Background. Marriage is an important phase in someone’s life during adulthood. An important part of getting married is to determine the spouse to get married with. There are two ways of getting spouse for marriage in Bukittinggi, 1) self-determined and 2) recommended by significant person such as parents or friend. This recommendation model marriage does still exist in Bukittinggi Culture even though with several changes. Bukittinggi is part of Minangkabau Tribe which considers that marriage should involve family to allow the couple living ideally with religious and culture life. The native Bukittinggi people are called Urang Kurai. Urang Kurai thinks that it is expected that the bridegroom to be his husband should derive from Bukittinggi City. In this area, there is time for the couple to know their character each other for less than one year. It is relatively short time to really understand the character each other. While, there is a social perception that the shorter time to know each other, the more probability to have the unhappy marriage in the future. The data from Court for Religious Affairs of Bukktinggi Town mentioned that more than 75% divorce cases of divorce occur in couple who have longer time to know each other before marriage in 2018. They made a date before getting married. It can be inferred that the couple who were recommended by family tend to have lower rate of divorce because they want keep the marriage in order to maintain the harmony with their extended family, to maintain the tribe norms, culture value and religious standards. But, it doesn’t mean that the couples of parent-recommended-marriage have the happy marriage life without having any conflicts. They believe that marriage is a sacred event in life should be run once in the whole life. Marriage causes people have the emotional affection with spouse. This is called attachment. At the same time, marriage limits the personal interaction with other individuals which may cause lonely in each spouse.

Methods. This is a quantitative research. Participants of this research were 73 people divided in two researches in 2006 and 2018. The instrument used was attachment scale developed by the researcher. The inclusion criteria are: husbands or wives aged between 25-40 years old; they have got married for under 10 years; it is their first marriage; minimum education high school; having minimum one child. The data were analyzed using chi-square technique.

Results. There is no significant difference of attachment between the research in 2006 and 2018 in parent-recommended-marriage couples (p>1). Other results indicated that score of anxious attachment increased (39.47% in 2006 to 62.85% in 2018). It means that the number of spouse who have less understanding, less self-confidence, no worth it, think that spouse has lower commitment in interpersonal relationship, less assertive, felt unloved, not willing to help. While, secure attachment decreased (50% in 2006 to 28.57% in 2018). It means that spouse felt not worth it, supportive, friendly to spouse, responsive, full of love. It is possibly caused by the changes in personal values, diffeent characters, life style, norms in environment and technology factors in last decade. It may also be cause by the change of personal internalization through experience of attachment in continuum from secure to anxious and avoidant attachment and vise versa.

Conclusions. The results indicated that there is no significant difference in attachment of Couples of Parent-Recommended-Marriage in 2006 and 2018 researches.

Added-Value. Learning the human behavior in specific culture in Minangkabau, especially in Kurai.

Keywords: attachment, recommended-marriage, significant person, Minangkabau, Culture.
Word count: 577