have an inflated sense of control over their lives and feelings of invincibility.

Tiger Woods "has an incredible sense of control in every aspect of his life," Reynolds said, including what tournaments he plays in, his schedule and sponsors. "Why shouldn't he be able to control who knows about his personal life and the reactions people have to it?"

This illusion of control, Reynolds added, mixed with lots of optimism can be a dangerous mix. "When he walks into a tournament he is fully optimistic that he is going to win, with his past as his cue," Reynolds said. "Why shouldn't he win this one." Reynolds said in the back of Woods' mind, he may have thought, "Of course I'm going to have a beautiful wife, and of course I'm going to be able to do these things on the side and nobody is going to find out."

Another word for this optimism might be "arrogance."

"A serious occupational hazard of being a celebrity is arrogance, to think you are better than the next guy, special, entitled, above common issues," said Joel Block, a psychologist specializing in love, relationships and sexuality. "How else to explain Tiger's reckless behavior? Did he really think that none of these women would talk about their liaisons? His fame and acclamation clouded his judgment."

Relationship trouble?

Generalizations about men and women only go so far when trying to explain unfaithful behavior. On the individual level, various other driving forces come into play, including specifics of the relationship and personalities involved.

For instance, narcissists — or those who are completely self-absorbed, relatively arrogant and have less empathy — are more likely to stray from spouses for a fling. "It's also possible that a lot of the rich and famous guys are not only high status, but they're probably fairly high on narcissism, so they basically feel entitled to affairs," Josephs said.

Some might wonder if the celebrities who got caught were having marital trouble and that motivated the cheating. Yes and no, say scientists.

"Cheating occurs for many reasons, consequently it is difficult to make a blanket statement about a marriage based on infidelity," said Block, author of "Broken Promises, Mended Hearts: Maintaining Trust in Love Relationships" (McGraw-Hill, 2001). "For example, infidelity may be driven by a need for an ego boost or a distraction to avoid personal issues or sexual curiosity."

Some relationship reasons might include hostility toward a partner or as a means of diluting the intensity of intimacy with one's partner, Block said.

The woman's role

Like any affair, Woods and Edwards didn't go it solo. Even if the mistresses or romantic others weren't officially taken, they may have known these celebs were. So why did they jump into the sack with married men?

"If women are considering someone to have a sexual affair with — if he's not going to bring a long-term investment — it's high-quality genes," Kruger said. "Somebody like Tiger Woods, he's young and attractive and he's athletic and incredibly high status; it makes him the perfect candidate for a short-term affair."

And statistics suggest that while men do cheat more often than women, the ladies do cheat. It should be noted that the prevalence of marital infidelity and extramarital sex varies widely depending on the definition of infidelity used and the survey referenced, ranging from about 10 percent of couples to more than half. Josephs estimates that in the United States, 20 percent to 40 percent of married men cheat, and some 15 percent to 30 percent of women do the same.

But they do so for different reasons.

"When men cheat it is typically about sex," Block said in an e-mail interview. "When women cheat it is more likely a trade-off — sex in exchange for attention, emotional support and regaining the feeling of being special."

Block added, "This is not to imply that it's all about sex for men, or that it has nothing to do with sex for women, only that the drivers are usually different."

Women may have more reason not to cheat. "For women it might be even more risky to cheat, because guys are naturally suspicious. Guys have a higher tendency to be jealous and to suspect infidelity because they don't want to be cuckolded so they're going to be hypersensitive," Kruger said. Essentially, they don't want to put their resources into raising some other guy's progeny, at least from an evolutionary perspective.

High morals and hypocrisy

Cheating may seem particularly wrong when it involves someone like Edwards, who touted family values. But from what research has shown, morality doesn't preclude indiscretion. Power can make a person stricter in moral judgment of others while being less strict of their own behavior, new research suggests.

To simulate an experience of power, Joris Lammers of Tilburg University in The Netherlands and colleagues assigned roles of high-power, such as prime minister, and low-power positions, such as a civil servant, to participants. The participants were then presented with moral dilemmas. Results showed that compared with low-power individuals, high-power participants judged others more strictly for speeding, dodging taxes and keeping a stolen bike, while finding it more acceptable to engage in these behaviors themselves.

The underlying cause is three-pronged, according to the study team, which also included Tilburg University's Diederik Stapel and Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Power makes people more egocentric, and so they focus on their own needs; power reduces a person's ability to take on the perspective of others; and power makes people feel psychologically invisible.

"They become unaware that their behavior can be observed by others," Galinsky said.

One example would be Gov. Sanford, who voted to impeach President Bill Clinton for his transgression, and then this year admitted to cheating on his wife with a woman from Argentina, Galinsky added.

The power must be legit, however. Another experiment in this study found that people who don't feel personally entitled to their power are actually harder on themselves than they are on others. The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Perhaps we don't think of extramarital affairs as moral transgressions.

"Humans are complicated," Kruger said. "For most people we don't say we're good or evil. We have these conflicting desires, because we always have all these different challenges based on differences on what would be best for our own reproductive success and that of our partners and families."

At the end of the day, it comes down to choice, Kruger says.

"As far as the personal decisions go it's not like we're forced to do this. It's not like our genes are steering the wheel. It's a choice Tiger and others have made," Kruger said.

He added, "Even though we're talking about evolutionary bases for psychology and we do have these aggregate differences I think there is what most people think of as free will. We have a choice in these matters and we aren't genetically determined to go one way or another."

Source: LiveScience

Men v Women: Jealous for different reasons

2009-12-29T14:55:00.000Z

Cheating on a spouse or significant other is sure to cause feelings of jealousy and hurt in the spurned partner.

But men and women differ on what part of cheating they think is the worst: Men tend to be more bothered by sexual infidelity, while most women are bothered more by emotional infidelity.

The prevailing explanation for this difference is the unique evolutionary roles played by men and women, but a new study suggests that it has more to do with the types of attachments people form in relationships.

The widespread evolutionary explanation posits that men rank sexual infidelity as the greater sin because over the eons they learned to be hyper-vigilant about sex, as they could never be absolutely certain that their children were actually theirs. Women, on the other hand, became more bothered by emotional infidelity, because they are concerned about having a partner to help raise their children.

A recent study found that men feel guiltier after a sexual discretion, while women feel guiltier after an emotional one.

The problem with the prevailing idea was that while men were more likely than women to rate sexual infidelity as worse than the emotional kind in studies, there was still a small subset of men who put emotional infidelity at the top of the list, said Kenneth Levy, a psychologist at Penn State.

This subset seemed to indicate that "there must be something else going on," Levy told LiveScience.

Attachment to others

Levy, who studies attachment in relationships, saw the results instead through the lens of his research and began to suspect that individual differences in how people view relationships could be affecting men's and women's views on infidelity.

Levy spoke of two types of attachment in relationships: dismissive and secure. A person with a dismissive attachment "doesn't see the value in relationships," he explained, describing them as "hyper-independent." Or, in other words, "most of us value our independence, but we also value our relationships. These individuals only value their independence, to the exclusion of relationships."

On the flip side, those with secure attachments see the value in relationships and are comfortable with the interdependency that comes with them, Levy said.

Levy thought those with a secure attachment style might be more likely to be bothered by emotional infidelity, while those with dismissive styles would see sexual infidelity as more of problem.

Sexual vs. emotional infidelity

To test this idea, Levy and his colleague Kristen Kelly had over 400 undergraduate students (about three-quarters were female) complete a standard assessment of attachment style in romantic relationships and also asked them which they would find more distressing — emotional or sexual infidelity.

The findings of their study, detailed in a recent issue of the journal Psychological Science, backed up Levy's hunch: Males with a dismissive style found sexual infidelity more bothersome, while men with a secure style rated emotional infidelity as worse. Somewhat unexpectedly, the same was found in females.

"So it seems to be that this concern about sexual infidelity seems to be tied to dismissiveness attachment whether you're a male or a female," Levy said.

While it would seem like those with dismissive attachment styles wouldn't care about either type of infidelity, Levy notes that this kind of attachment is defensive; dismissive types distance themselves from relationships too avoid deep-seeded feelings of vulnerability. Their concern over sexual infidelity shows a concern about their connections to others, but on an unemotional level, Levy said.

Levy suggests that this attachment model of jealousy could replace the standard evolutionary one, though it is itself rooted in evolution. Attachment is a mechanism that helps people become connected to other people — an important survival technique in human society. These attachments are learned from our earliest relationships, with our parents or other caregivers, and seem to carry on through life, as our most important relationships shift from our parents, to our friends, and finally to romantic relationships.

So it would seem that the attachment styles adults display in relationships were learned from early on, and not programmed in.

This understanding could point to ways of reducing feelings of sexual jealousy, "which research shows is tied to all sorts of maladaptive behaviors," by promoting secure attachment in children or exposing adults to the benefits of this kind of attachment, Levy said.

Source: LiveScience

Manipulate a woman..!

2009-12-25T23:54:00.001Z

:) Interesting..

How to Manipulate a women
What politicians are to the citizens of a democracy, men are to the women. We never vote for the best politician (for there aren’t any) …we always end up voting for the least corrupt. Similarly, women are forced to choose the one who is the least likely to mess up their lives – which is anyway going around and around in cycles. Period.

MatchMaker tips

2009-12-24T00:28:00.000Z

Search on and on..

2009-12-11T09:11:00.000Z

Love & Happiness

2009-12-09T10:37:00.001Z

A beautiful wisdom leaf from Diatomist Diary

What a thing is relationship, and how easily we fall into that habit of a particular relationship, things are taken for granted, the situation accepted and no variation tolerated; no movement towards uncertainty, even for a second, entertained. Everything is so well regulated, so made secure, so tied down, that there is no chance for any freshness, for a clear reviving breath of the spring. This and more is called relationship. If we closely observe, relationship is much more subtle, more swift than lightning, more vast than the earth, for relationship is life. Life is conflict. We want to make relationship crude, hard, and manageable. So it loses its fragrance, its beauty. All this arises because one does not love, and that of course is the greatest thing of all, for in it there has to be the complete abandonment of oneself.--J Krishnamurti.

while I was away

2009-11-23T22:13:00.002Z

I want to fly,
but everytime I try,
I fall,
wings ripped from my grasp,
held in front of my face,
testing my strength,
I reach out for a rose,
but I just fell short,
rose was in heights beyond my reach,
destiny had different plans,
poked by tiny little horns
testing my sanity.
with prays for a rainbow to appears before my eyes,
I let the fears go
without much of tear flows,
all because of what i thought i seen,
wanting to fly with angels wings.
wasn't to be this time, atleast just yet..

when time comes

2009-10-01T21:30:00.000Z

straight from dreams...

...and when that time comes, everything will fall in place, just as I had imagined, just as I thought and dreamed… And just as I believed it would be. By then, I would simply look back and smile at all I have gone through in spite the pain, confusions and amidst the simple joys of life— and I would be very thankful because they all led me to you…
In the meantime, you take care of yourself for me. Believe in your heart that we will find each other no matter what happens. our destiny has planned the course, let's just follow the directions. No you don't need to worry and not to be afraid of getting lost. No matter which one you choose to follow, our path will cross eventually..

Ask for Hand in Marriage

2009-09-23T13:36:00.001Z

Brilliant Ad with powerful message..

