A few weeks ago, I was on Greatbong’s podcast, talking about Indian Matchmaking. One thing I realized was I hadn’t made it clear why I was on that show. Priyanka, who was the other guest on that podcast, was on there as a professional matchmaker. Several people who listened to that podcast were wondering what qualified me to be on there sounding off.
I had spent most of my twenties extensively dating, off of both the traditional sites like Shaadi.com, as well as all the swiping apps. I find a lot more people doing so now, both men and women, but back then, it felt like everyone on there would hang around for maybe six months, after which they’d find the love of their life and get off those sites. I hung around longer than most before I figured out how to work that scene, and met my husband.
I hadn’t found people with my perspective represented in public discourse about dating. It was always those who were jaded who told you how awful it was to be a woman dating on those apps. I suppose that’s a valid part of the experience - several friends of mine in the same boat grew incredibly jaded, and sad that they were still single. Several of them put their lives on hold, not buying that house or not taking that job or not going on that trip because it was supposed to be taken with the love of their life. However, that wasn’t my experience. I decided early on that I just wanted to get to know people and experience all the different shades of that experience. While I had a lot of disappointing experiences, I didn’t feel jaded or sad or put my life on hold. It just felt like understanding life a little better.
My perspective of both arranged marriage and dating was somewhat like an alien figuring things out. I don’t naturally fit in in these scenes, and social cues and reading the room are not my strong suit. At the same time, I’m pretty self-aware, and curious and willing to give people the benefit of the doubt always, and interested in getting to know people. That made my experience an interesting one.
The common narratives for women on the arranged marriage circuit are of parental pressure, lots of men and their parents expecting heaven and earth from you, and losers who can’t spell. I saw all that. And if you’re on dating sites, the narratives are of entitled men, bad one liners, boring opening lines (“Hey!”), and even worse dates. I saw all that also! But I also met tons of perfectly nice people who would probably make someone who wasn’t me very happy, and tons of loving families I didn’t want to be a part of. Unlike the common narratives, I wasn’t so inundated with matches that I had to filter like a Harvard admissions officer.
I didn’t (and still don’t) see that kind of balance in narratives about dating or arranged marriage. It was all sunshine and flowers, or all-round awfulness. The rare times when it’s a combination, it’s like “dating is awful, but I lucked out”. 1
The book about settling for Mr. GoodEnough
I came across a book last week called Marry Him! The Case For Settling For Mr. Good Enoughby Lori Gottlieb. It was the perfect listen for when my mind was addled by the heat wave. It also made me smile because the actress Priety Zinta, who is everyone's embodiment of a no-nonsense lady, is married to a man called Gene Goodenough. Yeah, that’s really his name, and she married him.
This book, like several books by Gen X women, started off as a piece in The Atlantic, and got expanded into a book. Unlike a lot of those books, it’s actually well-researched, asks all the right questions, and actually does justice to the space it occupies.
The thesis of this book is remarkable, in the sense that you want to remark about it (which is an essential component of the book getting free publicity). Ms. Gottlieb says Settle For The Okay Dude, You Aren’t Getting Any Younger. I didn’t know my annoying aunt wrote for The Atlantic, but Ms. Gottlieb DESTROYS with FACTS and LOGIC (She does, but the facts and the logic are strangely cherrypicked to suit her thesis).
The reason this book was intriguing for me was because everyone, literally everyone, seems to think women with successful careers are too picky and need to “settle”.
“Settle” is a messy word, much like “I’m so OCD”, and it definitely gets hackles raised. Let me try breaking down all the positive, non-outrageous things the book says, in the best light possible.
If you as a woman see marriage and children in your future, you have to make conscious choices to get there.
The criteria we are told to watch for, for a great dating relationship, like banter, sparks, and common interests are not the same criteria that make for great marriages.
Rejecting people on the basis of superficial criteria makes for a much less successful personal life.
Having too many boxes to be ticked means you reject people who tick the important boxes because they don’t tick some of your unimportant boxes. Maybe forget about a checklist.
Compromise isn’t a bad word.
So essentially, it’s about having more realistic criteria for a life partner, and trying to find someone who fits married life better than dating life.
But the book kinda sucks.
This book seems to be a very Seema Aunty from Mumbai kind of book (Hmm, Lori Aunty from LA does have a good ring to it). In reviews I’ve read, I find it rubs a lot of women the wrong way.
It seems to assume every woman seems to crave marriage and children as the ultimate goal, probably because that’s what the author wants for herself. Which is definitely not the case. A lot of people prefer being single and focusing on hobbies, work, social work, and their birth families, and I do know a lot of people who are better off single than making some other person unhappy.
The book also thinks the only reason women end up single at forty is because they are picky. There’s no mention of frustratingly bad dates, PTSD from awful relationships, life priorities that prospective partners aren’t on board with, and just being rejected by everyone you date. This book tries to say men aren’t picky at all, but we all know that is simply not true.
