The Road to Marriage — Ancillary 1
As international relationships and ‘international love’ gains popularity and acceptability in society, marriage is becoming a global context. Thus, it’s important to address the road to marriage locally, nationally, and globally because every country, every state, every locality has a different understanding of how two people should end up being married. Friendship. Dating. Living Together. Engaged. Married. A stereotypical western path to marriage. On the east, pairings involve a lot of parental intervention and family matching rather than an emotional connection between the two people being married.
Historically, the road to marriage was very simple: one married a girl/boy in their community, primarily locally, and rarely nationally. Global marriage was an unorthodox and unacceptable concept, and people who wanted to marry internationally often eloped. The increase in acceptable global marriages is because of increased globalisation through immigration laws, and international education. The road to global marriage is amended by such changes as migration, or international education is a step as well.
Today, western media promotes this road to global marriage through TV shows, Romantic movies, Romantic Sitcoms, and various publications that exaggerate the effects of finding international love. The media’s effect on the idea is proven by various locals and nationals forgetting their traditional path and adopting the more liberal and independent path to marriage.
Nevertheless, conservative families would prefer local arrangements over national arrangements, and national arrangements over global arrangements. They fear the ‘differences’ between another culture and religion. This has given birth to another road to marriage, one that begins locally or nationally but transforms into a global one. Couples are married locally or nationally through the western roadmap or eastern roadmap and then move to another country, imbibe another culture, or educate their children using different teachings thereby transforming the nature of their marriage.
The road to marriage is something that causes debate on marriage as a whole, and thus it is an important context to address locally, nationally, and globally. Marriage is the end, the road is what matters!
