My uncle married a woman he had met only twice before the wedding. I remember asking him, years later, if he had been afraid. He smiled and said something I never forgot: “I was not afraid because I expected nothing. And because I expected nothing, everything became a gift.”

I think about this often.

When two strangers begin a life together, every morning brings small discoveries. She takes her tea with too much sugar. He hums old songs while reading the newspaper. She cannot sleep without a fan running. He talks in his sleep, sometimes in complete sentences. Each habit arrives like a small package waiting to be opened. The marriage becomes a long conversation, a slow novel where you turn pages without knowing what comes next.

In love marriages, we have already read the book. We know the ending. We have memorized the characters. After the wedding, life becomes a re-reading. Sometimes beautiful, yes. But rarely surprising.

My friend Anwar married for love. He told me once, almost sadly, that his wife had no secrets left. He had discovered everything during those years of courtship. “The mystery ended before the marriage began,” he said. There was something wistful in his voice. As if he missed not knowing. As if he envied the arranged couples their slow unfolding.

Expectations are strange creatures. They shape our happiness more than reality does. When we expect the moon and receive only stars, we feel cheated. When we expect nothing and receive a single candle, we feel blessed. The mathematics of contentment works this way. Happiness equals reality minus expectations. Lower the expectations, and suddenly the same reality feels richer.

Love marriages often begin with cinematic expectations. We have watched too many films. We expect our partner to be hero and heroine combined—passionate, understanding, endlessly romantic. When they turn out to be ordinary humans who forget anniversaries and snore at night, something feels wrong. We feel we have been sold a defective product.

Arranged marriages begin differently. We expect an ordinary person because that is what our families promised. We expect adjustment, compromise, the slow work of building something from nothing. When our partner turns out to be kind, or funny, or surprisingly thoughtful—it feels like winning a lottery we never entered.

I knew a woman who had an arranged marriage at twenty-two. She told me that for the first year, every good quality she discovered in her husband felt like finding money in an old coat pocket. “I kept thinking, this too? He is also this?” She had expected so little. Reality kept exceeding her modest hopes.

Her friend, who had married for love, had the opposite experience. Every flaw felt like a betrayal. “You were not like this before,” she would say to her husband. But of course he was exactly like this before. She had simply been too in love to notice.

There is a word researchers use: hedonic adaptation. It means we adjust to everything. Good fortune stops feeling good. Bad fortune stops feeling bad. We return to our baseline happiness no matter what happens. But here is the thing—starting from lower expectations makes the adaptation gentler. We adapt upward instead of downward. The journey feels like climbing rather than falling.

Something else matters too. In arranged marriages, love is not assumed. It must be built, brick by brick, through daily choices. You choose to be patient. You choose to understand. You choose to stay when staying is hard. This conscious effort creates something sturdy. Love becomes a house you built with your own hands. You know every room because you made every room.

Love marriages sometimes assume the house already exists. Love happened, so the work is done. When the roof leaks or the walls crack, it feels like structural failure. Something is wrong with the building. But perhaps nothing was wrong. Perhaps the building was never finished in the first place.

Passionate love and companionate love are different animals. Passionate love burns bright and fast, like paper in fire. It cannot sustain itself. The brain chemistry that creates it simply cannot last. Companionate love burns slow, like coal. Less dramatic, but it keeps you warm through long winters.

Arranged marriages expect coal. When they occasionally get fire, it feels like magic. Love marriages expect fire. When they get coal, they feel the fire has died. But the fire was always going to die. That is what fire does.

What do humans actually need to be happy together? Research says: mutual respect, shared values, similar life goals, compatible daily rhythms. These are not romantic things. No film was ever made about compatible daily rhythms. But these things matter more than butterflies in the stomach.

Arranged marriages, at their best, check for these things deliberately. Families ask practical questions. Can they build a life together? Do they want the same things? Will their days fit together without too much friction? These questions seem unromantic. But they are asking about the foundation. Romance is the decoration. Foundation is what keeps the house standing.

Love marriages often assume that chemistry provides everything. If we feel strongly enough, the practical things will sort themselves out. Sometimes they do. Often they do not. Strong feelings are not the same as shared values. Passion does not automatically create compatibility.

I am not saying one is better than the other. I am saying both require the same things in the end: patience, effort, the daily choice to love even when loving is difficult. The difference is only in expectations. And expectations, as it turns out, shape everything.

My uncle has been married for forty-three years now. Last month, I saw him bring tea to my aunt without being asked. She smiled at him—a small, private smile. There was no passion in that moment. There was something better. There was the quiet knowledge of being known. Of being chosen, every day, for forty-three years.

He expected nothing when he married her. And so everything she gave him became a gift. Every year, another gift. The gifts accumulated into a life.

Perhaps that is the secret. Not the kind of marriage you have, but the expectations you bring to it. Expect less. Notice more. Be grateful for small things. Understand that love is not a feeling that happens to you, but a choice you make every morning.

Choose well. Choose often. Choose even when choosing is hard.

That, I think, is the only formula that works.