Pros and Cons of Blind Dates - Essay Example

Blind Date Introduction Blind dating has become quite a popular activity among the society members of China. This practice helps individuals make new friends might be potential future life partners of these individuals. Individuals have become quite busy in their professional lives and they have very less amount of time on their hands to get involved intimately with others. In blind dating an individual do not have to look for a life partner themselves and friends and family members of individuals do the hard work of locating a potential life partner for them. This means that blind dating provide individuals with the opportunity to continue to focus on their professional life and their love life is managed by others and this is one reason that has led to the popularity of blind dating. There has been a hot debate on whether this practice of the blind dating is beneficial for the society or not. Although various benefits are associated with blind dating but blind dating is harmful for the individuals as well as the Chinese society. Blind dates should not take place because they are destroying the meaning of love, they promote forced marriages or relationships and they promote relationships that may fail to last longer. Body I understand that those in favor of blind dating as a part of Chinese society are promoting it because it allows individuals to spend more time in their professional pursuits and at the same time they even end up finding a suitable life partner in certain instances. According to Yixin various parents belonging to the Chinese community attend various events of blind dates that take place in the metropolitan cities of China in order to locate possible future husbands and wives for their children who are single (Yixin 1). Parents of these unmarried individuals are quite choosy in selecting the perfect life partners for their children and they have certain requirements and expectations while browsing around for single males and females. Those parents who are looking for a groom for their female child they require the men to have their own houses and to be rich. On the other hand, parents of the male individuals expect to find a future bride who is beautiful, attractive, and obedient. I personally have never been on such a date but I have been several times approached by my relatives and close acquaintances with an offer of meeting a person who had his own restaurant they wanted me to marry him. My cousin highly recommended me to attend the blind date with that man because he told me finding a rich man was more important than anything. The negative part of the offer was that the guy who my friend offered me to meet would have never accepted a woman who had the ability to assist him in his business. During my twenties I was approached by my aunt to attend a social engagement with a man who was 10 years older than me and had his own house and was extremely rich. These incidences provided me with a clear view that people are too busy to find their own future spouses, and they choose blind date to effectively deal with this problem. This even means that now a day’s people are giving preference to materialistic elements while looking for life partners and the very meaning of falling in love is changing. Blind dating is not about finding love and finding a person who would love you unconditionally and would be there for you even during the worst times. Blind dating is more about finding a trophy wife or getting into a relationship which is based on materialistic motives and this is one of the reasons I am very much against blind dating. Parents usually arrange a blind date for their children because they believe that they can make a better choice and they are in a hurry to get their children married. Parents in China tend to become worried if their daughter’s pass a certain age limit and this is true especially in the case of daughters. They believe that after that age limit, their daughter won’t remain attractive and will fail to land in a healthy relationship. Due to this parents set out to find the life partners of their children and children in China tend to comply with their parents since China is a more collectivist society where interest of individuals is given less precedence than the interest of family. According to Zhu, a survey of 7,932 people was conducted by China Youth Daily and the survey revealed that there are 89.1% of the respondents were being forced by their parents to attend a blind date and 61.2% adults are between 25 and 30 years old (Zhu 1). This means that blind dates are promoting parents to operate against the free will of their children and free will and freedom to make choices is one of the basic rights of every human being. Since marriage is a personal decision and an individual should decide about his/her marriage, individuals should avoid attending blind dates fixed by parents and relatives. People think they can easily find the love of their future life by going on a blind date, but I believe that blind dates can never help an individual in finding a partner who actually loves them. Sometimes people are excited to meet a person who is introduced by a mutual friend because they think the person might be a good match. The issue is that blind dates do not promote love and affection; these dates only promote attraction and business. According to Adshade, Chinese women do not face issues in selecting their life partners as the China’s male population exceeds female population, but a respondent argues that it is still difficult because Chinese females tend to have certain requirements while selecting husbands and the main requirement is that the husband needs to be wealthy (Adshade 1). Men who go on a blind date select those women who are very pretty and women go on a blind date with those men who are highly rich. Both attraction and wealth can result in happiness and can lead to a relationship, but such relationships are not long lasting. Only those relationships last for long where both the couples are there for each other even if the wife is not good looking and even if the husband is gone broke. I believe that both beauty as well as money is there for a limited period of time and both have no connections with love. Real love takes place when both the couples are helping each other and caring about each other no matter what kind of a situation they end up in. According to Bonacci, the occurrence of love is a gradual event while infatuation does not take enough time (Bonacci 138). This means that couples meeting in blind dates are simply experiencing infatuation, while couples who spend time with each other and then get married are actually in love as they know everything about each other. Only people who really love each other remain married for a longer period of time, while those who are infatuated tend to get divorced earlier. Conclusion Blind dating has several advantages which makes it difficult to argue against and makes it seem like a favorable option. But the reality is that it might be providing short term gains of helping parents marry their daughters earlier, or allowing individuals to focus on their careers, these dates are actually ruining the very essence of love, these dates promote forced relationships and these dates even promote relationships that do not last for a longer period of time. Works Cited Adshade, Marina . "We are Big Idea Hunters…." Big Think. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. . Bonacci, Mary Beth. Real love: Mary Beth Bonacci answers your questions on dating, marriage and the real meaning of sex.. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. Print. Yixin, Xinhua . " Chinese Parents Busy Matchmaking." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 7 Oct. 2010. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. . Zhu, Sophia . "Forced Blind Dates Become Holiday Routine for Young Chinese People." - All China Women's Federation. N.p., 12 Feb. 2014. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. . Read More