Passionate Love and Sexual Desire - Elaine Hatfield

211980). Families might also consult with religious specialists, oracles, and matchmakers(Rosenblatt & Anderson, 1981). When contemplating a union, parents, kin, and theiradvisors were generally concerned with a number of background questions. What wasthe young person's caste, status, family background, religion, and economic position?Did their family possess any property? How big was their dowry? Would they fit inwith the entire family? In Indian families, for example, men and women observed thatwhat their families cared most about in arranging a marriage was religion (whether onewas a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian), social class, education, and familybackground (Sprecher & Chandak, 1992). If things look promising, parents and gobetweensbegin to talk about the exchange of property, dowries, the young couple’sfuture obligations and their living arrangements.Some problems were serious enough to rule out any thought of marriage.Sometimes religious advisors would chart the couples’ horoscopes. Those born underthe wrong sign may be forbidden to marry (Bumroongsook, 1992). Generally, youngpeople were forbidden to marry anyone who was too closely related (say, a brother orsister or a certain kind of cousin). Sometimes, they were forbidden to marry foreigners.(In Thailand, Thais are often forbidden to marry Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Mons, orMalay suitors [Bumroongsook, 1992]).Similar assets and liabilities have been found to be important in a variety ofcountries—such as India (Prakasa & Rao, 1979; Sprecher & Chandak, 1992), Japan(Fukuda, 1991), Morocco (Joseph & Joseph, 1987), and Thailand (Bumroongsook,1992).