Why are arranged marriages successful?

Shared responsibility for the match lightens what each spouse carries alone

Question: Why are arranged marriages successful?
Position1 of 3›: Arranged marriages are successful because you relinquish difficult aspects of the choice
Argument1 of 2›: Shared responsibility for the match lightens what each spouse carries alone

The argument

Those who offer this explanation locate the mechanism in who is answerable for the match. Where a person has selected a partner entirely on their own judgement, every subsequent disappointment has a single author. The thought available in a bad week is that this was my doing, which adds self reproach to whatever the original difficulty was. Proponents argue that this compounding is a serious and underrated strain, because it turns ordinary friction into evidence about the chooser. Where the hardest parts of the search have been handled by others, the picture changes. Responsibility for the match is distributed among people who were invested in its succeeding and who remain present afterwards. Proponents emphasise that second part: those who helped make the match have a stake in it working, and in practice supply mediation, pressure, practical help and a standing interest in reconciliation that a couple who chose alone must generate for themselves. The couple is not the only party to the marriage, which means they are not the only resource it has. Holders of this explanation argue that the relief is real even where the eventual consent is the couple's own. What is handed over is the search rather than the decision: the filtering, the inquiries, the awkward business of assessing suitability in matters that are hard to raise directly. They present this as the explanation's strongest form, since it does not require anyone to have been married against their will, and they accept that the mechanism depends entirely on the good faith of those arranging. Where that good faith is absent, the same structure that distributes responsibility also distributes the power to coerce, which they treat as the central risk rather than an incidental one.

Premises

[P1]A person who chose a partner wholly on their own judgement bears sole responsibility for the match, so disappointments become evidence about their own judgement. [P2] Where others conducted the search, responsibility for the match is shared with people who remain present and have a stake in its succeeding. [P3] Those people in practice supply mediation, practical help and pressure toward reconciliation that a couple choosing alone must supply themselves. [C] Marriages where the search was handled by invested others are therefore under less strain and better supported when difficulties arise.

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that the same structure cuts the other way. Third parties with a stake in the marriage succeeding are also third parties with a stake in it continuing regardless of how it is going, and the pressure described as support in good cases is pressure to stay in bad ones. They note that the explanation gives no account of what happens when the interests of those who arranged the match diverge from the interests of the spouses, which is precisely the case that matters. Others question the premise about self reproach, arguing that people who chose for themselves typically report ownership rather than guilt.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Shared responsibility is not obviously lighter, since having been matched by others can make a disappointing marriage a standing grievance against family rather than a private misjudgement. [Rejecting P3] The same involvement that supplies mediation supplies pressure to remain, and nothing in the premise distinguishes support for the couple from interest in the arrangement. [Rejecting C] Less strain and better support are consistent with worse outcomes for a spouse whose interests diverge from those of the people who made the match.