Cultural influences on relationships

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Several key differences exist between western and traditionalist cultures in their attitudes to love and marriage. In western, individualist cultures, partners are freely chosen during the dating process, based on attraction. Marriage is seen as an alliance and union between two people, yet a temporary one that can be terminated fairly easily. In traditional, collectivist cultures, arranged marriages are more common, based on the idea that parents know who is compatible in the long-term for their children better than the children do. Choosing a partner based on attraction is believed to lead to an unsuccessful marriage - marriage is seen as more permanent, being impossible or difficult to terminate, and is considered an alliance and a union between two social groups rather than two individuals.

Arranged marriages are sometimes suggested to be more successful than love marriages if measured by the metrics of divorce rate and long term satisfaction. 

Gupta and Singh provide supporting evidence for arranged marriages being more successful than love marriages. In a study of 100 professional and educated couples from Jaipur, India, they assessed relationship satisfaction over 1, 5 and 10 years using Rubin's "Like and Love" scale. Love marriages started high in both categories and decreased over time, whereas arranged marriages started lower and increased overtime, exceeding love marriages in both categories after 10 years. This supports the concept of different styles of marriage leading to different quality interpersonal relationships.

However, a study by Xioahe and Whyte challenges Gupta and Singh's suggestion that arranged marriages are more successful. A study during a period of rapid modernisation in China found that women in love marriages were much happier than those in arranged marriages.

Cultural bias was an issue with Gupta and Singh's study, due to their use of Rubin's measuring scale based around U.S culture being applied to India. The cross-cultural use of a survey designed to measure relationship satisfaction in America is imposing an etic, assuming that the metric will work the same way in both cultures, when in fact it could be a less reliable indicator in Gupta and Singh's study than in the cultural context Rubin devised it in.

Another issue is that these studies can be considered unscientific, using subjective self-report data. Responses could not accurately reflect real life relationship success due to people's inaccurate perceptions of their own relationships, difficulties in trying to quantify "like" and "love", and giving untrue responses due to social desirability bias. 

There are validity issues with the use of divorce rates as a measure of relationship success, the measure used to suggest that arranged marriages are more successful than love marriages. Divorce means a relationship is unsuccessful, but a lack of divorce does not mean that a relationship is successful. Cultures that practice arranged marriages often hold a stigma towards divorce - it is often illegal, socially unacceptable,  or only able to initiated by the husband.

Divorce often stigmatises an entire family, so there can be family pressure to stay together in an unsuccessful relationship. The dowries that are often given from the wife's family to the husband makes marriage like a transaction - as if the female is bought by the husband. Social pressures, a lack of financial independence, lack of legal rights, and being considered "tainted goods" after divorce could all make divorce from a bad relationship impractical for women.

The shift from a traditional and rural lifestyle to an urban one brings greater geographical and social mobility, leading to interaction with more people, widening the "field of availables." In comparison, people from rural populations have less mobility and a smaller field. Divorce rates seem to be linked to urbanisation.

Dummett (2011) linked India's sharp increase in divorce rates to the high social mobility of India's emerging urban middle class, suggesting a causal link - urbanisation caused the higher divorce rate.

However, it could be that city dwellers just have more relaxed attitudes towards divorce as the values of the middle class progress and become more westernised. City females also have more financial independence that those from rural communities, so divorce is more practical due to money being less of a setback. 

The rapid exposure to the views and values of other cultures after immigration is suggested to affect the thinking of second generation migrants, causing an internal conflict of values between those of the host culture and those of their older family members which more closely reflect their family's home culture. The process of acculturalisation occurs - internalising the views of their host culture, which can cause conflict and stress.

Research by Zaidi and Shuraydi (2002) supports this hypothesis. They studied 2nd generation Pakistani Muslim women in Canada, and found that most favoured westernised marriage practices, but perceived their fathers to be resistant to change, preferring the cultural practice of arranged marriages. This demonstrates that migration can cause cultural conflicts in the attitudes to relationships between 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants.