The quest for the 'right one' - arranged marriage | Shazeeb Akhtar | TEDxMannheim

what can we learn from arranged marriages I know this topic is controversial and I've brought it deliberately with two main objectives one objective is that I would like to redefine what you think about arranged marriages and the second thing is I would like to propose a more rational way to start a serious relationship your life but before I dig deeper into this topic I would like to tell you my own story I would like to get some credibility 11 years ago I went on a quest to find myself in Singapore it was a result of a failed relationship and I thought I need to reflect upon it so I went to Asia and thought about it when I came back I remember I came out of the gate my brother picked me up and the scene was I had a tan I was wearing shorts I shaved off my hair I was in vacation mode my brother took my suitcase and he walked with me through the car casually he said to me while he was putting my bag into the trunk you know what we're not going home we're going somewhere else I was surprised but I didn't ask much when we arrived at the house I said what's this and he said well there's a surprise for you our parents are already inside and there is a girl waiting for you so you should you know he should meet someone I was really shocked because I was born and raised in Germany and it was never an option for me to go for arranged marriage I said to myself it's not gonna harm I can just go inside be polite be friendly and just go out but I went inside I greeted everybody and then I saw a beautiful young woman sitting there and our parents said hey why don't you go on the balcony and have a talk and get to know each other I said okay why not she looks interesting so we went on the balcony and asked her a couple of questions she asked me a couple and I felt every word she's saying seems perfect it makes a lot of sense I actually felt I never thought there could be a person like this I was actually quite surprised 11 years fast forward this is the same person that's my wife and she's here today you can ask her you can verify everything I'm saying we have two kids now and I'm happy I never could have imagined having a relationship that's so meaningful so powerful and so comforting now you could fairly say hey this guy's lucky and maybe I am I surely am but maybe there's something more to it that is underneath the idea of arranged marriages over the last couple of years in our friend circle whenever we met people I met people that had comparable stories and I started to dig deeper into this concept before I go deeper into arranged marriage I would like to pick you up where I believe some of you might may be today the perception of this idea may be something like this where force is involved where people don't have a choice and this picture specifically is disturbing because for us in this society having a choice and having the option to say no is as normal as breathing and while the UN or the common sense condemns this this still exists and I'm acknowledging that it exists we cannot say it's not there but it's also not the standard it's not what is the standard in arranged marriages and that's one part of my message today so especially today in the time of social media young people are exposed to awareness they're exposed to Hollywood also but also to the choice that every individual has and this concept is making an impact all over the world a study from 2013 from if sauce revealed that if you look at two at India people between 18 and 35 74 percent actually want to have arranged marriages and as a fact of the matter 90 percent are in arranged marriages in India I found this pretty interesting but no matter how you start your relationship as I said they must be voluntary before I met my wife I had two relationships that failed they lasted four years consecutively and both individuals were very nice human beings they were beautiful people had great ideas but most importantly they had good intentions to have a relationship that may could have could have lasted for life but something was missing having a common ground is maybe not enough there needs to be more to it to make it a relationship that lasts for a lifetime and after they ended I took quite some time to process them and to understand why didn't they didn't work out so what I thought is that marriages need to be extremely robust but they were not and the reason for that is that we didn't talk about important life questions initially and I will come to this in a second because I would like to compare the concept of love marriage and arranged marriages what do you think of when you picture that you're meeting someone what I'm picturing is something like this maybe it's a disco maybe it's a party maybe it's a company function it's something where you're relaxed where you have a good feeling ambience maybe if you're not in your daily skin but what you have in common is probably a more flexible mindset you want to be likeable and the idea is not why but it's more like why not so you challenge yourself you challenge the odds and I think what happens is that you often become irrational it happened to me and especially in Germany when you think about it we plan everything we plan the smallest project but in this question we're happy to do trial and error and this is one of the most important lives decisions in our lives now what I think about is when you meet at such a such an event what happens is that you take a drink maybe you meet for dinner or maybe you eventually go to a movie and then you start liking each other and then you start your life and if you're lucky you discuss the critical life questions later on so first you fall in love and then you discuss life questions what are the life questions I think about the question do I want to have kids where do I want to live what happens if somebody gets an offer to work from abroad and just move to a different country what happens if one of the parents falls sick and you want your parent to live with you that will be surprising to your partner if you haven't talked about it and I feel that those questions are either discussed later or never if they're never discussed it's likely that you will have surprises down the road the problem is when you are in a relationship for a longer time your ability to adapt is lower compared to the initial phase now don't get me wrong I'm not saying you shouldn't explore I think that's fine exploring is important it's important to understand who you are and more importantly it's important to understand how you want your relationship to be and to also understand how the other person takes that's that's important but if you think about a serious relationship you cannot afford to waste time let me contrast arranged marriage with love marriage and before I do that I would like to share the definition of it arranged marriage means that there are two entities two people two individuals that are brought together by a connecting element by connecting person it could be your parents it could be some family friend or anybody else who knows both people and this knowing aspect is very important because that person that connects to people needs to make a pre-assessment a compatibility check and when the compatibility is given that person brings together those two people for them to explore if they make sense together but more importantly the outcome of that meeting is open it means that either one or both can decide that this makes sense and we want to explore further or we don't and as I said before there are still communities and parts of the world where this this freedom is not there but the awareness is changing and the way how I experienced it was that I could have said no and so could have my wife I agree this doesn't look like a very romantic scene it looks more like an interview and maybe this is what it is when I think about arranged marriage this is what I think about I think about two people sitting there talking to each other and telling each other what they do what they've been doing how they picture a relationship and maybe also what they're afraid of you're in your daily skin and you are not afraid to say what you're afraid of you have a comparatively inflexible mind because you want to make sure that you don't take the wrong decision the underlying assumption is not why not it is only and only why why does it make sense that we both try to get into a relationship try to get into a marriage and it's really important that no time is wasted here the sequence compared to the other example is the other way around while in the other example you fall in love first and you discuss life questions later maybe in this thing it's discussing the life questions first and then trying to find the spark that is important to like the other person and by the way this is something that I would like to emphasize also for people from my community I think that just rationally being able to connect is not enough I think that's the prerequisite to interact after that and to try to find the chemistry that is important for a person to remain interesting for someone else be the idea as people from comparable backgrounds or people from comparable mindsets values are less likely to see surprises down the road there are platforms today where you can create your profile and an algorithm will tell you you should date this person that person makes total sense for you and I've been discussing that with some of our friends I think this solution also has its flaws because every person creates his or her own profile I show someone else how I see myself rather than someone else who knows me well proposes that this could be a nice person see it's the selection of my wife I could couldn't have done it better myself somebody else actually told me hey this makes sense for you and it did but nevertheless even if somebody takes all the boxes for you it doesn't mean that your relationship will be perfect and it's a fairy tale and nothing can happen to it even the perfect soulmates and split therefore you cannot predict the unpredictable because life itself means that anything could happen today when you go out this door today anything could happen to you that changes how you think how you feel and we cannot do anything against it but guys we can do something about things that are predictable there are things if you think about it when you meet someone that could mean that two people cannot get on the same common ground for example kids if one person says I want to have kids desperately and the other person says no then that common ground is not existing therefore I'm saying be brave and set expectations be brutally honest especially in the initial part of your relationship if you mean it to be a serious relationship do your marriage homework because I propose rather than having an initial phase of romance with a shooting flame to have a lifetime of happiness with a slow burn but more importantly whatever way you choose to start your relationship may it be an arranged marriage may it be a love marriage make sure you don't waste your time and even more importantly don't waste anyone elses time thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 12,080

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Culture, Family, Love, Relationships

Id: sf21qJA1mxU

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019