It states that as we get closer to someone we tend to divulge more secrets (Bolden, 2016). Self-disclosure plays a huge role in determining our intimacy with someone. Some of the factors that come with that self-disclosure are dependent on many factors such as how long you have known the person, whether the person is trustworthy, consequences, relevance to them, how the person’s attitudes or beliefs will affect their relationship, how much they disclose about themselves, and many other reasons (Bolden, 2016). Although my parents themselves were not arranged marriages, they mentioned in their interview, in response to my question about how the concept of self-disclosure played a role in their lives, that those people that were and are in arranged marriages are given what they call a “biodata” of each others height, education background, family background, and other basic things that only addressed a person’s physical attributes. They said that their friends who made it through the arranged marriage all these years are the ones who took time to disclose things with one another to create that bond and friendship between the two. As we can see, self-disclosure is observed to be trait of successful …show more content…
One of the couples we observed were more spontaneous and after knowing each other for two weeks, they got married. There were also the pair of high school sweethearts who knew all their lives that they were destined for each other. Then there was a couple where the man and woman were meant to be in an arranged marriage and he snuck out to spy on her and found her to beautiful, so he married her. Although many examples were mentioned, I felt that these few were some of the ones that my parents described they saw with their own friends back then. While my parents fell in the high school sweethearts category, considering they knew each other since they were teens, they described how arranged marriages were common, as were spontaneous marriages. They said at their age marriage was just a common part of the routine of life, such as going to school, getting a job, getting married, having kids, their kids having kids, and so on. The purpose of relationships at one point were for the purpose of procreation and to follow societal norms. We now see that life does not always follow in that order, and that an abnormal life cycle is also normal. The way my parents described relationships and the way we think of relationships now is so different. Back then relationships were not a casual thing, and majority of the time, being with someone meant marrying them.