Affect of culture on Marriage

 

 

How can culture affect marriage and the way people meet? It is very important for therpaist to understand clients cuture. 
Not every therapist can be an expert in any culture so a lot of times you need to ask the client if their culture is affecting the issue that they are dealing with. This brings up to issue of arrange marriage. I once met a young man who was going to loss and greif. when I asked him what was going on he said that he met a girl that he was going to marry but the families did not agree and the marriage did not work. So I asked him how long he know her and to tell me a bit more about her, which is something that we often do in grief therapy. His answer was that I only met him to 45 minutes. One thing that we know about grief is that a lot of time, greiving is realated to the relationship that you have with this person. So I wondering how this can be. I lost my uncle a few months ago but I was not greiving since I have never seen him! but, then I realized that in this young man was actaully thinking that she was going to be his wife and had plans to bring her to the US and start a family with her so all her dreams were shatered when this did not work out. 
Arrange marriage is very common in some culture including my own. My own parents got married this way. Actually when I go back one generation most of our family members married thiis way. When I look at our family members I oftIn see that in the previous generations couples don’t have much in common . In fact there is not love there and two people have just learned to be with each other. This often causes them to pay too much attention to their children and just be married for the children which can cause other issues. The fact is that most arranged marriages end up in being in bad marriage or divorce. it is tottaly understandable that some of the this is a cultural norm, but I often spend a lot of time psycho educated my clients that just because something is a cultural norm it does not mean that it works.