Many Elter-Bubbies and Zeides, at this point, met in person under various conditions, but were not simply introduced to each other with the parents listening in. They were also born in a different world, and what worked then does not necessarily work now.
Beshow may still work for some individuals. While it is also true that you do not really know someone until (well after) you marry the person, you can, however, learn a very surprisingly large amount during dating and it is therefore wrong to deny the opportunity to date to those people who need that time.
So it is quite primitive and therefore unrealistic to expect two relatively sophisticated people to live in consonance with diracheha darchei noam when they are not given the time to determine whether or not they wish to spend the next 100 or so years with this other person. Even if they don’t get divorced, CH”V, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been happier had they been allowed to date first, even with their current spouse. Again, diracheha darchei noam, not necessarily the derech of the culture of what happens to have been done many, many years ago. This does not mean that every couple who’ve dated are happy. But that also doesn’t mean you might as well make their odds of success dramatically worse.
You also can’t compare the divorce rates from one to another (i.e. beshow to dating), because the main reasons for a divorce in a beshow is obviously due to the beshow and denial of dating. Whereas by dating, it is external, which could be anything from something covered-up before-hand to simple immaturity in married life to lack of communication to other things, all of which have nothing to do with the process of how they meet, when that process is dating. By a beshow, however, there is little, if any, time to determine if any of this could potentially be an issue.
So if you take out the “external” factors, it’s hard to see how any divorces could be caused by having allowed the couple to date rather than beshowing them. On the other hand, it’s quite easy to see how the couple might not have divorced since they were denied the opportunity to date in favor of beshowing them.
If it were just a matter of “live and let live”, then I would not write most of what I’ve written. But I feel that many people who are put through this beshow system are being denied that which they need, and which has painful and costly ramifications later on, not just on them, but on their families and children, etc.
So it’s not okay to just say “it’s okay for them to do it”; it’s not, at least for some of them, and those who feel it might not be for them should find a neutral Rav to discuss the matter with.
May Hashem be misameiach all of His people and redeem us all BB”A.