On a Generalization of the Marriage Problem

Abstract

We present a generalization of the marriage problem underlying Hall's famous Marriage Theorem to what we call the Symmetric Marriage Problem, a problem that can be thought of as a special case of Maximal Weighted Bipartite Matching. We show that there is a solution to the Symmetric Marriage Problem if and only if a variation on Hall's Condition holds on each of the bipartitions. We prove both finite and infinite versions of this result and provide applications. We also introduce a non-bipartite version of the problem and show that a generalization of Tutte's Theorem applies.