Arranged Marriages – who would have thought?

He is smart and living the dream in a country full of opportunities. She is smart, successful and helps sick people. Together they are a formidable duo that are now going to spend the rest of their lives together.

As we talked about this exciting news around an office full of single men and women, everyone applauded this age-old custom of arranged marriages.

Parents finding suitable partners for their children from appropriate families was well received with many of us having Muslim friends who are in arranged marriages and are very happy. The 5 couples I know are all happy, in love and committed to each other. As there is no chance of marrying outside your religion, social-economic status or caste, for some reason, in the cases I am aware of, it works. Both families try and work out problems as they arise as both families are very much part of the relationship. Everyone is family and that’s the gel that makes it work.

I have to say, I wish someone had married me off at 18. I wouldn’t be here, single at 36 years old, wondering whether I will ever find true love or have a family of my own.

I am quite aware that the older I get, the more picky I become and the more independent I am emotionally and financially.

If only my parents were Muslim and they found a nice man with the same religion and background as I that I could learn to love and be a good wife to.

Now, that sounds submissive, but I am deadly serious. How much easier would life have been? In my experience, when I have dated unemployed men or the one time I dated a backpacker, I knew it was never going to work. We were not moving in the right direction nor did we have anything of interest. Likewise, the time I dated a guy whose family were billionaires, I was equally out of my depth. He was an ‘owned’ man, in that, he was not his own man and had to run way too many things past his family for my liking. Not that I said anything, but I certainly thought it. His idea of a holiday to me seemed like hard work. I just wanted the simple things in life (well simple in comparison to him) and he would never dream of going to my hometown of Charters Towers nor did he particularly like my friends. All understandable because our backgrounds are so different.

So, both scenarios don’t work. But if my family had found a man that was a good person, from similar background, perhaps I would be happily married just like my friends.

I will never know.

Which lends itself to why we don’t have ‘arranged marriages’ in business? To be perfectly honest, I just need 300 clients in Australia, and I will be very happy. I need them to have the same values as I do, the same financial status (ability to pay their bills), similar education and know that we are in a relationship and no matter what obstacles come up, we can together as a ‘family’ work it out.

Does that sounds too outrageous? I don’t think so. There is enough work out there for all marketing companies, so why don’t we all make an agreement and put companies into a pot and pick out ones that would be suitable ‘arranged marriages’?

I am up for it and I believe it would really work.

It’s not really a crazy idea. I have met many companies in my time that would not suit Marketing Eye and have said no to them, and have also met companies and said yes to them when clearly our values are distinctively different.

To all those companies that haven’t paid their bills and think that is ok – where are your values? Now, if it was an arranged marriage, this would not have happened – would it?

Mellissah Smith