‘I’d Like To Ask For Sinead’s Hand In Marriage’

Thanks to: indiauncut.com

Love, Marriage & Expectations

2009-09-18T18:45:00.001Z

Question: Is it possible to balance friendship and romance?

Elizabeth Gilbert: It’s so easy to find the balance between yourself and your partner. No, I’m kidding. It’s not. It’s not at all. You know, “Eat, Pray, Love” ends on a very romantic note because it ends within the first two months of a very romantic relationship, right? And so, for me, now, I’m 5 years into that relationship so it’s always sort of funny to me when people come up and they’re… and they still have… just finish the book and they still have this very starry-eyed idea like, oh lovely, you found this very romantic relationship, you know. And that very romantic relationship has now evolved into a marriage, you know, which, like, everybody else’s marriage, is complex. And, you know, it’s much richer than the romantic relationship in the first two months was. But I… I should’ve share to people that, you know, was actually evolved into an actual real partnership now. And, you know, I think that some people were really delighted by the ending of that because it gave them hope for romance, which we all hold dear in our hearts. I think some people were agitated by the end of that book because they felt like it sent a message that… you know. And therefore, the ending is that you have to find a guy and you have to, you know, you have to be loved in this certain way. And, you know, the story was told in a way that it was told simply because that’s what happened, you know. What happened was that I did happen to meet somebody who is really lovely and I wanted to pursue that. I think… You know, I… You know, somebody said, “Well, do you think the message is that you need… you know, that you need love?” And I was like, “Well, I think the message is that you need healthy love, you know. And if you can find that or something that’s as close to that as you possible can, that’s, you know, by all means, that’s something that you should feel entitled to look for.Question: What are your thoughts on marriage?Gilbert: A lot of these questions… I’ve been thinking about it a lot and working on it a lot ‘cause my next book is all about marriage, which is, of course, you know, marriage is kind of the antithesis to romance in a way. And I ended up having to get married because the Homeland Security department got involved and actually chucked my sweetheart out of the country. And the only way I could get him back was to marry him. And I have, you know, for reasons I probably don’t have to go into, really ambivalent feelings about the whole institution of marriage. And so, again, because I have a lot of time on my hands because I’m a writer, I could spend, you know, 2 years doing nothing but reading books about the history of marriage and sort of trying to wrap my mind around ideas about marriage. And… I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert on it but I would say that it becomes clearer to me, the more I read about it, why it is so very, very confusing for people to try to figure out the balance in their lives and between self and other… And again, this isn’t a particularly easy time to be trying to figure that out because those roles have opened up. And men and women can be all sorts of different things in each other’s lives than they could be in more traditional and rigorous societies. The stakes are huge because our expectations for happiness are huge. But the opportunities are also really vast because we have a lot of options and organizing our lives by our own terms. So again, welcome to modern life. I also just think… I don’t know. There comes a certain point in your life… I mean, one thing that’s been really interesting to me about doing all this research about marriage is just realizing how the expectations that we have burdened in this institution with, at this point in history, are staggeringly huge. You know, on every generation since the 1700s in Western culture has just heaped another layer of expectation on what they want out of this relationship called marriage. And it is so out of scale right now. And, you know, there were some survey that… Back in the 1920s, there was a survey that asked college women what they wanted in a partner and they listed all these virtues, you know, reliability, honesty, decency, morality, you know. And somewhere down around 6 or 7 on the list came love and passion. These things showed up sort of low on the list. Prudence was sort up high, you know. And then, in the 1970s, they ask those questions again to women and, you know, the very first thing on the list is, like, love, you know, love and connection and intimacy and then, you know, the other stuff they weren’t really paying very much attention to. And now, it’s even worse ‘cause they ask this question and they say they want a man who will inspire them everyday. Like, I think that’s a lot, you know. Like… You know, or to be asked, you know, to want to… to expect that the person in your life, should sort of almost in this divine way, every single day, inspire you. It’s a huge thing to want somebody to be. And, you know, it’s a huge thing to have somebody want from you, you know. I’m only capable of inspiring people, like, every 3rd Wednesday, you know. Like, the rest of the time, I’m just trying to, like, find my, you know, keys. You know… I mean, it’s… It’s hard. And so, you know… Well, I would never sit down with a young woman and say to her, lower your expectations as a piece of advice for life. I think it’s been really sanity inducing in me, just after doing all this research about marriage to realize. For better or worse, my expectations are really big, you know, and do with that what you wish, you know. But that’s a good piece of information to know. Because we shouldn’t walk around, thinking that this is how people have always thought about marriage or that this is what people have always expected out of their marriages. And… You know, I’m not quite sure how you resolve that but it’s just a piece of information I didn’t have before, that I have it now. And it somehow changes things. When inevitable disappointments or frustrations arise, I just think, what would a 17th century wife think about this, you know… you know, what did my great grandmother think about this. There’s… It’s just… It’s helpful.

Question: How have your thoughts on sexuality changed?
Gilbert: Well… I mean, I think like a lot of women when I was younger. I don’t think I was so much concerned with being objectified. I think I was kind of wishing I would be a little bit more objectified. You know, I’d always been the smart girl and the bookish girl. And I… You know, there was a certain sort of sexual attention that I was longing for. And I was… I was wishing that I could generate… And then, I was always really happy to get and always really happy to pursue whether or not it benefited me to be out, chasing that in a certain way. Well, I was going to say it’s up for debate but it’s not. It actually… Actually, it was not beneficial to be giving so much attention to that. I was a boy crazy kid and I wanted a lot, you know. I’m a very excitable person and I’m a very passionate person. And, you know, just in the same way that as a writer, I wanted to kind of go and roll around in the world and experience it in really huge ways. I mean, I had a big hungry heart that wanted to know love and infatuation and to disappear into the other end, you know. I mean, everything that you could do to try to do that, I did, you know. And the results were fairly predictable. You know, it’s like a lot of messes, you know, a lot of just really messy experimentation with intimacy, a lot of, like, throwing… impaling myself on people on really unhealthy ways, a lot of carelessness toward people and other really unhealthy ways. It’s just a… It was just a big, flat, hot mess, you know. But, I guess, I had to go through that, you know, as many of us do and kind of, you know, see that all out to its natural conclusion and then, take a lot of time to be alone, you know. It’s interesting ‘cause therapists always say that they have 2 kinds of patients. The ones that need to be, like, screwed in a little tighter and the ones that need to be loosened up, you know. And I was definitely one who needs to be screwed a little tighter, you know. I know that, like, that other people’s psychological problems, that they’re too withholding and mine was, you know, kind of the opposite. I had to sort of narrow my margins in order to become sane. And a lot of that, for me, came just from spending a lot of time by myself, which I never done before ‘cause I was always seeking that reflection in the other person. And… You know, I have a really pretty good relationship now. And, you know, I sleep with one eye open when it comes to love because I’ve made such huge mistakes and I’ve been punished for those mistakes. So, I think, when you’ve been through a divorce as crappy as my divorce and when you’ve been through, you know, breakups as bad as my breakup, you’re always a little… you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop a little bit. Like, when is this… You know, is this really… is this real ‘cause this is pretty good but, you know, how long is this going to last. But I also… I don’t know. I try not to walk around, calling trouble’s name. You know, if things are going well, I try to be happy to just let that be well and recognize that if trouble wants to find you, it knows where you live and it will come and knock on your door. But I don’t go looking for it very much anymore.

Source: BigThink

Love (un)defined

2009-09-14T21:39:00.000Z

Question: Can you define love?

Rob Riemen: No you cannot define love. You cannot define love. For a very good reason, because the most essential things in life are beyond definition. This is why the philosopher Wittgenstein said at the end of his small Tractatus . . . He said the things we cannot speak about we have to remain silent about, because there is more truth in the silence than in all kind of words about it. So no, there is no definition of love. However, everybody which is a human being – and maybe even beyond, I do not know – knows what love is. We know it. At the very moment you experience this, you know what love is. I mean the . . . the . . . the phenomenon, the profound experience that is something that with somebody to whom you don’t have to explain everything because he or she already understands. The phenomenon that you can have this profound trust that whatever happens to you, he or she will be there. And again, the same applies for art and beauty. Let me explain very briefly. We started . . . We have become . . . No. We are living in a society in which usefulness is very, very important. What’s the use of it? Is it concrete? And so on and so forth. Can you define it? It’s all on the same level, because if it’s not useful why should we spend tax money, time, etc., etc., on it? But again Brett, the interesting thing is that the quintessential things in life must be useless – completely, utterly useless. Why? If we want to know what a poem, or a painting, or a piece of music has to say, it is us to be silent. Because only when we are silent we can listen, and be receptive, and answerable to what it has to say to us. At the very moment we think it should be something useful, it can no longer speak. That’s the same way with love. At the very moment you think that a love or a friendship has to be useful, you kill it. So love, friendship, art, beauty can only be life affirming qualities as long as they remain a form of invitation. You cannot force anybody to love you. You cannot force a friendship to be your friend. You . . . It’s out of the question. So again we are here dealing with the fact that the most quintessential parts of life are beyond words. That’s why we have art. That’s why we have music. That’s why we have symbol. That if you really love somebody, you give him or her a kiss. Or you give them a rose. Or you give a book, or whatever. But you cannot . . . You cannot . . . You cannot . . . You cannot say I love you because dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But again this whole mindset is so much the opposite of a society who is drifting towards, “Love is romantic, should give me a good feeling. And at the very moment the good feeling is there; or if I don’t . . . no longer feel that I can fly, and so on and so forth, the love is over so I have to move on.” Well as long as you remain on this level of absolutely superficiality, you will never find true love. I mean everything will be done on the wings of your emotions. And emotions are like the weather. It changes constantly.

Source: BigThink

Vaccine for Love

2009-09-04T10:26:00.003Z

Love vaccine?

Would you rather have a love potion that made you more likely to become attached to someone else, or a love vaccine that stopped you from falling in love with the wrong person?
..

This doesn’t mean there will soon be magical elixirs causing you to instantly fall in love with anyone. Love isn’t just a response to raging hormones; our rational processes have something to do with it, too. But drugs could make a difference. In fact, some of the antidepressants now in use are suppressing the neurochemical processes that stimulate romance and attachment...

Soulmates does not exist

2009-09-01T12:41:00.001Z

That's what one Economist says. Well I don't think we should listen to them and with current market conditions probably most would agree with me that Economists are the last people who we should listen to, specially for social issues.

But I came across this interesting commentary from Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Economics at the Wharton School. She explain her take on marriage and why soulmate is Myth.

Most people think that if you let an economist into your personal life they'll tell you how to re-balance your portfolio. While that might be true, economists see markets at play everywhere. Even in your romantic life.

Indeed, I'm one of the worst guests that you can invite to your wedding. Why? Because while most of your guests are listening for your love story, I'm listening for your contract. While others see a romantic courtship leading to the altar, I see people who are satisfied enough to stop searching for someone else.

Economists simply can't believe in one soulmate. There are too many people in the world and the odds of finding that one person in five billion are, well, you can do the math.

So if economists don't believe in soulmates, why do we think people get married?

Searching for a spouse is very similar to searching for a job. There is not one perfect job for each of us, but there are clearly better and worse jobs. So we hunt, for a spouse and a job. When do we stop? When the offer in the hand is better than the likely offer in the bush.

