As I flipped through channels I came across a show called" Marriage at First Sight " and it brought back memories........

I sat with my hands in my lap just silent. I couldn't laugh or cry. It seemed like after the tsunami of emotions, stillness had found its way into my heart. For days I had been calm and collected on the surface, but from the inside my soul was being cut into a million pieces. It was so ironic how every cell in my body was in pain and being tortured yet I managed to put a smile on my face and act like nothing was wrong.

That was how I felt when I had an arranged marriage. Days before the wedding I was dying yet when the day arrived I became still. It was a difficult decision but I was doing what was expected of me, marrying the person my parents wanted me to. So obviously it was the absolutely right thing to do- atleast that's what I told myself . My mind told me it was the "proper" thing to do, yet my soul knew exactly how wrong it was of me to hand my life over to someone who I didn't know. I had already given my heart away yet I was willing to give the rest of myself to someone else.

So I sit here today 23 years after that day, and I can still feel the emotions running through me. I am not sitting here and judging people or cultures that encourage arranged marriages, I am just saying that it didn't work for me. I believed in my parents more than I did in myself. But then when I look at many couples today who had arranged marriages or married for love, are happily married and felt it was the best thing ever for them. However for me maybe I had my mind made up that it wasn't going to work.

Maybe I was too headstrong to agree or to give up my dreams and couldn't conform to what was "expected" of me or maybe Im just not marriage material.
Either way as I sit to write this I feel that marriage is such a complicated institute, where if you cant communicate properly you are doomed. You have to open the sacred doors of your soul and allow the other person in, show your weaknesses and insecurities along with the goodness and greatness in you. Which in my case didn't really work, because I started my marriage with a closed mind and soul, I was a skeptic yet followed what was expected of me. This created doubts even before there were any.

So if you plan to get married please be willing to open your soul up. Communicate your inner most dreams and desires because those unfulfilled desires are what become resentments and anger. Those are what create distances and ruin relationships. So arranged marriage or not marry someone because they touch your heart not for other reasons ,like I did.