You Don’t Marry for Love

Chaebols in Korean dramas practice marriage the way that most societies have for centuries. In Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage: A History, she articulates that marrying for love (what some in India call a “love marriage” is a fairly new invention. Prior to the 19th century, people get married without falling into romantic love. Her book she discusses that in older, ancient societies, people saw romantic love as very dangerous.

Why would that be the case?

Romantic love causes you to do stupid things that might threaten the well-being of your family and society as a whole.

For example, think about all the harm that Romeo and Juliet caused with their passionate affair. No bueno.

Throughout most of human history, marriage has been about property. Who is able to own something? Was able to acquire more? It was often about bringing together families together. Getting closer to a person’s family who you know would be a strategic for the community would be a great reason to have the young person marry somebody from that community. Also, because patriarchy is so universal and so prevalent throughout history, women often had a little decision in who they married.

This is why it’s not surprising to me that women are often seen as dispensable in Korean dramas. Watching “Queen of Tears” and many others, we see how a chaeol heir easily discards of one wife when it’s no longer convenient for him; he can get another one who will grant his family more political power. Chaebols treat marriages as business mergers, like elites in many societies.

This is not only done for wealthy people.

In poor communities, marriage helps to bring people closer together. I recall how my parents got married. My paternal grandmother was a widowed farmer in a rural village of Nigeria. She saw my dad having fun in the United States and wanted to make sure that he was going to marry a Nigerian woman. Otherwise, my Dad told me, he would likely feel less of a connection to home and would become “lost.” Most importantly, he would likely relinquish landownership since he is the only heir as the only male child of 6.

My dad said that his mom looked at people who were a part of our extended kin networks but not closely related to us. Anthropologists have shown us that this is a practice often used to decrease the chances inbreeding. That was how my grandmother found my mother. I believe that my mother was a descendent of my grandmother’s grandmother. Close enough to speak Owerri dialect and to visit but distant enough to reduce the odds of unhealthy children.

When my father realized my mother‘s height, he thought she was too short. My mother was barely 5 feet tall. His mother told him that, “Don’t worry. She’ll get taller after she has children.“

I do not think that is how height works.

Since my father could not afford to go back and scope her out, he trusted his mother to send his new wife to United States to join him. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, my 23 year old mother arrived in the United States in 1977. I was born a year later but when my brother was born, he established her as a legitimate wife for my father and a useful addition to the Osuji “clan.” My father’s father’s land could stay with him and his son.

Igbo law has changed to allow women to inherit but when I asked my Uncle Abel, he had not heard of any cases like that.

Much like in Kdramas, my parent’s marriage was a strategic partnership to meet goals of the extended family. This is something we see all around the world. As Sima Aunty showed us on Indian Matchmaking, caste is important for marriage in India and finding the right match is a difficult process.

In a time when Americans are the loneliest they’ve ever been — as Robert Putnam would say, “bowling alone” — perhaps love marriages have run their course.