I know some one in their 50s who is in an arranged marriage. They are happy as far as I know and did infact fall in love. They are from Kashmir. The way he told it to me, it was very similar to friends setting you up with some one, except it was the parents who did it. No forcing and no personal gain for the parents. Just people who know you trying to find a good match for you with their contacts.

I feel a little ashamed. Everyone here has cool trauma.

My parents chose each other. They argued over money, which we didn’t have a lot of, and her chronic illness which loomed large over all our lives, but they loved each other and us. She was in her late 50s when she died of a cardiac event caused by complications from her chronic illness 12 years ago. My dad is still alive and I dont think he’s even looked at another woman since. I have a hard time even imagining it.

They chose one another, and are toxic af. They argued constantly, my mom physically, mentally, and emotionally abused me all my childhood and still tries.

Shortly after I was born, my dad bought a small adobe house 18 miles from town, it had 1 pull string light and one plug socket in each room. There was no bathroom, and no indoor plumbing when we moved into it. My mom grew up in NYC and could not cope with this. Everything my dad did he did for the betterment of the family, my mother saw anything not directly for her as a slight against her.

The fighting and abuse got so bad I used to try to get my dad together with my friends with single mothers moms.

Mom mother finally moved out of the house a few years ago. It has been the best thing for their relationship.

Mine chose each other and were ok people. Not ideal parents, they were emotionally distant which has left me with some mental garbage but they weren’t cruel, didn’t fight much, and generally tried to do the right thing.

My parents ostensibly chose each other, but it’s really more like my mother preyed upon my father. He’s a bit younger than her, not as educated, was shy and not overly ambitious, and perfect for her campaign of modeling someone into what she wanted. My aunt says he used to have a great group of buddies back in the 60s when they met, and one by one she weeded them out of his life and replaced them with people she thinks had higher social status. This tape has recycled itself routinely throughout their lives as she discards someone and finds someone new to glom onto for a while and try and be them. She has him totally under her thumb, and she’s a vicious monster who regards other humans like furniture she rearranges.

People didn’t know much about borderline personality disorder in the 60s when they met, and he’s too shy and unable to defend himself, and while they do squabble, she always wins. He has very little insight into how toxic she is, and goes along with all her psychotic shit, like how nobody can use a bathmat and you can just slip and slide on the wet floor, or how you can’t keep the toaster or kettle on the counter and have to put it immediately back in the cupboard burning hot, because her narcissism means everything has to look like a museum.

He dated some woman before her, just a girl really, who was chubby I guess, and my mother spent one dinner with extended family joyfully insulting this woman, who he last laid eyes upon probably 40 years prior, and asking him repeatedly with vicious gleeful delight if he remembered “the ball”, meaning this chubby girl. My spouse wanted to clock her in the teeth. We were all just kind of numb to her behavior then and tried to ignore it, but not long after I awoke to who she really was and haven’t seen them since. It’s sad, but she regards me as a piece of lost property really, and I don’t think there’s a good enough therapist in the world to wake him up to how dangerous she is.