The thing I’ve noticed in my experience is that people like to come across as too picky, but in practice, they aren’t, really. Their dating experiences are much worse than they let on, and often, turning someone down is the sanest choice they have. I was called incredibly picky while dating, but I didn’t let on how people were abusive or creepy or simply incompatible. Telling someone, especially a stranger, that your dates haven’t been going well is inviting judgement upon yourself, unfortunately. If things aren’t going well, people often either pity you or think you’re doing something wrong, because no one sane can have such a string of bad luck on dates, can they? It’s just better to be thought of as a picky choosy bitch than someone who is weak and easily pushed around.
This book just takes women’s stories of self-blame for their singledom on face value and piles on some more. It doesn’t dig deeper to figure out what those dates actually were like.
The book does have its moments
One of the things I agree with, though, is that the media, society and our friends probably have us stuck in toxic thought patterns about relationships. They collude to make you think about what you “should” want instead of what you do want.
She gives this example of her and her date realizing they had the same TV, and liked the same obscure brand of cookies, and that made them think they were soulmates. But later she realized that means nothing more than that they both have shitty aesthetics and unhealthy eating habits in this one regard.
My friends encouraged me into this relationship where a guy and I had literally everything in common. But it turned out we couldn’t communicate with each other, and didn’t get along with each other’s families. Liking the same obscure bands and TV shows and sharing a food allergy is not a sufficient basis for a relationship, who knew.
The other thing the book brings up is us having this mythical image of what a perfect relationship should look like. This is a big one. It’s easy to get attuned to an image in your mind, and reject everything that doesn’t agree with it. Maybe you think there needs to be a meet-cute. Maybe you think your partner needs to share a specific hobby with you - a friend of mine who is a singer thinks he can only marry someone who is also a singer. Maybe you think you and your partner have a specific financial relationship, or split the chores a particular way. Or maybe you desire a specific trait, like curiosity, or extraversion.
In my experience, and according to the book and several “experts” interviewed in it, those details don’t matter. Instead, it works better to be open to possibilities on those specifics, and build the relationship without too many preconceived notions. Maybe you can have a handful of non-negotiables, but having too many specific criteria can make things needlessly difficult.
Indian Matchmaking/Arranged Marriage
One good thing with the Arranged Marriage process is you don’t have the luxury of dawdling too much and going on too many superficial dates. Your family often pushes you to talk about the important issues. It’s not uncommon to discuss income and children on the first date.
But as we’ve seen on the show Indian Matchmaking, that doesn’t stop people from having as many superficial boxes to tick. Maybe you think because your family are all doctors, you need to also marry a doctor so they too can join you in running the family hospital. Or maybe you think, like Aparna on the show, that someone getting their income from a podcast, books and public speaking is a financially unstable loser.
No matter what your situation is, it’s important to be watchful so you don’t end up confusing your non-negotiables for unnecessary proxy qualities. Like maybe you want someone who is financially stable, but somehow that requirement has morphed into only going for people who have jobs with the central government.
Summarizing it all
There’s genuine issues with finding a partner, and several of them are unique to our era. It’s also a reality that it’s harder to date if you’re a woman who doesn’t fit conventional notions, and it’s normal to want to make that situation better.
Dating can be a complete shitshow, and it can make us forget that there’s real people on the other side. It’s important to retain empathy. It keeps you from being jaded, and losing faith in what you’re doing.
Having said that, you don’t need to get into this if you don’t want to. Long term commitments aren’t for everyone, though there’s significant advantages to being in a happy marriage. There’s also significant downsides to being in an unhappy one. As for the ehh marriages, I think you still gain advantages from the tax breaks.
We don’t live in a vacuum, and while friends and family and the world around us can help us in finding a partner, it’s also easy to get muddled up with unnecessary criteria and overthinking, which can be quite destructive. While Ms. Lori Gottlieb might think the ultimate failure in life is to be forty and single, I think there’s far worse turns your life can take.
People try dividing the world into ‘picky’ and ‘adjusting’. It isn’t that simple. It’s good to be picky, but about the right criteria. And while that varies from person to person, they are usually only as many as you can count on one hand, and tend to be more reflective of what kind of a partnership you want long term, than ones that give you short term joy.
Ultimately, most books, movies and shows about relationships are all about self discovery and not about happy endings. This is true for the book Marry Him!, and it is true for the show Indian Matchmaking.
But I’ll leave you with a thought that can be depressing, or liberating depending on how you take it.
It doesn’t matter how much personal growth you get from the whole process of dating and going through partners. If you find someone who seems right for you, all your previous experiences aren’t going to matter, no matter how many of them there are. You’re more or less starting from scratch, beyond a threshold. So even these tales of personal growth seem incredibly hollow anyway. I don’t think I’m going to read or watch too many Eat, Pray, Love type stories, especially since the happily ever after from that movie didn’t quite end that way.