At a wedding I see a relationship that is good enough to settle down and start investing in.

If you get a reasonable rate of return, investment in your relationship will make it truly better than any other relationship you could have. And that's why I listen to people's vows: to understand what they want out of their marriage or in economist-speak, what they are contracting over.

How important are fidelity, loyalty, generosity, kindness? As an economist I think that a good marriage, like a good employment relationship, has shared vision, common interests, complementary abilities, and gains from specialization.

If you want to hold on to romantic illusion, don't invite me to your ceremony. But if you do, please don't sit me next to your cousin in banking; we likely have less in common than you think.

Source: Marketplace.org

What do you think?

Perfect her for Imperfect me

2009-08-08T20:28:00.000Z

Beautifully Imperfect

2009-05-16T00:36:00.000Z

Secret to a Lasting Marriage

2009-05-08T15:21:00.000Z

good FWD from a distant friend..

2009/5/7 from Nav

"When I was a little girl, my mom liked to make breakfast food for dinner every now and then. And I remember one night in particular when she had made breakfast after a long, hard day at work.
On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage, and extremely burned toast in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet all my dad did was reach for his toast, smile at my mom, and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that toast and eat every bite!
When I got up from the table that evening, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the toast. And I'll never forget what he said: 'Baby, I love burned toast.'
Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if He really liked his toast burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, 'Debbie, your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired. And besides-a little burnt toast never hurt anyone!' You know, life is full of imperfect things....and imperfect people. I'm not the best housekeeper or cook.
What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other's faults - and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences - is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.

And that's my prayer for you today. That you will learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your lives and lay them at the feet of GOD. Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to give you a marriage where burnt toast isn't a deal-breaker!

We could extend this to any relationship in fact - as understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship!! "

Vision

2009-05-01T10:23:00.007Z

I came to realize that I need wife..apart from the usual needs (etc.. cooking, cleaning...) when I am traveling I need someone to take photos. ;)

source: photograph for me taking by my dad at Bitburg,Germany

Iam a Director/Explorer

2009-03-15T00:38:00.002Z

I got to link forward which lead to a find-your-personality questionnaire designed by Helen Fisher. I took it and below is the result:

Characteristics of all four personality types can be found within each of us, but there is almost always one personality type that is dominant. We call this the major personality type. we also identifies your minor or secondary personality type. You exhibit some aspects of this personality type, though not to the same degree as with your major type.

Your major personality type = Director
Your minor personality type Explorer

E -Explorer - 27%	N -Negotiator - 24%
B -Builder - 17%	D -Director - 29%

You are a DIRECTOR/explorer

You are courageous; and you seek challenges. You are a tough-minded, independent and daring thinker who likes to explore ideas or problems thoroughly. You focus easily. And you are persistent, systematic and competent in pursuing your interests and goals.

You are also assertive; and you enjoy the opportunities your hard work wins.

You have a lot of energy. You think quickly, make decisions more easily than most, dislike unnecessary rules, and take a rational approach to people, issues and ideas.

You don't often enjoy "small talk." You are generally not interested in pleasing boring people and you gravitate to men and women who are intellectually exciting and get to their point quickly during conversations.

You are not conventional in most of your attitudes and values. You tend to be irreverent and pragmatic and you like spontaneous people. You can be an exciting, yet hard driving and exacting, friend and companion.

You are more compatible with Negotiator(Excels at seeing the big picture, long-term planning and consensus building. An intuitive thinker who is flexible, verbal and socially skilled. Imaginative, empathetic and nurturing.) or Director (Daring, original, direct and inventive. A non-conformist. Skilled at abstract thinking and short-term planning. Often assertive and quite competitive. Tough-minded and efficient). An Example of Director/Negotiator couple is- Bill and Hillary Clinton.

(un)Sucessful realtionship

2009-03-02T19:43:00.002Z

>>> a friend, who I knew for 12+yrs and from whom I haven't heard from many years after his marriage(which is usually for first 3/6month not after)), got in touch after all those years to inform that he is coming to visit me. and he did. Had fun time taking him around to whatever little place-to-see in luxembourg. It was nostlogic weekend taking about all old days, bubbies,.. I have very high regards for him. he was one of those who's not idealogs, with all good intentions, habits & very highly flexible and yet another urban adult with simple hopes & aspirations. which is why i felt tiny earthquake when he told me, he is divorced now. that was a complete shocker. ofcourse he wasn't comfortable talking about it for any length and i guess that's also part of the reason why he was out-of-touch. I don't know how to react or what to talk about that subject. I dont know what happen but that's kinda confirms my fear/belief- marriage is random act of luck. not much a rational process/act can do to make or break it, atleast not always. anyways, everyone cannt be good to all and he is good to me. I will be his friend without any judgements.
when talking to someone else who knew about this, he was trashing ‘her’(mrs…ex) I don’t why we indians designed to think broke marrriage is broken character.!? Cannot two rational good individuals can come together and go part without anyone been cast as ‘bad-person’.!?

The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra

2009-01-01T18:05:00.000Z

The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra, is story about desire of first intimate but short-lived affair of Samar, young Indian student. Books narrators is journey of love & loss as he recalls his days at Benares/Varanasi as student preparing for his civil service career and Samar is introduced to expatriate circle by Ms.West, a Englishwomen who is tenant of same landlord.

Samar goes thru mysterious conflict between his Eastern upbringing, specially ideology about relationship, marriage-- where love follows arrange marriage And his fascination with west, where love is illicit excitingly experienced. Mid Novel soul search leads him to his homeland in Benares and is troubled by the scenes from difficult but still calming memory with good narrations. Author narrator the first experiences of love, infatuations with Western culture with exotic backdrops of "holyland" of India. Book completely and complexly renders love with its pain.

Book's doesn't have any particular point. Its starts and ends with characters flowing in & out. But its a good narration of East meeting West & temptations which comes with that encounter of cultures and for that very reason its an interesting read.

to Settle or not to..!?

2008-11-26T11:28:00.001Z

Interesting read:

To Settle Or Not To Settle - That Is The Question

http://susispice.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/to-settle-or-not-to-settle-that-is-the-question/

The Case for Not-Quite-Right

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200802u/gottlieb-interview

Lessons from Arranged marriage

2008-11-17T14:57:00.001Z

below good article from LiveMint.com

Last weekend, I was ploughing my way through bad news and more bad news in the newspapers when the husband, who never begins his Sundays with financial news, started reading something aloud.

“Well settled match for daughter 5’-9” Aug 78 born, extremely B’ful convent educated M.A. English, PG Mass Communications, Wrkg as Editor National TV Channel. Homely, believes in old traditional values. Dr. parents high status fmly.”

Classified: Why arranged is still in. Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint

Now, I gave up trying to understand India through a study of its matrimonial advertisements in the 1980s, but I couldn’t get this one out of my head. I think it was the designation that did it. Why would a woman who was an editor of a national television channel, and whose new India job allowed her to interact with the world, want her parents to find her a stranger she could spend the rest of her life with?

Or was she one of those video editors who worked long hours in a windowless room staring at a screen, interacting only with machines, making sense of raw footage and packaging it for viewers like us?

The matrimonial was followed by a phone number and Gmail address, so the next day I gathered courage and called. Her mum answered.

So here’s their story, or at least the little her sweet mother told me before she started sounding exasperated and I hurriedly hung up.

Both this girl’s (let’s call her Ms Ed) parents are doctors; she comes from a traditional Agarwal family where the woman, irrespective of whether she’s a doctor or not, handles the kitchen and does the cooking. Until two years ago, Ms Ed wasn’t ready to get married, but then she changed her mind. Her mother never met her father before they got married, and they’ve stayed together for 30 years. Mum says yes, Ms Ed meets a lot of people in her line of work but she has never indulged in an affair (and if you see the date of birth in the matrimonial, this year marked the end of the carefree 20s for Ms Ed). Mum said arranged marriages work better because there are fewer “disparities of customs, cultures and economic status”. “Disparities lead to quarrels,” she says.

Isn’t that what Raj Thackeray and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad believe too? These days everyone wants to be surrounded by people like themselves. Hindus with Hindus, Muslims with Muslims and, of course, Maharashtrians only with Maharashtrians. So, why pass judgement on an Agarwal girl looking for an Agarwal boy?

Besides, if you believe Reva Seth, author of this year’s First Comes Marriage,arranged marriages can teach women lots about how to find — and hang on to — Mr Right. Seth interviewed 300 women in arranged marriages over a period of five years and says that arranged marriages offer “lessons and guidelines that are increasingly relevant to the modern dating scene”. Some secrets Seth uncovered in her book:

Your man doesn’t have to be your best friend. (That’s why you’ve had a best girlfriend all along, right?)

It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t dance (common interests are less important than shared values).

Sexual chemistry isn’t always organic (attraction can be created — if you know how to unlock your passion).

I disagree with Seth on two of the three points, but then again, I also believe that in this country you can be different and live together.

PS: I’m looking to surround myself with people who agree.

Men. Women. Infidelity

2008-04-05T09:28:00.003Z

would to like hear diverse views/comments on this article from LiveMint.com by Priya Ramani

A good book always reveals a few secrets of life
My favourite neighbour called me last Saturday after reading the luxury issue to point out that books are not a luxury. He said I shouldn’t encourage people to buy leather-bound versions of rare books just to line their libraries. I hope you don’t do that?

As far as the husband and I are concerned, books are our only luxury, and a key necessity. There are teetering piles all over the house. Recently, we bought another book cupboard to store some of our beauties but now drunken stacks tower over it too. You’ll soon be swallowed by your books, my mother-in-law once predicted.

Of course, there’s no time to read. Many of our books wait patiently until it’s their turn to be held, page after page. Plus I’m biased towards older white male authors who were born in places such as Newark and New York, so it took me a while to pick up my copy of Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water, purchased a few years ago.

Reading it reminded me that, sometimes, the pleasure of a great new film is no match even for a book that’s been around for more than a decade. A good book always reveals a few secrets of life. Shreve’s book is about adultery, a subject that’s been in the news courtesy Eliot Spitzer (don’t miss Shoba Narayan’s take on it next week).

In a few pages, Shreve sets up an intimate portrait of two couples (one married, one near the end of a short affair) on a boat trip. The men are brothers and, as is wont to happen in small spaces that involve prolonged periods of physical proximity to an attractive other, the wires get crossed. One of the women is researching a crime of passion that took place on a remote island more than 100 years ago. Shreve goes back and forth between the women in these two dramatically different times to show us how some things never change.

Only a woman could have come up with this tale.
“I swear I think marriage is the most mysterious covenant in the universe. I’m convinced that no two are alike. More than that, I’m convinced that no marriage is like it was just the day before. Time is the significant dimension — even more significant than love,” one female character says.

For most men, infidelity is about variety in that time dimension. Different body parts. A quick, fuss-free transaction. An adventurous partner. Visual stimulation. And women?
Women are dangerous. They have mastered the art of hiding their thoughts.
Women can create sexual sonatas in their heads while they are chopping vegetables. I’m not saying that women don’t have lovers. But women don’t always need lovers. They are happiest with their imaginary lovers.

good wife can bring balance to your life

2008-04-02T18:21:00.002Z

Musings of Marriage..

