A marriage arranged under any kind of pressure is a marriage that will likely crumble beneath that pressure. If your parents are pressuring you to get married or to marry a certain person, or if you pick up that the other person is under a similar type of pressure, its time to knock that pot off the burner until you can make your own decision.

Consider a few other ways people feel under obligation to marry. There is the person dating someone with a terminal illness and the sick partner want to hurry up and get married. You want to do what is right and you don’t want to be cruel, but if you are not certain about the marriage, you must not feel obligated to do it. Another trap is fulfilling the request of a parent on their death bed to marry the one they know you should marry. Or perhaps someone is being suffocated at home and they are expecting you or making you feel obligated to set them free. If you feel you owe it to someone to marry them you need to take a second look at the origin of that feeling.

Ask who in your childhood made you feel responsible for their happiness and ask why you are repeating that pattern. The obligation to marry should could from a heart full of love and devotion to that other person. And before I finish I have to remind you of the most common obligation that produces sick marriages. It is the obligation to marry because you are having sex. Enough said.