For those who want to marry, there is not a lot of support if they do not do well in the dating system in the US. If men are shy or even if women are shy and do not flirt and get male attention, they can be overlooked for marriage. We are bombarded with images of the 90th percentile and up for good looks on TV and magazine ads, and so the vast majority of folks who are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve for looks can have difficulty finding someone if they aren't outgoing in the western dating system.
My wife is from Indonesia. In the cities, but also in villages, young people kind of find their own spouses, but parental approval for marriage is socially required. I don't even think the civil registrar agent would have signed the papers if my wife's parents had not agreed and she was 24. The lady asked if the parents agreed. But her people group in days gone by had a preference for certain cousins who do not have the same family name to marry. It seems like most do not marry their cousins, but I have noticed they do that sometimes. In some cases in her extended family, if a woman has gotten older, they try to match them up with someone in the family network.
My wife had a pretty young cousin who we heard was matched up with someone from a well-to-do family. I don't know if they sort of dated or just got matched up. Another cousin, my 'adopted' sister for family name purposes in their traditional system, married her cousin. I didn't know they were related. And one of my wife's other relatives had a baby out of wedlock and they finally married her off to a cousin in her 30's and they had more kids together.
My wife has a cousin. We left Indonesia right after he had started college. My wife said he was good-looking. I've got about as much of a sense of a man is good-looking as I do about telling whether a dog is male or female by looking just at it's face. So I'll take her word for it. We went back after 9 years and he was married. I recognized his wife. I believe i'd met her at a family reunion. But she was up in her 30's and hadn't married. She wasn't bad looking or anything, but hadn't found anyone. I talked to my wife's male cousin. I asked if he looked over at her at a family reunion and fell in love. He wasn't familiar with the Jeff Foxworthy jokes I had running in the back of my mind. When I mentioned being 'in love' he was really uncomfortable for that. He said marrying like that strengthens family bonds.
I was not privy to the family discussions, but my guess is cousin so and so probably says "My daughter is 33 and not married yet. Your son is single. How about you help us out a bit and talk to him about marrhying our daughter?" It's not so bad in the city, but when I've got up to the village, my wife's relatives want to arrange our whole itinerary while we are in a big family meeting. Usually, I don't care that much, but sometimes it is irritating. It's the downside of hiring a relative who is a part of the group as a driver. I wonder if the discussions about who marries whom when they get older are like that.
They also had an old tradition of Lavrite marriage. And they also might talk a sister of a deceased wife into marrying a widower. Or if a woman were widowed or a husband were a widower, they could ask the deceased family for help finding a partner. They would probably suggest someone on the same generational level as the deceased. Going above or below would be like marrying an uncle, aunt, niece, or nephew and probably would be seen almost like cousin marriage is in the US. They might also match someone up with an in-law of an in-law.
In Korea, young people who go to college get matched up on 'meetings' by their 'seniors'-- older students. They go on a date with the three of them. If the couple like each other, they start dating. So they get help with starting dating, after coming out of all boy or all girl schools. Those who do not end up with a boyfriend when they graduate, get a job, and start getting pressure from parents to marry can get set up by relatives. Or they can go to a professional matchmaker. When I was there in the 1990's, they said if you were single in your late 20's, you aunt would have a picture of you and talk to someone else's aunt or grandmother at a bus stop. They would show each other pictures and try to match their kids up. Maybe the busstop thing was an exaggeration a bit of a joke.
Japanese managers try to suggest potential matches for marriage to their employees. Korean pastors may do the same with their congregation. I spoke to a man in Hawaii who was set up with a woman maybe around 40 who was single. He was probably 50 or so.
I notice the Old Testament tells parents going to Babylon to find wives for your sons and husbands for your daughters, to increase and not decrease. That implies that parents have a responsibility to help find spouses.
I have heard of church people frowning on someone going to church hoping to find a spouse. I don't see anything wrong with, for example, a man visiting other mid-week services to meet women if all the suitable women in his own church are married off. We could also be a bit more active in helping people find each other. Some parental involvement would also be helpful. At the least, fathers need to approve their daughter's choices, though the widow may marry whomsoever she wills, but only in the Lord.
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