2008-01-11T12:47:00.001Z

recently landed on page of a soul who is world part yet so similar... we all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same - Anne Frank

comments on Musings of Marriage
to dear Ferreting Fish,

it would be interesting to see-- if you keep this blog for next 30yrs and write about same topic when your son/daughter at same age..;¬)

for sure marriage involves adjustment-- question what you want to adjust? you can compromise habits(may be lifestyle) but not character.

freedom..!!? look at this way-- do you ever wanted freedom from your parents..!? (possible no). ok understood, you need space for ur interesting without enforcement but we human general like interference. imagine you are painter and your hube gave 'freedom' to achieve your fame. but he doesn't care to notice ur failure/success nor any support you thru it..! you will say- he's not caring enough although he give all the 'freedom' u asked for.

that's the key compatible match-- yes we all long for it. but we fail to realize we are not the same person last year or year before nor will be our loved ones in future. as long as we accept changing self and changing others around us it will always be difficult to fit-in. We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person -- Somerset Maugham

and about age-- i thought only female had expiry date (ok,iam not sexiest)) and male too has it in today's marriage market. that's 30s iam told and have to wrap my mind before otherwise i have loss 'choices'.

gotram/nakshatra or even caste/community are beyond my understanding. i dont even have one of those chart paper and not even my parent got married with that thingee. poor parents they don't know what to do when someone ask for the paper/chart/whatever..:L

reading these details-- iam glad not that i had opportunity to be different(rather more normal in a sensible world) but my parents are. not just that they dont want me to visit anyone unless iam sure but infact they are too much that they dont want to be in scene(may be background) until iam ok. problem is if & when iam ok then i dont want them play the community card..;l so its kinda deadlock with either having no clear idea..;!£$^"^&%£$*

taking about parents -- just recently i took couple months break from work and spend time home and realized i have case study of marriage at my home. my parents cannt any different from each other and in today's urban liberal world version either they wouldn't have been together in first place even if not for long. one being educated, individual, well employed(read that as exposed to wide world), with no belief in superstition, social, kinda of idealist, stay low key avoid conflict to any cost, believes even enemy has reasons to be enemy,..
and another with little exposure to world, education, very strong belief in religion/gods and their actions.. opinionated (makes mind and its quite a work to change that). off late become more liberal then the other,.. not anti-social but certain not too much enthu among strangers,..and now add that to complicated thread of family tree/bond wider aunties/uncles looking up for help, guidance, advice, suggestion and criticize when done anyways. for years both had their difference, some many arguments on almost everything especially off late..l)

that's one of hell of relationship but they pull off for 34+yrs and still going strong. reasons could be various factors-- may be their social settup, may be not exposed to alternatives(ignorance is bliss), etc... ofcourse love/care but i cannot ignore-- respect, trust, faith on each other's intentions.

million $ question is: in which part of their relationship they bulit this for each other? also they knowing each other for better part of their life before marriage is big advantage, which most don't have.

so that's no secret afterall. commonsense-- respect, trust, faith on each other's intentions, love/care and similar interest, lifestyle has to fit-in somewhere in that list.

but i still don't know how to & whom to gain that from and how to do that before making big decision of marriage. so Good Luck to me.

Mate not soul mate

2007-11-10T01:02:00.002Z

Indian-style Matchmaking but Online..

2007-09-04T11:43:00.001Z

CNNMoney article: Matchmaking Indian-style

with better business model, increase in funding online matrimony business in India is becoming one of the fastest growing web2.0 service, with a growth trajectory of as high as 90 per cent annually in some cases. Currently membership is estimated at 7million+ users and with 60% annual volume growth.

Now Iam under pressure from friends & family to get onto one of those websites to zero-in 'the perfect one'.

Online matrimony is a project just like offline matrimony. It requires considerable time, energy and capacity to reject/ accept rejection. An interesting experiment was carried out by HT's Brunch supplement. One of their staffers registered two profiles on a dating website. One was an 'adventurous, fun loving, 'wants to live life to the fullest' type' and the other a more staid description. Profile1 was flooded with response (the sex variety) while profile 2 got barely a trickle. And a male journalist who registered his profile got.. absolutely no response.

Problem is success or failure of a dating/ matrimonial site depends on no. of girls registered/ing. I notice common assumption that-- 'open-to-dating' women have enough choices in real life, when they are in the college-age bracket. The trouble starts when you finish your education and into your second job by which time you may have a limited social life and little opportunity to meet new people. That's when people turn to matrimonial websites.

Some interesting Stats - According to IAMAI:
- have a gender ratio of 69% male, 31% female, which is far better.
- 37% of registered users are between age 18-25. so I am guessing they are actually using it for dating purposes. But perhaps the 'matrimonial' purpose of the website cues that 'I am not that type of girl/ guy'. As in I may eventually wish to marry you.
- Marital status : 63% Unmarried, 31% Married without kids, 25% Married with kids, 4% Divorced.

A plausible explanation for such profile data is that these are uncles,aunties,friends,parents of prospective grooms and brides. People like me, searching for other people. But still.. it creeps me out.

Can someone explain web2.0 matrimonial industry data please?

Credits: CNNMoney and YouthCurry

Girl's eye on Traditional marriage

2007-07-02T13:52:00.000Z

Thanks to Anitya, landed on this nice quirky clip on Girl's eye on Traditional marriage

Mate or soul Mate...!

2007-06-13T01:00:00.001Z

Are some people just meant to be in our lives, to play a part, even after we think that we might loss them. What is the role of accidental meetings, coincidental phone calls, coincidental mass emails sent by to an address which still lies in your address book which you`ve never been able to delete, because you just don't want to. Why is it that these people leave such big foot print.!

It`s amazing the way some people are a part of your life. How they just happen to pop in at intervals decided by the Universe. It`s ironic because it`s the same universe that conspired may one day take those people away from you. I don`t know why though. I`m reading my journal right now and I have written "She`s Perfect"...

Spouse: Truth About Marriage by Shobha Dé

2007-05-17T07:52:00.000Z

found this interesting write-up from Shobha De about her book 'Spouse: Truth About Marriage'. Its interesting debate about Love and Arranged Marriage, how marriages work & why they fail.

after reading this, my first thought 'well, If only Life is that simple but then Life supposed to fun but not easy'. when it comes to marriage nothing is right or wrong but Its right or left. Either ways, you can make your life happy & fun experience if you are determined to do so (and ofcourse, Luck always helps)

Love vs Arranged :Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya
I have seen as many successful ‘arranged’ marriages, as ‘love’ marriages. This is, of course, a peculiarly Indian description that amuses the rest of the world. But hey, I see ‘arranged’ or ‘semi-arranged’ marriages catching on, even in the West. Perhaps people have woken up to the reality that there are no real guarantees, no safety nets, either way. You can consult the most revered astrologer, talk to the family pundit, match horoscopes for all the ‘gunas’ endorsed by the shastras, but if a marriage has to collapse, it will. Ditto for a marriage driven by emotion, which we so cutely call a ‘love marriage’. It’s a fifty-fifty chance, whichever option one takes.

Young people have figured this out, perhaps intuitively. A lot of kids today are entrusting this all-important decision to their folks—parents, relatives, even well-meaning friends. Of course, the new ‘arrangement’ is more open-ended and better structured. Devoid of the old ‘rules’, which prescribed the ghastly ‘Dekho’ session, the social meetings orchestrated by middle men or women these days work in a more acceptable fashion.

I often ask my father what he thinks are the two basic factors that made his marriage a success. He always gives me the same answer: ‘character and abiding love’. With these comes the rest of the package. It helped, of course, that my father flipped for my mother’s looks at first glance. But what about her? Did she have a choice in the matter? He insists she did and that nobody could have forced the spirited seventeen-year-old Shakuntala to marry a man she did not fancy. what about fights? Differences? Tantrums? Of course their marriage had their fair share of all these. But beyond occasional arguments and sulks, I don’t recall a day of sustained hostility or unpleasantness. If they had problems, they settled them in privacy. It was, in many ways, a great marriage, full of sharing, caring and deep understanding. And more than that, full of communication.

One need not rule out either communication or passion in a modern-day arranged match. Recently, while in America, I met several extremely bright American Desis. I confess I was a little surprised when told that most of the young couples slaving away for their MBAs, were in fact, not the dating couples I imagined, who’d taken campus romance to the altar, but couples who’d met as strangers through family intervention. In this day and age, these kids had taken the crucial seven steps around the holy fire, without so much as holding hands before the wedding night! And here they were, some with young children, others still settling into their new lives as ‘young marrieds’, but nobody could possibly guess that they had opted for a conventional ‘arranged’ marriage out of choice. When I expressed my surprise, they drawled, ‘Aaw—no big deal . . . it has worked out just great!’ And so it seemed!

In Mumbai, too, more and more children of parents I know are leaving it to mom and dad to look for the right alliance. ‘My mother knows me better than I know myself,’ a young man confessed, ‘I trust her judgement. My dad has seen the world, he has more experience. They know what’s good for me.’ And these are guys in their mid-thirties, who have studied in foreign universities, dated a few girls, done the party circuit. And yet, when it came to marriage, they were more than happy to settle for a conventional, old-fashioned match. Much like their grandparents!

It was my generation that stupidly rebelled against a system that had worked perfectly well for centuries. A lot of us paid the price for letting our impulsive hearts decide who our life partners would be. No regrets. Just that I fear we were blindly following the West and taking our cues from Hollywood, just to prove to our parents how ‘liberated’ and ‘modern’ we were.

Our kids are smarter. And more realistic. They’ve seen too many marriages collapse and they definitely don’t want repeat performances in their own lives. Force-fed on romantic drivel from countless movies, it’s a generation that laughs at the old Mills and Boon version of marriage. They ache for performance and stability. If an arranged match can provide both, they’re not averse to considering it.

They were refreshingly candid while talking about the methodical manner in which their parents had gone about the whole thing. The girls were all educated, attractive professionals who looked happy enough as they adapted to an entirely alien culture with an entirely alien partner. ‘ We got to know each other only after the wedding. But it has worked out,’ they insisted. Some had had earlier relationships, but claimed that fact did not colour their decision. They’d made informed choices and expressed no regrets.

On the other hand, I also met alarmingly young divorcees (some with babies), who lamented the day they’d said, ‘I do’ to a boyfriend of long standing. ‘We thought we knew each other so well. We were used to each other’s ways, too. God knows what went wrong after we got married. It reached a point where we couldn’t stand the sight of one another.’ Can happen. Does happen. Love . . . passion . . . desire . . . madness . . . where does everything vanish? Nobody knows.

The worst thing about a love marriage that ends up on the rocks is that parents get all huffy and judgmental. ‘We told you it wouldn’t work. Did you listen? We knew he wasn’t the right person. Now look where you are.’ Parents in such a situation do have a point. But they also need to rise above their own feelings of outrage and false pride and provide much needed empathy to a child who has made a mistake and is going through hell.

Love marriages may be more common now than they once were in our society, but that’s only because of increased mobility and access. Dating starts during the teenage years. Couples might see each other for close to a decade before tying the knot. But even such marriages can collapse, much to the parents’ dismay. ‘After ten long years you people still didn’t know what you were doing! Ridiculous!’

