So...

[Haider]

My parents are a living example of everything counter to your assertion.

51 years this September.

How about this. Find, court, and marry a good woman, then report out to us in about 10 years about marriage. Being married sure change my understanding of marriage, that is for sure.

This might be the reason why I said:

Only in the last hundred of years this changed in our Western world.

We now have the privilege - mostly because of our relative wealth and independance (meaning women rights and leaving behind the "villiage community") - to choose for ourselves. This also doesn't mean that there weren't marraiges for love only in the past, but it was only a arguably small faction.

Arranged marriages are still common throughout Asia, Africa, East-Europe (dwindling in cities, common in rual areas), China and of course the Middle East (and virtually all Muslim countries), not only India. I would (without having any statistics) say that most of the marriages today are still made for reasons other than love.

So honestly I don't see a tradition of the "sacred marriage". Mostly the reasons to marry were earthly ones and seldom ones of spirit (so to speak).