What’s Love Got to Do with It?

A Mumbai media professional has been dating a man for four years now, but still doesn’t know if he is the one she will marry. He is acceptable but does not really fit her mould of the “right partner”. But she is wary of letting go of him in haste. There is nothing to fall back on… yet. “I don’t have the energy to start the whole dating process again. What if I let him go and he turns out to be the only good guy left out there? I love him, but clearly that doesn’t matter. If it did, I would have been married a long time ago.” There are other boxes to tick, and this 32-year-old is clear that love won’t influence her decision. In Nagpur, her parents, who had given up on her, will be glad to know that their daughter is finally thinking like them.

“I liked being single and independent, but now loneliness is too big a consideration,” says the media professional, “I was focusing on my career, but have to think about getting married because time is running out.” She is clear about one thing, though: “I have realised that if you go out looking for an ideal partner, you will be disappointed. My basic reason for getting married is an obvious one—to not be alone. But if he earns less than me and is not well read, I would have to let it go.”

Is love now just a distraction from the supposedly important things in life—money and status? We spoke to young people of marriageable age who were dating in cities as diverse as Mumbai, Delhi, Nagpur, Jalandhar, Srinagar, Pune, Agartala and Ahmedabad, and almost always got the same response when it came to marriage—romance can be put on the backburner as long as their partner has enough money, makes decent conversation, is intelligent and good in bed. Single men also wouldn’t mind if the girl lets them chill with their friends, has some smarts and a great body. The girls, on the other hand, would want a metrosexual with a six-pack thrown in. By the new rules of dating—crafted by the mind and not the heart—‘love’ has been reduced to an emotion that only exists in the sappy Bollywood romcom.

Maybe that’s because the world is not what it was a decade ago. Women are equal to men; money and financial reputations matter more; and in a society where bringing your girl/boyfriend home at the age of 15 isn’t so shocking anymore, there seems nothing much to rebel against either. The term ‘arranged marriage’ has taken on a new meaning—where the couple instead of parents do the arranging. Anthropologist Shiv Vishvanathan isn’t surprised that this transition has taken place. “This transference of responsibilities is very noticeable,” he says, “They are pragmatic rather than romantic.”

Another young dater from Indore is 25 and recently broke up with her Jain boyfriend, whom she had met in Pune, where she studies. Her father would have never agreed to the match, but there were also other factors. “In times of crisis, both of us would lose our tempers. And to get married or date successfully, one person needs to be sane. So I thought practically, and broke up.” She remembers Indore as being rather prudish as a city, but has revised her opinion. “For every desperate man, there is a desperate woman. Women want a partner who’s good in bed, because that’s what it all boils down to,” she laughs. “If you don’t have that, the marriage will end soon. But most importantly, he should earn super well. So if my parents find me someone tomorrow [who fits the bill] I am all game.”

In her 2008 Atlantic magazine piece titled ‘Marry Him: The case for settling for Mr Good Enough’, author Lori Gottlieb made public an epiphany that was greeted by a stunned silence. She exposed a predicament faced by many singles, as much as they tried to hide it: is it better to be alone or to settle? She opined that marrying Mr and Ms Good Enough would be the practical thing to do, as, after all ‘marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business’.

Did Gottlieb reach her conclusion because she realised that if one kept waiting for Mr Right, one may just be living in an empty house with cats for company? Take the example of a Delhi girl who shifted to Pune as she couldn’t take the jibes of her parents anymore: “They have been aggressively trying to get me married.” The 27-year-old had been dating someone for five years, but ended her relationship a year ago because the man in question didn’t have the guts to stand up to his parents for her sake. And so this once-staunch believer in love is okay with an arranged marriage now.

Haunted every now and then by the demon of loneliness, she has resorted to registering herself on a matrimonial site. As long as a suitor earns as much as she does (or more), she says she would have no problem okaying an alliance. She doesn’t want to lose out on Mr Good Enough in her futile pursuit of ‘true love’. “I have seen so many people who have love marriages and get divorced a year later. So how does love matter? I am getting older day by day, and I know if not today, tomorrow I will be lonely. My parents have their own lives, my friends will get married. I need to be with someone, right? The fear of loneliness is a big reason why people ‘settle’. We were all emotional suckers, and now we are adding pragmatism to it.”

The fear of loneliness, or the fight against it, has never been more visible since the invention of the internet. The World Wide Web has provided lonely singles an anonymous platform to find whatever they may be looking for—cheap thrills, sex, long chats, and most importantly, marriage. A 2009 international study by the consumer research group Which? (yes, it’s called that) found that one in five of those who have used dating sites to find a partner has gone on to marry someone s/he met on the web. According to an earlier study of online dating service members by Bath University, 94 per cent of couples who met online went on to see each other even after their first real-world meeting.

Algorithmic matchmaking, of course, is thriving online. Internet dating services like Okcupid.com and Datingfunda.com are all abuzz with activity at any given moment, as also matrimonial sites like Shaadi.com and Elitematrimony.com. You list your requirements and qualities and hope to find someone acceptable. In fact, on these websites, you need to tuck the love factor deep in that bottom drawer, because these sites never claim to find you love—they just want you to get a date or spouse.

To journalist Nasrun, a 27-year-old who frequently reports on upheavals in Kashmir, love is a “vague term” nowadays. He met his lady, a British-born Pakistani, on Orkut. He is grateful to the internet for having found her, and plans to marry her next year. “The concept of love has changed,” he says, “It’s like Love Aaj Kal. It has been transformed into a need—emotional or physical. You don’t want to be alone, that’s all. My girl should also be intelligent. And obviously, sex matters a lot. You can’t sustain [a relationship] without it.”

Nasrun’s friend, 40-year-old businessman Irfan Hassan, says he missed the bus when he was younger, and now admits he has few choices left. “Loneliness kills and it has already started troubling me. It will be a huge compromise, but I think I will have to get married without love now. I am hooked on the net now. I just want my girl to be intelligent.”

Aditya Gulati from Jalandhar, who met his present girlfriend on Yahoo Messenger, understands Irfan’s dilemma. “Love is outdated because you don’t want to give all of yourself to anyone anymore,” he says, “And when you date on the net, everyone knows it’s not really about love. Zyaada over-involvement nahin hona chahiye (One should not be over-involved). We should be equals in financial status and independence alike.”

There is also the hypothesis that the irrelevance of love can be blamed on the increasing independence of the Indian woman. After all, does a good feminist really need a man to love her to feel complete?

Says Shiv Vishvanathan, “Women don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves anymore and know what they want very clearly.” Nitya Vasudevan, who is doing her PhD at the Centre of Society and Culture Studies in Bangalore, says that though women have become independent, that doesn’t decrease their anxiety about being single. “As women see supposed love marriages fall apart, they regard love as an unsure thing,” she says, “Sometimes they fall in love, get married, get divorced and then turn pragmatic.”

Dating just makes many of today’s youngsters wary—to the extent that they almost consciously ignore the love quotient. Take this 27-year-old resident of Agartala who was seeing a Rajput boy for two years, but did not end up marrying him. “I don’t need love,” she says frankly, “I need someone who will provide financial stability—and someone who will look after my parents, as I am required to look after his. I think people should start opting for arranged marriages as they help you fulfil all the criteria you need. After all, it’s not worth it if there is no quid pro quo.”