Parents must avoid this harsh judgment trap and extend a helping hand to an emotionally distressed offspring dealing with a broken marriage and much else. This is a time which can only be described as wretched. I know the feeling. I’ve gone through it myself.

Your self-worth is at its lowest and you’ve never felt as desperately alone. You also feel the entire world is sitting in judgment over what is a personal and painful decision. Friends take sides, cast aspersions, play the blame game. As for foes—they gloat and chortle with glee, while trading the ugliest rumours and theories as to why the marriage collapsed.

If, at such a time, your immediate family turns its back on you too, then why call yourself family in the first place? All it takes is a little sensitivity, a little love, a little patience. I keep running into single parents trying hard to cope with a failed marriage, while presenting a tough facade. Having been there, I can identify with the emotion. No matter what anybody says, it isn’t easy. Never was, never will be. Society is not known for its kindness. When the chips are down, you have just one person to fall back on—yourself!

Not every love match is similarly doomed. There are enough marriages based on great romance. Marriages that have survived all attempts to ruin them. Couples who have battled tremendous odds to be together—religious problems, caste problems, class problems, too. Yet, I fear the vulgarization of the entire love-marriage phenomenon.

At least some of the blame for this has to be shared by popular Hindi cinema. Love ke liye kuch bhi karega and similar sentiments. Nearly everyday, our newspapers run headlines about lovers caught in some hideous situation—elopements gone awry; acid attacks on women who have turned down ardent suitors; kidnappings and rapes. All this in the name of ‘love’. It’s not just an urban problem. These ludicrous manifestations of ‘love’ can be found in rural India, too! A direct spin-off of Bollywood potboilers, I’m convinced.

Marry for love, by all means. But be realistic at the same time. Marrying ‘above’ or ‘beneath’ your own level is an option only the stout-hearted should take. Even in this day and age, a large part of India is still preoccupied with caste and class. Those who attempt to cross either or both, will necessarily be up against a great deal of resistance.

To have the guts to stand up for your beliefs and marry the person you fancy, despite daunting odds, is a challenge. If, on the other hand, you are lucky enough to flip for someone you can happily take home to mother, go for it. There is no better reason to give up your independence than to be with a person you love and who loves you. But love alone is no guarantee.

At the end of the day, it’s back to the C-word: commitment. A couple in an ‘arranged’ match can fall in love later and make a success of their marriage. But someone opting for love cannot then look for the rewards of an arranged alliance. Love is meant to overcome all odds and embrace any and every complication. Nothing quite as unrealistic or lofty is expected from a more conventional approach.

Arrange marriage? One moment please

2007-05-07T09:54:00.000Z

Thanks to Annitya, landed on nice article Arrange marriage? One moment please

Tip 1: Do not get ‘talked into’ marriage
Tip 2: Going out more than once does not mean it’s a ‘Yes’
Tip 3: Go on dates that take the focus off of the topic
Tip 4: Leave the question answering for the final date
Tip 5: If you are rejected, don’t take it personally
Tip 6: If you reject the relationship, steer away from pointing out his weaknesses

for reading and thinking....

In truth, arrange marriages are more complicated than love marriages. It demands more time and emotion which the more you put in, the more you’re risking. But if all goes well, there’s nothing like arrange marriages that give you the red carpet treatment from family and relatives. A final note - before looking into a prospective partner do bear in mind that if you can have high expectations, they can too.

What is the perfect marriage? ...
Forgiveness and love for each.
Given from the loving one-
-from way up above.

Yes, Trust & Love, you are happening
Marriage, you are new beginning
Without the other you shan’t survive.
and then on, they walked hand-in hand..

what is use of Marriage?

2007-03-29T21:11:00.001Z

recently landed what is use of Marriage? why Marry?

first, I would recommend-- Chasing good life : on being single just to highlight single or married life, happiness/success,et.. will depend on the person.

Having said that--Communication, intimacy and companionship are three of the big draws to a permanent relationship. The warmth of knowing that someone cares and will be there to listen is a common pull to settle down and marry.

Many marry because they find that their relationship challenges them to better themselves. Living alone or in a relationship without commitment doesn’t offer the same challenge to better yourself. An unmarried person has to worry only about themselves. Marriage and children help a person jump over that hump and care about others.

It’s difficult to be selfish when you live with others who demand that you give of yourself; living with a pet demands responsibility, but it certainly doesn’t encourage anyone to be a “mensch.”

Say for Pet lovers -- pet places no challenges on its owner to improve. Animals accept their owner with unconditional love. Though each person dreams to be accepted and loved unconditionally, the truth is that we all need to improve our character and marriage challenges us to do just that.

Ultimately, though maybe not consciously but people marry because of the spiritual and esoteric reasons.

Love, elixir of life?

2007-03-19T15:16:00.000Z

landed on Meena's blog about Love, elixir of life?

Love is a minefield. You take a step and get blown to pieces, put yourself back together again and stupidly take another step. I guess that's human nature. It hurts so much to be alone that we'd all rather blow up than be single...

so true..strong words with awesome insight... when I think of it:

Sands of time pass our way
as we live from day to day.
flashes of light continue to blind
people who try their best to find;
True meaning of happiness
Wondering where this word is.
as another day unfolds,
they don't see what it holds
their eyes are sightless
and they become restless.
In this world we have
Happiness is found only in love of each other...

Marriage...(un)Defined..

2007-03-13T17:37:00.000Z

Recently, landed on Shashi Krishna's blog about Happy? Marriage? or both??

I know my parents will soon start asking me questions about my plans of ‘settling down’ in life. They will want me to be part of the crowd they were by going in for arranged marriage which does not scare me as much. But what scares me is the notion of being married to someone without love. What scares me is the concept of ‘making love grow’ after tying the knot. What scares me is the scheduled timing that takes place with such arrangements. One cannot blame me for seeing it this way. Born and bred in a pretty liberal society back in India I have been completely exposed to a whole new set of ideologies in the western world for the past decade. This exposure has in effect changed the way I visualize wedlock. I am sure I am not the only one in this weird dilemma as to which way to go when it boils down to ‘spending the rest of my life with someone’.

I totally hear him and feel the same.

sometime back.. i did some reading and post blog about arrange marriage then i wasn't even close to thinking about marriage.. so i could post a very objective blog.

What is the perfect marriage? ...
Forgiveness and love for each.
Given from the loving one-
-from way up above.

Now, when if i think for answers.. although, from friends experience and my reading (resulted as post) is still logical, real, mindful,.. but i dont know, somehow something might be missing... anyways truth is -- fear is always a lot bigger in your head than it is in reality.. so I takes things as its comes.

Marriage
many have tasted the bitter side of it
many that found themselves inside
wished they were not married
many that are outside
look with great admiration
towards exploiting it benefit and profit

Marriage
an idea divine, designed, imported,
profit and benefit intended
affection, procreation, benediction expected
platform to extend and expand,
goodness, kindness
and the righteousness
of GOD who designed
and also assigned
wisdom to enjoy the same:
to all the creation

Marriage
what is the problem?
many got the product, but neglected the manual
problem reminded many that they are not
fully prepared, Yet it is too late
to enjoy the profit and benefit intended
for marriage

Marriage’s missions: mentoring, maturing, multiplying,
Mission met marriage mended
Mission missed marriage messed

Perfection and Reality are Oxymorons

Women.. with Strength or Strong!?

2007-03-08T16:14:00.000Z

strong woman isn't afraid of anything,
Looking forward to challenges each day will bring,
Women of strength show courage in the midst of fear,
Knowing triumph through faith because the Lord is near.

strong woman works out every day,
Pride in her appearance she portrays,
But a woman of strength kneels to pray,
Keeping her soul in shape, God leading the way.

strong woman relies on the physical attributes making her tough,
In her search for power and money she will never have enough,
woman of strength understands that it’s not about material stuff,
Knowing that before becoming a diamond first she’ll be in the rough,

Strong women won't let anyone get the best of them,
So skilled in defense even if they have to pretend,
Yet a woman of strength gives her best to everyone,
Being anointed with divine blood from the only begotten Son.

strong woman is easily impatient back and forth she will begin to pace,
Counting on her holier than thou attitude instead of depending on faith,
woman of strength is assured trust in God will always carry her through,
And at the Creator’s appointed time she’ll receive all that is justly due.

strong woman sometimes disguises her feelings shadowed by clouds,
Unhinged when challenged on her policy becoming boisterous and loud,
woman of strength concerns herself not with judgment from others,
And will not let business interfere with commitments as a wife and mother.

strong woman walks head first with no doubt in her mind,
Again, no matter what, she’ll not make this mistake a second time,
But a woman of strength knows God will catch her when she falls,
So when a situation arises again, she’s not afraid to answer the call.

strong woman makes mistakes and avoids the same for tomorrow,
Refusing to take time looking back with reverence and Godly sorrow,
woman of strength realizes life's mistakes no matter how slim,
While thanking God for the blessings as she capitalizes on them.

strong woman has faith that for the journey she’ll have enough,
No matter how uneven the terrain or roads being rocky and rough,
woman of strength knows it’s in the journey she will become strong,
And the love of God is forever with her, no matter how difficult or long.

strong woman wears the look of confidence on her face,
Always doing whatever it takes to finish, seeking only first place,
woman of strength competes with an emotional sense of grace,
Understanding it’s more important to run a Holy Spirit filled race.

strong woman when uninformed thinks that she is being mistreated,
In the end her physical attributes fail causing doubt to become seeded,
woman of strength will compromise as a little give and take is needed,
Why? Because a lesson not learned the first time is soon to be repeated.

Women, you can be strong or you can act with strength. so what your choice??
Man, which women interests you??

Source: Twisted some old FWD

Wife School...

2007-02-16T08:58:00.000Z

wow, wish atleast some of is true and possible..;-D)

Saint Valentine,.. and (hi)story goes...

2007-02-14T12:32:00.000Z

I've often wondered how patron saints are chosen. I sometimes imagine celestial arm-wrestling matches with the winners getting the best holidays, or maybe some saints just have better public relations people than others. In reality, a great deal of consideration is given when selecting a patron saint, and there are usually obvious connections between saints and their causes.

Take our friend Valentine, for instance. Around the year A.D. 270 in Rome, emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage, fearing that married men would make inferior soldiers. Apparently approval ratings weren't quite as important in politics back then. Valentine, bishop of Interamna, invited couples to come see him and marry in secret.

Claudius, obviously not a romantic deep down inside, promptly told Valentine to renounce Christianity or face certain death. Valentine not only refused, but also tried to convert the emperor to Christianity. This so displeased Claudius that he had Valentine clubbed. Then stoned. Then beheaded.. on 14th Feb 270A.D.

And you thought you were a martyr for love!

Details at http://www.linguatics.com/StValentine.html

How is this photo beta...!?

2007-01-12T10:24:00.000Z

How is this photo beta. She is beautiful right ?

Mom asks her beta while showing a girl's color-photo picked out from her diary. This is one of the first questions a concerend mom would ask her "available" beta when she feels her nanna-munna-beta has finally "come-of-age" for marriage purposes. She, even before asking her beta's opinion, would first advertise his profile in one of those communitiy matrimonial circle manazines and collect profiles & photos of available girls around. Then, Based on her perceptionsof the prospective Bahu traits, looks and screening she'd hand-pick a few of these profiles. Once this homework is done she'd introduce the Topic of marriage to his son with one of these photos.

