http://www.financialpost.com/related/to ... story.html

What the fuck.. And here I thought the medieval times had ended.

Oh that stuff is not that uncommon in many third world countries. Even over here these things are still relatively common in the North-African and to a lesser extent Turkish community. I take it Estonia doesn't have large groups of African and Asian immigrants?

We have a few black people. Quite literally. My biggest surprise was when i was driving to central Estonia to visit my cousins cousin and i saw this black dude walking down the road in the middle of nowhere quite literally next to nothing. And i did say "what the fuck" out loud.

lolz. I have a friend (Pakistani) who's in an arranged marriage. They're actually quite happy. Who am I to judge? In the case of the article, though, the chick was very adamantly opposed to her marriage to some semi-stranger from Lebanon, so I can see the court's point of view and would back it.

I knew a girl who was in one too. She was in college with me, Turkish descent, and while she was a superb student and didn't appear to be very old-fashioned or religious at all (no stuffy clothes, no head scarf) her family did set her up with a guy from Turkey. She was always a headstrong girl tho, and she told her family something like "okay, I'll do it, but on my terms". She forced him to take Dutch lessons from the moment he set a foot in the country and told him to get a job, and that she wouldn't stay at home and become (just) a mom but wanted to work. At least one thing she did to compromise was to start wearing a head scarf once they were married.

Not sure what happened to her, but I liked the way she took control of the situation. I do believe it can work, if you have the right people in the marriage...if the guy is an old-fashioned religious tyrant I can imagine it's not exactly fun for the woman. But other than that, I can see love grow from a 'professional situation' easily enough.

Supposedly divorce rates for arranged marriages are lower than traditional ones. *shrug* Whatever... as long as the people are happy, they can do whatever they want. But there's no way I would do an arranged marriage.

That statistic is probably skewed in the sense that those forced marriages are often part of traditional cultures where divorce is much less of an option. But yes, I don't see why they couldn't work...after all any long-term relationship is, in a sense, a reaching of an understanding. Iy's probably unlikely to be happy if you're both not being a (little) pragmatic.