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As far as I'm aware marriage for love was quite rare in the era before the suffrage.
You might say that wives probably liked their husbands some, even if it was usually not the primary stimulus for marriage, but then I'm willing to believe high-end escorts like their clients some as well. It's not like liking your job is entirely unheard of when you're not working in a gutter.
Yeah I mean I've had friends who've gone through the Indian arranged marriage process and like even when a good match is found there's still a meeting or two to see if there's any immediate chemistry, then go from there. It's rare (though I'm sure it does happen sometimes in certain poorer regions) that a modern, affluent Indian arranged marriage is done at knifepoint where one party is an obese 75 year old slumlord and the other part is a 18 year old with hopes of romance.
Yeah from what I've gathered knowing Indian immigrant tech workers it is lots of phone calls, in person meetings, meeting family members, etc. It's just not dating in a modern sense. There's a lot more involvement than "my parents assigned me someone".
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