Typically, she thinks her "innocent-beta" would not allow her proceed with the pre-marriage tasks as she feels he'd be "very-happy" being single and would even want to concentrate more on his "career" before thinking about settling down. So this innocent mom would first get the photos and then try to "entice" her betaa with these photos and a quick 2 minute summary of these girls - "five-six tall aakkum !! very fair, Nice character..works as manager in Citibank. Music lover aakkummam"

While our mom is busy with these pre-marriage tasks, seldom she knows about the latent thoughts running on in her "naive-beta's-gullible-mind". As we know, He would typically be obsessed with "Post-marriage" tasks. And a typicalmetro born "naive-beta" would have just had about 13 proposals, 3-5 acceptances, 37 dates and 5-6 broken-heart experiences until now.And his mom knows none of these stories. Finally when none of these "extra-curriculars" works out, the beta would wait for his mom to start "co-curricular" activities.

He'd have cursed his mother silently for atleast 2 years for not starting looking for him. But after the long long wait when his mom pokes a photograph of a pretty looking lady on to his face and asks the question, he'd play a TOM-CAT, would blush, look down, draw semi-circles with his toes and say "Mamma..i dont want to marry now"...

A typical beta would never admit that he wants to marry. Rather he creates a scenario where he gives out the message that he is agreeing to the marriage only under the immense PRESSURE put on him by his parents. Here is how it goes :

Let the time now be 8.15 am. Our beta is getting ready to leave for work. That is the time our mamma shows a photo to him. The girl looked bad,and had a below-expectation type profile. So our beta shouts at his MOM :

"HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE TOLD NOT TO LOOK FOR ME NOW ?"..YOU DONT UNDERSTAND...I HAVE TO PLAN A CAREER..A LIFE..I NEED TIME..2 YEARS TIME.."

At 8.30 AM when our beta is just done with the breakfast and when mom feels he's cooled down, she shows another photo --> This time an above-average profile. And a better looking girl. Our Betaa smiles this time, blushes and says softly:

"Oh..amma..i need just some more time before marriage..just..u see..I am working..i need to be focussed..wait for 2-3 months..".

And when at 8.45 am, mom shows a sweet girl's picture (resembling Mallika Sherawat), the guy yields to "pressure" --> First smiles, then controlls smile and then blushes. He'd pretend not to have seen that photo at all (He's definitely noticed the mallika like part though) and say politely :

"If you all want me to marry, then..then..I needed somemore time...but. i'll agree..go ahead..whatelse can i do?..."

Then comes the "formally-seeing-the-girl" part. Son, accompanied by his dad & mom, eldest brother of dad, elder sister of mom and Broker goes tothe girl's house. On the way in the car our betaa would have, by now, gauged the best of features of the girl like a super-intelligent computer.Based on that single photograph of the girl he has seen, our son would have fantasized the girl in atleast three different dresses, hair-styles and fashions. And finally when the girl's dad calls his daughter out to the living room to meet everyone, Betaa realises that the photo he's seen was atleast 2 years old ! And like the India's GDP calculation, the projected estimate (36-28-34) is no where near the actual figure (34-32-36).

By the time he could re-estimate his calculations, imaginations and have another round of self-satisfaction-survey (typically a profile matching execrcise where he'd see if the earlier projected estimate could bere-estimated to fit with actual figure) , his dad & her dad have realised that they have a common close friend. His Mom & her mom have just realised that MoM #1's 2nd cousin's husband's sister was married to Mom #2's sister-in-law's brother-in-law. Also the Girl's naani was the first to recollect the family name of our Betaa's Naana. Now its a real dead-lock --> Even if Betaa wants to get off this marriage, he cannot.And he has to again "yield" to pressure - This time literally.

After consulting with all his friends, our son finally assures himself that 34-32-36 with a Job in ICICI is finally manageable. They (friends) tell him aboutthe intangible aspects of a woman like personality, Behavior etc (Though its a fact that the friends have themselves gone by "numbers" eventually). Finally, they both start sending emails and decide to start dating. And he accepts the fact that Not everyone can be mallika sherawat. There areother heroines too in India.

After-all, according to his imaginations, except for the VitalStatistix, everything else about her (personality, Body Lang, pomp, attitude) is just perfect. Its again similar to how Govt concludes on how "India Is shining" despite poor numbers like fiscal deficit, suicidal rates, Below-poverty-line-% etc). And corporate India goes only by "Numbers". No wonder why the latter is more successful.

During his first date He realises that her english is accented & Body Language is bad (personality test failed). And she realises that he doesnt take bath.

During the second date he realises that she wears only sarees or salwar-kameez. (fashionability test failed). And she realises that he doesn't know to drive a bike.

During the third date he realises that she eats only vegetarian & would never visit a Pub or Bar. And she realises that he's not a first-timer in Dating.

During the fourth date he realises that she can never miss a friday fast or a monday temple visit. And she realises that He can never miss a friday mumbai-disc or sunday pune-disc.

During the fifth date he realises that she wants him to quit smoking and drinking. And she realises he wants her to start doing both.

During the sixth date he realises that her family is Keen to get married to him immediately. And she realises his family has already fixed up the date of marriage.

---------------- Marriage Takes Place ------------------------

After 1 week into marriage he realises she's not even Mamta kulkarni - forget Mallika sherawat. And she realises that he's salman khan without fitness.

Yet...Yet...After 1 month he & she realises she's carrying :-). But how ? :-) :-)
After 1 year, they realise they are three - Not two anymore.

Yet...They complete silver, golden Jubiless together as a happily married & settled couple.

Yet..people around call it the perfect marriage and term them "made-for-each-other"

Ofcourse there's another story on what the Girl realises about Guy at different stages. But that could be more Nasty to write here! So in this successful relationship, Neither the "numbers" worked well. Nor the Intangibles. "Marriage is all about compromises" --> People say !! But when everything is against expectations, can we call it a "compromise" ?

got theses screens from unknown author fwd.. but thought this could enlight few of us..;-D

Good day to you & If you are single like me, Good Luck too !

Marriage.. from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

2007-01-10T18:48:00.000Z

You were born together,
and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together
even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Source: The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

boo.. from Singlehood.. Part 2

2006-12-24T16:21:00.000Z

while on quest for singleton woos and boos... I endup reading Bhaichand Patel's Chasing the Good Life : On Being Single, a Mono of Single Life.. lively and varied volume of essays brings together the thoughts of more than two dozen Indian men and women on life as a bachelor, spinster, divorcee, widow, widower — and even husband or wife.

One category well represented is of those who could be described as defiantly single: they insist they have absolutely no regrets about being unmarried and even revel in their single status. but others(Rahul Singh/most of older writes) who see their single status as something that can be coped with but is not a cause for celebration, who are the most convincing. The life of a married single that Sheela Reddy describes is probably best only for those who are ambivalent about the charms of their spouse since you cannt avoid wondering why bother to get married at all..??

Among them is Asha Narang Spaak, who in her contribution Bathrooms Are Not for Sharing, delights in being able to spend hours doing the newspaper crossword or watching the wildlife in her garden. But can't you do all these things and more if you are married?

India's grand old man of letters, Khushwant Singh, contributes an amusing, if a touch self-indulgent essay which looks at being single from a completely different angle from that of the other writers. Singh, a widower, finds that for him the pleasure of being alone is that you can break wind — or be offensive in any other way you choose — without anyone caring.

It could be great if author could have captured views from Ratan Tata, Mr. President APJ Kalam..! cannot avoid wondering what they were thinking...!! Two-thirds of the essays in this book are written by women and some of them, plus one or two male contributors, fall into the assumption that singlehood is somehow trickier for women than it is for men. There are several reasons why this might be the case, often related to societal scepticism that manifests itself in, for example, difficulty in finding accommodation or even outright and blatant ostracism. In addition, the biological clock ticks more rapidly for women than for men. However, the reverse case — that men might have to deal with particular difficulties when they are single — is not properly put, which is a shame.

one conclusion to be drawn from this book it is that single people are anything but a homogenous group who share the same values, interests and problems. There are as many ways of being alone as there are of being in a couple.

Proud of me: If anything I can credit my international-exposure- and-happy-go-lucky-backpacker-attitude has given me; is habit of acceptance & not pre-judging... whether its same sex relationship or no relationship - all is good, if no harm for other and happiness for you (ofcourse by having self-defined values & ethics). I treat each day at its merit.

having said that.. I know, Life is not always about choices, fortunately or unfortunately its about priorities...

boo.. from Singlehood

2006-12-14T08:09:00.000Z

Landed on this blogs - Will Mylapore Mami’s RIP?

My single status seems to push everyone to the sideline and without any effort it gets me the limelight. Is this an accomplishment or am I the recipient of Param Vir Chakra? Be it a family gathering, a professional gathering or a relative visiting my home these folks are always read to assault and autopsy me with their questions. I don’t know their intent?......

I am just sick and tired of answering people why I am single. My single hood seems to trouble them more their old age friends, viz. asthma and arthritis and I don’t know how and why I become an eyesore in Mami crowds. May be someday I will feel marred due to my single status and decide get married, but when I do it a lot of graves will open in the city and Mami skeletons would parade to the wedding hall to bless me and walk back to their graves to rest in peace.....

I dont have somany words but I share sentiments/frustrations.

However moderate you are, when it come to marriage - No one is listening and even willing to listen to any rational arugements. more than half of 'eating-brains-questioning-my-single-status' crowd didn't even cared, what I was doing before?studying? what I do for living? habits? ambitions? OK, Can understand some but cannot understand why do some many strangers bother?

Guess.. Its a social pre-defined system... process is set, follow step-1 to step-10, leads to marriage then managed it to be happy. ofcourse its Time tested so NO questions, exceptations, deviations,. unwritten rule of the land... NO one knows WHY but everyone does it...

Arranged Marriage Remote Control

2006-12-13T22:26:00.000Z

Don't misunderestimate yourself

2006-12-07T09:17:00.000Z

Why people think that rivals are better looking than they really are?

IF YOU have ever sat alone in a bar, depressed by how good-looking everybody else seems to be, take comfort—it may be evolution playing a trick on you. A study just published in Evolution and Human Behavior by Sarah Hill, a psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that people of both sexes reckon the sexual competition they face is stronger than it really is. She thinks that is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate.

Dr Hill showed heterosexual men and women photographs of people. She asked them to rate both how attractive those of their own sex would be to the opposite sex, and how attractive the members of the opposite sex were. She then compared the scores for the former with the scores for the latter, seen from the other side. Men thought that the men they were shown were more attractive to women than they really were, and women thought the same of the women.

Dr Hill had predicted this outcome, thanks to error-management theory—the idea that when people (or, indeed, other animals) make errors of judgment, they tend to make the error that is least costly. The notion was first proposed by Martie Haselton and David Buss, two of Dr Hill's colleagues, to explain a puzzling quirk in male psychology.

As studies show, and many women will attest, men tend to misinterpret innocent friendliness as a sign that women are sexually interested in them. Dr Haselton and Dr Buss reasoned that men who are trying to decide if a woman is interested sexually can err in one of two ways. They can mistakenly believe that she is not interested, in which case they will not bother trying to have sex with her; or they can mistakenly believe she is interested, try, and be rejected. From an evolutionary standpoint, trying and being rejected comes at little cost, except for hurt feelings. Not trying at all, by contrast, may mean the loss of an opportunity to, among other things, spread one's DNA.

