Talk:Matchmaking

Since the emergence of the mythology of romantic love in the Christian world in medieval times, the pursuit of happiness via such romantic love has often been viewed as something akin to a human right.

I'm not so sure. Certainly the official line is that romantic love is a recent development, but the official line on premarital unchastity is the same, and pregnant-at-the-altar statistics do not bear that out (and I believe without evidence that one of the longest ongoing projects in medical science was the search for an oral contraceptive). It's possible that, just as (as mentioned in the article) matchmakers frequently did little more than rubber-stamp decisions the parents had already made, they and parents often did little more than sign off on the prospective spouses' own choice (i.e., of each other). Anyway, if romantic love was non-existant or unimportant until the 13th century CE, how did Leander drown? Why weren't Pyramus and Thisbe home in bed like everyone else who didn't want to be eaten?

And after all, how frequent is it that a society has more than two of:

• arranged first marriages,
• de facto major obstacles to or prohibition of divorce, and
• de facto monogamy and disapproval of adultery?

--Calieber 14:12, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

PS: It occurs to me, thinking about it, that the answer to the above question may differ according to whether we're talking about men, women, or everyone. --Calieber 14:46, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)