Bahá'í Faith/Spouse Selection/Introduction
Selecting a spouse is one of the most important decisions in life. The most essential thing you can do to get ready for finding a spouse with whom you can be happily married and then getting and being married is to first develop yourself to make sure you are prepared for marriage. That task will never end, but somewhere in the process you may discover someone with whom you share a mutual attraction, who is also prepared for marriage and who is compatible with you. The more we thoroughly investigate in as scientific and systematic way as practical the compatibility with our future spouse, the more likely we will choose wisely and have a happy marriage.
The questions and information below should help you make a choice of a spouse based on an understanding of the best indicators from science and guidance from the great wisdom traditions. You and your partner will learn more about one another if you answer the questions together. They can provide some measure of the potential for a successful marriage. The more you or your spouse is lacking in these qualities and indicators, the more likely you and your marriage will suffer.
The signs or characteristics related to better determining if a person will make a good spouse discussed below should be considered holistically, not treated in isolation. Like determining the physical attractiveness of someone, you look at the composite of all parts. Just because they have one or two attractive features, does not make a person attractive. Some qualities are more important than others are. Some blemishes and imperfections are acceptable, as long as the whole is still beautiful.
No one will completely or perfectly meet any one sign, let alone all of them, but a satisfactory minimal accomplishment in each will be necessary for a successful marriage. Some of the signs may seem like common sense or unnecessary, but ways of selecting a spouse and conditions considered important for marriage vary greatly from cultures and individuals. What may make sense in one culture or situation, would not in another. I have tried to give ideas that are applicable universally: to all races, cultures, classes, nationalities and genders.
I am a Baha'i and wrote this book from that point of view. I believe the guidance to be useful to anyone, and as much as possible have tried to collaborate my ideas from what I have learned in more scholarly literature related to this topic. If you are interested in reading some of the source matierial that I consulted from the Baha'i literature, you may also wish to read a companion piece that consists mostly of Baha’i quotes by clicking on the link Baha’i Guidance on Selecting a Spouse for a Successful Marriage.