You guys make it sound like knowing someone before marriage is a guarantee of success. Numbers dont lie. Divorce rates are much higher in the western world than in Pakistan, despite the fact that people there know each other very well before marriage.
True that a lot of Pakistani arranged marriages can be classified as suffocating hells, but again, a lot more are successful....and if you simply go by numbers, marriages last longer in Pakistan than they do in the US/europe, despite couples not knowing each other well (or at all) before marriage.
Its only when you make a mix masala of an ABCD/BBCD who wants to make a tossed salad of eastern and western cultures that you have problems and issues like this.
An arranged marriage, if done properly, has a very high success rate. All this convenient Islamic blah-blah about Hazrat Khadija RA and her proposal to Prophet Muhammad SAW is just selective following. Pick and choose the things in Islam that conform to your lifestyle, and conveniently toss it aside and yell "dont bring Islam into this" when it goes against your lifestyle.
Every girl talks about Hazrat Khadija's initiative in sending Prophet Muhammad SAW a proposal, but noone talks about any other aspect of her pious life.
As if sending a proposal was the only thing she ever did!