So...

[Occhidiangela]

It struck me that the places cited as ones where arranged (and presumably thus at least initially loveless) marriages are common are also some of the places where the extended family is much stronger as a societal influence than some others where the nuclear family is the basic building block. I then began to wonder about where and how that 'powerful spiritual bond' notion began to be fostered. Is there a relationship between the need for emphasising that bond and the breakdown of the extended family as the foundation of society? Is there a relationship between the desire of the church to be a powerful influence on people’s lives and the emphasis placed on the spiritual nature of a marriage as opposed to the more secular bonding that arranged marriages create between families?

OK, to answer your question . . .

I will generally absent from this conversation all cultures wherein the wife is considered chattel. They are still around, I wonder if they will ever go away.

So, in the realm of "a man and a woman show up and get married of their own volition, or by general arrangement of families" (danger, element of chattel possible there) . . .

And . . .

I am using as an assumption that the translations of the original Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic I have read, to include King James, RSV, and a few others, are close enough to be grounds for discussion.

The codification of the concept of marriage as depitcted in the New Testament, two become one, is an ideal to strive for, and has been so for just under 2000 years. Much of the codification was in the letters of the Apostles. As a body of work, they influenced my own civilization considerably. Those ideals hold if, and this is a big if, the two before the priest and the witnesses are sincere in their intent to embrace those guidelines.

Till death to us part, forsaking all others, sacrifice for one another, two become one, for better and worse, in sickness and in health, and so on.

This is not news.

I will go so far as to suggest that the Islamic antipathy to adultery, if rather one sided, is at least modestly in concurrence with that ideal.

The model of wife as chattel, however, predates the Christian ideal in many pagan societies. That, like Easter and Christmas, seemed to have gotten fused with the ideals presented and as we have seen, at the least in European Aristocratic societies, considerable chattel trading. One wonders if daughters of Kings and QUeens had brands on their behinds. :P Yet the forms of the ideal were recited. So, I wonder how the poor, illiterate folks dealt with this? In any case, the idea that the union was and is spiritual is rather old. The reality? Chattel seems to have sustained for a long time. I'd say the suffrage movements of the 19th century had a lot to do with re directing that idea.

Ideals run into human shortcomings. But given the repitition of the ideal, over and over, I imagine that over the centuries many of the folks who gave their vows took them to heart and tried to live up to them. How much they trusted and sacrificed for each other, and for their children, is a matter of cases, and how close any of us can live up to an ideal.