Why online dating sites work better than being introduced by family
Deepika found her partner on an Indian online dating service. Cut to a year and a half later, they’re both married to each other. Prior to marrying, they lived together for 5 months before her partner moved to another country for work. They continued to work through a long-distance relationship, trying to meet as often as they could. After marriage, Deepika also moved out of India to Boston to be with her husband.
Deepika is the oldest of her cousins, so she was also the first to marry. Deepika’s family is traditional and rather conservative, so she didn’t think they’d quite understand the concept of finding a partner online. Therefore, Deepika has not been entirely honest on her disclosure of how she met her partner – while her siblings and cousin knew the truth, the elders in the family think Deepika and her now husband met at work.
The morally correct road would’ve been to instead inform her family members of how she met her husband. But it is understandable why she chose not to do so for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons might be that it's often seen as casual. They assume that relationships started online are not serious in nature and can’t amount to a serious relationship, and therefore are not worth pursuing and should be avoided. However, such a mindset is erroneous and should be mended to welcome the idea of online dating, because you never know where you’ll find your ideal partner, whether it be at work, a beach, or now online dating. Everyone has their own process, and it should therefore be respected.
Nevertheless, Deepika’s family was now focused on finding a match for her cousin. However, he instead wanted to find his partner on his own but was worried about letting down the family by doing so. He recognised the traditional nature of his family and didn't want to offend them, but at the same time he felt that he was entitled to his choice in life partner.
Nowadays, people still operate under the context that family knows what’s best for you and so will therefore make a better decision when it comes to choosing your life partner. However, this isn’t always entirely true, and people are bound to make mistakes in terms of their judgement of a potential partner. So instead, perhaps Deepika’s cousin might prefer it if his family understood the fact that he is a grown adult who knows his own mind and is therefore highly capable of making his own choices and therefore by extension choosing his own life partner well.
Moreover, people often don’t really take the time (or rather aren’t given time) to get to know each other when it comes to arranged marriages or matches, and instead it goes more like the partners are introduced, and both party’s families immediately want a quick decision made, and that too a decision in the favour of the relationship. Instead, a more favorable road might be to take time to get to know each other and the families, understand one another, and then make a decision about something as important as marriage.
Additionally, say we somehow get the family’s approval to choose our own partner. Should this relationship ever fail, there will be a dozen fingers just waiting to point, blame, and make us feel guilty, even though it really isn’t our fault that we as partners weren’t compatible. As opposed to throwing blame at the separated partners, a better approach would be to receive both with support and well wishes, as at least they had tried their hand at a relationship, even if it hadn’t succeeded; that in itself takes immense courage.