Can arranged marriages survive in the 21st century?

In Oman and other Arab societies, it is customary for parents to arrange a bride for their son. The recommendation often included close cousins or members of the same tribe. Such a system may have worked in the past, but is it still likely to work in the 21st century? The honest answer is it depends. As a psychiatrist who has spent years listening to couples, families, and individuals, I have come to believe that arranged marriage is neither the villain nor the hero but a system with its strengths and blind spots.
You may agree with me that falling in love is a powerful but unreliable predictor of long-term compatibility. Parents and elders, removed from the intoxication of early attraction, often assess practical dimensions such as family values, financial stability, temperament, and shared expectations around child-rearing and elder care. This is not romantic, but it is not irrational either.
A marriage arranged within an extended family or tribal network has a built-in support system. New spouses are rarely navigating parenthood, financial stress, or grief alone, but grandparents, aunts, and cousins are often just a short drive away, ready to help. In societies where the nuclear family unit still bears less of the load than in the West, this system can meaningfully protect mental health, particularly for new mothers and aging parents.
When spouses share religious observance and cultural expectations, some of the friction points that strain modern marriages are reduced from the outset. This alignment can foster a quieter, steadier form of intimacy that develops over shared years rather than being front-loaded before the wedding.
On the other hand, having someone arrange your future partner for you may undermine your sense of autonomy and freedom to choose.
Even when a young person is free to refuse a match, the social and emotional cost of doing so such as disappointing parents, disrupting family alliances, and being labelled difficult, can make refusal almost unthinkable. True autonomy requires not just the right to say no, but the practical freedom to exercise it without devastating consequences.
Another important point is that marriage between close cousins carries a well-documented risk of elevated rates of certain recessive genetic disorders in offspring. This would subject the new parents to ongoing emotional stress that may threaten the continuity of the marriage.
In my opinion, a marriage optimised for family harmony does not automatically produce two individuals who understand, respect, and are drawn to one another as people. In my clinical experience, some of the quiet suffering I encounter, such as chronic low mood, unspoken resentment, and a sense of having been 'assigned' rather than chosen, traces back not to arranged marriage itself but to marriages where a couple's emotional compatibility was never seriously weighed against family convenience.
Today's young Omanis are, on average, more educated, more globally connected, and more exposed to alternative models of partnership than their parents were. Many now expect a degree of emotional intimacy, companionship, and personal choice that earlier generations neither expected nor demanded. When the marriage system does not evolve alongside these expectations, the strain shows up not as open rebellion, but as quiet dissatisfaction or, increasingly, as delayed marriage and rising divorce rates.