There is an opposite bias in women's errors. They tend to undervalue signs that a man is interested in a committed relationship. That, the idea goes, is because a woman who guesses wrongly that a man intends to stick around could end up raising a child alone.

On looks, however, men and women make the same error. So go on, pluck up your courage: you may think the competition is frighteningly hot, but then so does she.

Source: The Economist

New age Arranged marriages: Groom's perspective

2006-11-06T12:19:00.000Z

http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2006/nov/01arrange.htm

Finished your studies, landed a job, and settled down? Like most other guys, marrying will probably be the next thing on your agenda. But, the dynamics of an arranged marriage have changed. Find out what the realities of this age-old tradition are, for a new generation.

New avatars

"Nowadays, parents simply suggest the person they feel is suitable for their son or daughter. Only if their child approves (after interacting with him or her), do things move ahead. Also, children are now increasingly taking the initiative to find their own partners. The number of people putting up their profiles at matrimonial sites is a case in point. So, children are now 'arranging' their own marriages," says Sanjeev Sharma, 29, a software engineer currently in the 'marriage market', looking for a bride.

"By the new-age definition, an arranged marriage is just a 'set-up'. Parents introduce their children to each other, who meet and may even date for some time. Then, if and when they are ready, they get married," agrees Kamlesh Mathur, 27, a sales executive who has just joined the scene.

What are you looking for?

Who you will marry is one of the most important decisions you will make. Some questions that crop up include: What sort of a girl do I marry? Will she adjust to my family? How can I decide just by meeting her a few times? When should I marry? What if I make the wrong choice?

"Take a pen and paper and list the attributes you are looking for in a girl. For example, educational achievements, profession, appearance (looks, height, weight), etc. You might not find the 'perfect' girl, but you will have a fair idea of what you are looking for," says Sanjeev. "The key to choosing the right partner is to look for a person with a good character too, not simply a good personality," feels Kamlesh. Qualities to look out for include maturity and responsibility, a positive attitude toward life, commitment to the relationship, emotional openness, integrity and high self-esteem.

"Many men go for beauty when looking for a suitable bride. Sure, looks are important, but that should not be the most important criterion. Later on in life, it is her maturity and behaviour that will make all the difference," feels Sanjeev.

In arranged marriages, family support also plays a major role in ensuring a successful marriage. This is where compatibility of social status, family values and caste/religion may come in. "If she is going to live with your parents in a joint family set-up, it would be wise to take a few inputs from family members as well," advises Kamlesh.

Tell your parents

The selection process is tough on every one involved in it. In arranged marriages, the involvement of family and society is pretty high. Clearly define some minimum criteria for selection in terms of education, physical appearance, social status, family values, future career plans, etc., so your parents don't waste their time. "It would be unfair to meet a girl three to four times only to change your mind, as it can have repercussions for her too. You should have your criteria ready. Be clear about what you are looking for, so you meet fewer people," advises Jitesh Dwivedi, 28, a graphic designer who just finalised his match and will marry in December.

People often prefer partners from the same profession for better understanding. "For example, doctors sometimes prefer doctors for reasons that include being able to start a clinic together, etc. Also, the partner is better able to understand the working hours and professional difficulties. Thus, if you are looking for a specific match, convey it to your parents," says Dr. Bhaskar Gupta, 29, a pathologist who had an arranged marriage last year. "As I am over 6 feet tall and live abroad, my personal preference is someone fluent in English and at least 5'3" tall," adds Sanjeev.

Background research

It is important for you and/or your parents to check the educational and family background of a prospective partner. This can be done via a reference check, a visit to the workplace (or institute, if she's studying), through relatives, etc. The same process is used when the girl is abroad, but it is definitely more difficult. For one, a personal visit may not be possible and you have to rely on other sources for information. If you have friends/family abroad or living in proximity to the prospective bride, request them to meet her and check things out.

You can also perform an employer verification, check the visa status, request a medical test, etc. Also, communicate regularly through emails, phone, chat, etc. to know her better and get an insight into her lifestyle.

A meeting of minds

As we all know, it is difficult to judge a person based on a few meetings. How, then, do you select a life partner? "This is where you need to take additional help of other mediums of communication like phone, email, chat, etc. because it is sometimes possible to discuss issues more freely and actually get a better idea of the person through these mediums than in person," says Jitesh.

Whenever you do meet, relax and be yourself. Keep an open mind and don't hesitate to discuss important issues. Wear something that you look good and feel comfortable in. Try meeting away from the usual crowd of relatives, at some neutral place like a coffee shop, so you can interact without being influenced by others. Above all, trust your gut feeling.

Ask away!

Those days are long gone when youngsters getting married hardly knew anything about each other. Now you can ask just about anything and no one is supposed to take offence. "If you have questions that may seem uncomfortable but deal with the reality of today's social situation, or if you have doubts, by all means ask! Because NOT asking a question may ultimately prove to be a bigger mistake than asking," feels Dr. Bhaskar.

Here are some aspects that could be looked into once you get on familiar terrain.

General questions

Are you ready for marriage?
How would you describe yourself?
How do you like to spend your free time?
How do you feel about smoking and/or drinking?
What are you looking for in a spouse?
How much time do you need to decide?
What are your preferences, in terms of food?
What are your pet peeves?
How do you act when you get upset?
How do you feel about pets?
What is your family like?

Professional queries

What career path do you plan on taking?
How ambitious are you?
How much time do you spend at work?
How do you plan to balance work and family life?

Previous relationships

Today, a lot of young people may already have had a previous relationship. "Though having had a relationship is neither uncommon nor something to be ashamed of, people sometimes bring some 'baggage' -- emotional and / or health-related -- from the previous relationship. Of course, this applies to both men and women. Now, a woman should be equally cautious if a guy tells her he has had relationships previously, and should look for signs of any serious issues," feels Dr. Bhaskar.

"Yes, a relationship in the past would be a concern for me. But then, my opinion can't be generalised for all couples. It is a very individual thing," says Kamlesh. "It is difficult to say, as it is a case-specific issue," adds Sanjeev. "I feel there is nothing wrong with it if it is a thing of the past. What is more important is to be faithful to each other after marriage."

Medical check-up?

"Yes, you and your partner should get one. Everyone knows the significance of getting oneself tested in today's day and age, but the way you approach it involves a good amount of emotional maturity on the part of both," says Sanjeev.

"It's not as if you can't ask the girl to be tested, but there is a degree of reluctance in asking, as it is a very delicate situation and people may feel insulted if not outraged. However, if tactfully handled, most people would respond favourably, even if they voice initial doubts," says Dr. Bhaskar. "What you can do is tell the girl (and / or her parents) that, like you, they too are probably aware of the increasing incidence of HIV and may be experiencing some apprehension about it. Moreover, a blood test can also check for thalassemia and Rh factor. You can possibly both get tested at the same reliable clinic and then proceed with the marriage without any doubts," he advises.

It's your call

Do remember, all said and done, it is your marriage and your life that is at stake. After you get married, you and your wife are the ones who will face the music. Don't marry a girl just because your parents or friends asked you to do so. "Once you marry, if things don't work out and you end up saying, 'It's only because of my parents that I married you', then your marriage is destined for disaster," says Sanjeev.

New age Arranged marriages: A bride's perspective

2006-11-06T12:17:00.000Z

http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2006/nov/02arrange.htm

The concept of arranged marriages has changed. And, not just for men. As a woman, ideally, your life partner should be someone with whom you can share interests and who will encourage your independence. As with any relationship, friendship is the key. Good communication from the beginning will help ensure that yours is a lasting, loving partnership.

Let's take a look at how to go about looking for these characteristics in the context of an arranged marriage.

New avatars

Arranged marriages are not like they were, say, 20 years ago. "It is now more like meeting someone through your family or like being set up for a blind date," says Rachna Shukla, 25, a Web designer who had an arranged marriage earlier this year. "Parents or friends introduce the couple and let them talk via phone or email, meet a couple of times, and then ask for a decision. If the couple says No, it's a No. However, when parents are involved, there will inevitably be some pressure as they can't help but give their opinion and advice," she adds.

These days, couples often initiate the dialogue themselves, through matrimonial sites (as parents may not be familiar with computers) and end up being the ones introducing each other to their parents. "I call it an 'arranged introduction', as the choice is solely left to the couple. I feel this is the natural direction in which 'arranged marriages' are headed," says Chetna Johari, 27, a computer engineer who is presently on the manhunt.

"Another difference is that it is no longer only the guy who decides first. Girls have an equal prerogative to do so. Also, as women are now more career-oriented and financially independent, they are usually not in a hurry," continues Chetna.

What are you looking for?

The first thing to keep in mind is to make a list (at least mentally) of attributes you would want in your life partner, so you can focus better on your search. Depending upon your preferences, some factors that might be taken into consideration (not necessarily in this order) are -- job, salary, educational qualifications, appearance (looks, height, weight, etc.), caste, horoscope, values (traditional, liberal or moderate), habits (drinking, smoking, etc.), location, family background, social standing, etc.

Inform your parents

It's best to spell out any preferences beforehand, so your parents can search accordingly and the list can be narrowed down. This way, you will save your parents' time as well. "As I have a non-transferable job in Delhi, I would prefer a Delhi-based match," says Shalini Srivastava, 24, who works with an NGO and is looking for a life partner.

Meeting your 'could-be'

Deciding to marry someone is one of the most important decisions of your life. If you are confused, unsure or awkward, don't fret -- so is the other person. Just a few things you can keep in mind when you meet your could-be significant other:

Dos: Wear something that is both flattering and comfortable. Try meeting away from relatives. Choose a neutral venue like a coffee shop. Pretend that you are on a blind date and try to enjoy yourself.

Don'ts: Don't approach the meeting with the mindset that you have to marry this person. Don't think you'll be sure to hate him either.

Before, during, and after

Before meeting, try getting in touch with the person over the phone or through e-mail to prepare you, to some extent, for what to expect. During the meeting, keep an open mindset. Relax and just be yourself. Don't hesitate to discuss important issues. Afterwards, think calmly and give yourself time to assess. Although this meeting may not indicate if this is 'the' person you should marry, it can certainly tell you whether you want to get to know the person better and take a step forward.

If, at any time during the meeting, you realise it won't work, keep your cool, be polite, and try to keep it as short as possible. "Trusting your gut feeling is the most important -- if you feel something is not right, it probably is not," advises Rachna.

Ask away!

It's perfectly okay to ask any questions you have in mind. But remember, timing is the key. For example, it can be outright insulting and offensive if the very first question is 'How much do you earn, both net and gross?'

"Sometimes, information is not offered voluntarily and one hesitates to ask. But, if the answer to a question is important in taking matters further, there is no harm in asking. Maybe the person you ask will feel offended. But, when you are taking such an important decision, you have to take that risk. Isn't it better that they feel bad now, rather than you feeling worse later?" asks Rachna.

General questions that could be asked once you get familiar:

Are you ready for marriage?

How would you describe yourself?

How do you like to spend your free time?

How do you feel about smoking and/or drinking?

What are you looking for in a spouse?

