For a friend's marriage, I traveled to a country in East.

I embraced the local customs and became close with the people there. Unlike in most foreign countries, here you can ask people anything, and they don't mind, especially if it's coming from a foreigner. This enabled me to explore the culture of arranged marriages.

Most women I met had dated one or two guys in college and it didn't work and they became hopeless as most guys would just not agree to a marriage. So women understood it pretty early, those just want fun but not responsibilities.

What I found is that most average-looking women are married to average-looking guys; they are "looksmatched." Just like in the US, I couldn't easily find people who were married to more attractive partners. In fact, I discovered that most attractive men in the East are married to average-looking women. I even asked couple of attractive guys why this is the case, he said "I had no job, when I got job my family found a girl for me and I married her, I didn't have any time to search for it. God makes union". He was happy with the his wife, he fulfilled her every wish.

The only instance where a man had a better-looking wife than himself was when he was significantly richer than the average person. In these cases, the man earned more than $200,000 annually, with lots of assets and ancestral properties. In these families, the attractive wife often had an fancy arts degree but worked in her husband's adjacent business.

To put things into perspective, the average family I met earned $40,000 to $50,000 annually, with most spouses making $10,000 to $15,000.

Weddings are crazy expensive (in comparison to income) and incentives are aligned to make union last. They don't want a woman who is forced into marriage (because such union is not gonna last, it's understood). Men spend a lot of time with the girl prior to marriage to understand her mental state and compatibility (most aren't willing to take chance over a woman who isn't perfectly happy with her prospect otherwise the man will have to do it all over again and suffer in family and divorce courts which are not efficient and sink lot of money and family reputation.

Most of the women I met complained about their husbands not making enough money to support their lifestyle. It was evident they wanted more.

They hired house help, so the wife acted more like a manager, overseeing the cook and cleaner. Many of them left their jobs after marriage, except for those married to wealthy men.

In these marriages, the average man felt a lot of pressure. When they got drunk, they often said, "My wife doesn't care how many hours I work to fulfill her needs."

The culture emphasized relatives and family ties, where women competed with each other for cultural relevance and reputation. They had to keep many relatives happy by offering expensive presents like jewelry and outfits.

While the women managed all that, the men were busy acquiring resources. Despite their wealth, they weren't living like kings; they worked long hours and often had health issues like obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart problems.

I found average woman to be more happy than average man. I also found that most women had lots of female friends in her loyalty, relatives etc.. Most of them spent lots of time face timing and talking to them on phone.

Some wealthy women even had affairs, and they were fairly open about it.

Funny enough, lowest and highest ecnomic stratas had more love marriages compared to middle one.