I was talking to an Indian Friend of mine about Marriage, I asked him how comes many Indian Marriages lasts longer than most western marriages what is the secret behind. He gave me a very strange answer that I never thought of.
He said the problems with western marriages are that many are built on unrealistic expectations. Many people go into marriages with their pre-conceived ideas of how marriage life is supposed to be.
Women in particular tend to enter into marriage with pre-conceived notions from Hollywood movies of how marriage and wedding life should be. Movies have indoctrinated some people that they expect certain things to be present if the marriage has to be right. They enter into marriage expecting to be married with a flawless man, perfect hard working man, all knowing man, all loving man and the list goes on and on. When these pre-conceived characteristics of their husband are not there they feel as if their marriage life is not complete, they feel they are missing something, and sometimes they feel they have been taken for a ride.
Men also on their side tend to have their own burred vision of how marriage life should be, they expect a perfect flawless wife, who will do everything perfectly, respect them love them and at the same time continue to be young. When things dont go as expected they feels disappointed in some ways and some of them start looking elsewhere.
Now according to My Indian Friend he told me that unlike the western marriages, Indian Marriages are built on a total different foundation. Most of them are pre arranged marriages. Parents are the ones who arrange who should get married to who. Their upbringing is so strict that the question of disputing this pre-arranged marriage was unheard of in the past (At least nowadays they are changing). This pre arrangement usually takes into consideration a number of factors such as your Star, your cast, social status of your family and many other factors which I can not remember. (Mind you: Love is not among the considerations for marriage)
Since these marriages are pre arranged marriages. Many Indian enter into marriage with open mind ready to accept everything that comes their way. Because their marriages are not based on love they tend to have fewer expectations from their spouse than their western counterpart. And if you have less expectation you learn to accept the person the way s/he is because you did not enter into marriage with pre-conceived ideas. It is difficult for the person you do not love to hurt you.
This is their definition of marriage, or his definition of marriage.
Now for our case, I think it is getting tougher and tougher to get married nowadays, I believe both men and women are putting too much expectation such that is becoming more and more difficult to meet these expectation and settle down. This can be the reasons one of explanation why many marriages breakup. If we could lower our expectation to achievable levels, I do believe the situation would not be as bad.