How much time do you want to decide?

What are your preferences, in terms of food (non-vegetarian or vegetarian)?

How do you feel about pets?

What is your family like?

What are your likes and dislikes?

How do you act when you get upset?

How often will we visit our extended family (if staying apart from them)?

Do you believe in sharing housework?

Appropriate questions on the profession front:

What are your future career plans?

How much time do you spend at work?

Are you looking for a working wife, housewife, or is it immaterial to you?

What would we do in the situation that I get transferred?

Background research

Although researching the boy's background might seem painstaking, it is very important. "My friend got married to a very charming boy with a very good job. As he was from a reputed family too, they didn't bother to ask about his habits. It was only after marrying him that she found out he had a drinking problem," says Shalini.
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The difficulty of researching goes up a notch when the boy is abroad, especially if you don't have any friends/relatives to help you out there. This was the case with Asha (name changed), who married an NRI in the US only to discover, when she got there, that he had a live-in American girlfriend.

Thus, it would be wise to make discreet inquiries outside with the help of relatives and friends, with respect to his job, family background, age, education, habits, financial condition, medical history, lifestyle, etc.

"You can get an employer verification to find out if he is working there or not. Definitely check the visa status. You may also ask for a proof of employment letter, request a medical test, etc. Try calling discreetly at an odd hour to see who picks up the phone at night. You can hire a detective to do a background check (this is expensive, however). If you have friends and family abroad, ask them to meet him and find out more," says Chetna.
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Additionally, communicate regularly through email, phone, chat, etc. to get a better idea about the person.

Previous relationships

"These days, it is not uncommon at all to have had a previous relationship. If my partner had a previous relationship, I would try and be reasonable and objective about it. It depends on many factors like the type of relationship, duration, feelings, etc. As long as it is a thing of the past and he is now committed to his marriage, I would probably not mind," says Shalini.

"However, finding out about a potential partner's previous sexual history is next to impossible. Asking such personal questions will seem too embarrassing," says Rachna. "Arranged marriages involve the whole family and private information coming out in the open could have severe repercussions, so some may not openly disclose this aspect," says Dr. Bhaskar Gupta, 29, a pathologist who had an arranged marriage last year.

A medical checkup?

"Both partners getting a blood test is absolutely a must. If the boy's side feels offended, help by telling them that you are convinced about getting it done yourself too," says Chetna. "Actually, it is difficult for the girl or the girl's side to ask this, but I wish every person going through an arranged marriage would have the courage to insist on such tests. Isn't it better to be safe than sorry?" she continues.

"There are cases where, out of hesitation, marriages have taken place without such insistence, based solely on the goodwill of the family. The boys have been discovered to be HIV-positive later," says Dr. Bhaskar.

"A blood test should be made compulsory for couples before marriage. Today, more boys and girls are choosing to go together to a clinic and get the test done before marriage. Some experts advise on making a thalassemia test mandatory before marriage too, for couples in high-incidence states, on the lines of the Goa Government's plan for compulsory pre-matrimony HIV screening," he continues.

Is he the one?

Finally, there should be mutual consent and understanding from both sides; only then can a marriage be sustained. "It is important that you like your prospective partner enough to marry him," says Rachna. Good arranged marriages occur when the parents support and help their children find life partners.

To his Coy Mistress

2006-10-14T19:58:00.000Z

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell

The A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage...

2006-09-14T23:13:00.000Z

The A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage By Rekha Waheed, is a sassy story that unapologetically celebrates the realities of an age-old tradition for the new generation. From the endless supply of unsuitable grooms-to-be, interfering auntijhis, broken protocols, to non-stop community pressures, we follow Maya Malik's charming roller coaster ride through the arranged marriage process to realise that a girl can use old world traditions, and new world savvy to get exactly what she wants.

You've heard of Bridget Jones, Ally McBeal and Carrie Bradshaw, now meet Maya Malik. The 'plagued by singledom', quirky main character undoubtedly reaches out to a new generation of women through redefined stereotypes and new cultural challenges. All women will relate to her paranoia about singledom. The book is a contemporary, witty and proud representation of the controversial topic that has already created considerable interest.

The A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage reflects the splendid spirit of Asian traditions that has mass appeal. This book was recommended to me by a friend and I must say book is more for female. so guys, if you are not reading this book - you are not missing anything...

Unhappily Marriage?.. waiting might payoff..

2006-08-02T08:33:00.000Z

recent study says- Divorces doesn't make people happier..

The research identified happy and unhappy spouses in US national datbase. Of the unhappy partners who divorced, about half were happy five years later. But unhappy spouses who stuck it out often did better. About two-thirds were happy five years later. Divorce didn't reduce symptoms of depression, raise self-esteem or increase a sense of mastery compared with those who stayed married, the report says. Results were controlled for factors including race, age, gender and income. Staying married did not tend to trap unhappy spouses in violent relationships.

Study results contradict what seems to be common sense to me.. in indian context - for ages indian arrange marriage lived forever(/longer) because of this ONE reason "staying married". Society/community played big part on this but increasely with lifestyle change easy access to money everything getting/will change atleast among urban indians.

then again its always said if you are not happy - you can accept & wait for thinks to happen or design your own destiny by reacting/taking steps to change. later is widely considered to be wise step..

for more details - http://www.americanvalues.org/html/r-unhappy_ii.html

Why do people want to get married?

2006-07-19T11:45:00.000Z

recently read blogs
http://lordlabak.blogspot.com/2006/07/observation.html

made me think and posted my comments tooo..

having lived in western world some years now - marriage is viewed as a level of commitment. Seriously, no one taking that road until they live with the person for a few years... attitude is : If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. no one is in rush (may be some women due to body clock pressure) and totally cool to be single... instead of regret it later.

in general - i guess reason may be :

from the time we're tiny, we're taught that we're going to grow up and get married. We actually have conditioned ourselves to believe that we are not a success in this life unless we do find that one perfect person and marry. It's the fad of this millenium.. next one, no one will marry!

Because society tells us that if you are not married, you are NOT NORMAL, and something is WRONG WITH YOU! There is a social stigma associated with not being married.

but i think... its only human to love and wanting to be loved & cared. may be marriage is an self-assurance that you are worth it.

cross culture Marriages...taboo..!?

2006-06-29T13:54:00.000Z

recently read this article Marrying the greek family about cross culture Marriages. Initial thoughts, same applies for we indians as well... Iam no expert on marriage and not married but was think, logically what could happen.

Marrying someone from another nation can be exciting, interesting and challenging. ofcourse nothing is correct or wrong when its come to marriage - few praticle diffculties are:

understanding/communciation : very very big issues. hard time understanding each other's humor. imagine explianing the humor to one another...! discussion with either parents/in-laws are almost impossible (this is very diffcult if even understand the language)
home court advantage :If a foreign man marries an American woman and they live in the United States, she would be cast in the leadership role in some aspects of their relationship
cultural & religious beliefs : one of must needs to give a little and adjust a little bit more. Often, it is the person with the least strict beliefs. Religion is a thorny issue. (confused child/child raising issues..)

Marriage requires to give up a great deal of freedom because many have to be taken jointly. But problems that be set cross-cultural or inter-caste marriages are the same as those faced by others after all Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus...

Arrange Marriage...

2005-12-30T10:32:00.000Z

First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Love

"Marriage only brings a woman closer to man, and they become friends in a special sense, never to be parted either in this life or in the lives to come." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

Some people are fortunate enough to have found their soul-mates while others have their soul-mates selected for them. In South Asia and the Middle East, arranged marriages are preferred over love marriages, which is the predominant system in the West.People of the West reason that only the person who is to marry can decide whom s/he wishes to spend the rest of his/her life with, which leads to a successful marriage. On the other hand, people of South Asia and the Middle East claim that the elders of the family have the final say over the marriage for they have seen the world and know that a successful marriage is not just a uniting of two people, but of two families.

What is a marriage? Dictionary definition....a legally recognized relationship, established by a civil or religious ceremony, between two people who intend to live together as sexual and domestic partners.”

What is an arranged marriage? It is usually perceived as a marriage that one is being forced into but, in all truth, it is not. It is a merging of not only two people, but of two families through the process of agreement. Now, in today’s modern world, there are two types of arranged marriages: arranged-love marriages and pure-arranged marriages. An arranged-love marriage is where the couple loves one another and wishes to marry, receiving the permission and advice of their respective parents and family elders. Here, caste and dowry are not as important as status, both economic and social, and family reputation. A pure-arranged marriage is followed by a specific, traditional procedure: the man’s parents investigate the girl’s family history and caste before beginning any talks with her parents. The man’s family checks to see if the girl’s family is of the same caste, has relatively the same social and economic status, is of a reputable family and has no physical or mental disabilities or deformities.

Arranged marriages are not as cruel as they are viewed. The arranged system is one that both peacefully and lovingly unites not only two people but two families, showing that having one’s soul-mate selected for him/her is not all that bad. Those who willingly go through an arranged marriage know the rules and expectations of such a union helps them in making their marriage last – a quality that is lacking in many Western marriages, since over fifty per cent of them end in divorce. As Gandhi stated, a successful marriage is one that the couple will relive time and time again because “matches are made in Heaven.

I found this very interesting "Tips of Arranged marriage" :
www.sulekha.com/groups/postdisplay.aspx?cid=261248&forumid=756919
Ending couldnt be any better... Never do anything to others that you don’t like for yourself..

so easy & thought provoking to read... is it that easy to follow ?

Much Married

2005-11-12T11:30:00.000Z

A man and a woman who have never met before find themselves in the same sleeping carriage of a train.

After the initial embarrassment they both go to sleep, the woman on the top bunk, the man on the lower.

In the middle of the night the woman leans over, wakes the man and says, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm awfully cold and I was wondering if you could possibly get me another blanket."

The man leans out and, with a glint in his eye, says, "I've got a better idea... just for tonight, let's pretend we're married."

The woman thinks for a moment. "Why not," she giggles.

"Great," he replies, "Get your own damn blanket!"

Husband Shopping Centre...

2005-11-09T23:08:00.000Z

Recently a "Husband Shopping Centre" opened in London, where women could go to choose a huband from among many men. It was laid out in five floors,with the men increasing in positive attributes as you ascended.

The only rule was, once you opened the door to any floor, you HAD to
choose a man from that floor; If you went up a floor, you couldn't go
back down except to leave the place,never to return. A couple of
girlfriends went to the shopping centre to findsome husbands...

First floor:

The door had a sign saying, "These men have jobs and love kids." The
women read the sign and said, "Well, that's better than not having a
job, or not loving kids, but I wonder what's further up?" So up they
went.

Second floor:

The sign read, "These men have high paying jo bs, love kids, and are
extremely good looking. "Hmmm, said the ladies. But, I wonder what's
further up?"

Third floor:

This sign read, "These men have high paying jobs, are extremely good
looking, love kids and help with the housework. " Wow! said the women.
Very tempting, BUT, there's more further up! And up they went.

Fourth floor:

This door had a sign saying "These men have high paying jobs, love kids,
are extremely good looking, help with the housework, and have strong
romantic streak. " Oh, mercy me. But just think! What must be awaiting
us further on! So up to the fifth floor they went.

Fifth floor:

The sign on that door said, "This floor is empty and exists only to
prove that women are impossible to please."