How Online Dating Made Me See an Old Tradition in a New Light

Arranged marriages, like deliciously flavourful food and bumpin’ Bollywood beats, are an ingrained part of the Indian community both in the motherland and abroad.

After getting dumped over the holidays last year, I began 2016 in sweatpants and the deep trenches of the online dating world.

In an effort to avoid being #foreveralone, I dusted off my OkCupid and Tinder profiles and got back in the game only to discover that in my short absence there were now several more sites and apps to help me find love without ever leaving the comfort of my couch. However, as I swiped through photos of bathroom selfies, men chilling with tigers, or holding a large fish (not a euphemism), these tech tools began to remind me of the matchmaking I had disregarded as a way of the past arranged marriages.

Arranged marriages, like deliciously flavourful food and bumpin’ Bollywood beats, are an ingrained part of the Indian community both in the motherland and abroad. Growing up in Canada with a healthy diet of Disney movies and romcoms, I viewed this practice as an ancient tradition that had no part in my future. Yet while I was waiting for my Mr. Right, my family began to pressure me to join Shaadi.com (“Marriage.com”) – the leading Indian matchmaking site, responsible for more than four million marriages.

“You’re 24 now so you go and have fun, but if you haven’t found anyone by the time you’re 26, we’ll start looking for you,” my uncle once told me.

After years of staunchly resisting Indian matchmaking in favour of digital dating, I began to wonder: how different is it to swipe left versus saying “yes” to a bit of the Indian culture?

Most of my family members married their spouses before ever going on a formal date. Instead, they first fell in love with each other’s “biodata,” which is a set of biographical information that includes everything from height to hometown to what they hope to find in a partner – similar to the online questionnaires and profiles created for online dating.

“It’s almost like interviewing, right?”Anju Sharma, 36, who has tried both online dating (eHarmony) and Shaadi.com said. “You don’t meet with them in person [right away]. You have first, obviously, their resume online and then you screen them by phone calls and then the next step is to meet them in person.”

Being already far too familiar with online dating, I decided to explore what goes into making a Shaadi.com profile. The general process was basically the same. I uploaded the “I look great in this one” photo and included information about my hobbies, hometown, and what type of hottie I was looking for. Where the site differed from others was in its more culturally specific queries: What is my sun sign? Is my skin tone fair, “wheatish” or dark? What caste am I, and do I care about the caste of my partner? What do my parents do?

Like some of the questions on OkCupid (“Do you have a favourite scent?”), I left these answers blank since I viewed them as irrelevant to my search but for many, these questions are the appeal of the site. For others, they reflect the Indian custom of the family’s involvement in matchmaking.

“There’s a fundamental difference because Shaadi.com the profiles are geared towards the traditional views of parents,” Rahul Sharma, 29, who has used Shaadi.com, OkCupid, and other dating sites said.

In traditional arranged marriages, parents meet parents before boy ever meets girl. My grandmother said she placed personal ads for my father and sorted the responses into three piles—”total rejects,” “might work” and “definitely pursue”—ensuring that only the worthy made it into the hands of her son. Of course, it is important to note that with his parents’ help, my dad landed a total fox and a 31-year marriage.

Online, this process translates to the option for parents to set up an account for their eligible offspring, filtering through profiles and messaging potential candidates. However, users must disclose who is running their account and can indicate whether or not they are open to profiles run by parents.

While this may seem like a completely different approach to meeting someone, Internet researcher and Pew Research Center Former Associate Director Amanda Lenhart said seeking help to find love – whether it’s from an algorithm, a friend, or a family member – is not a new concept.

“There’s a lot of different ways we’ve used other people or things to facilitate relationships – whether that’s printed personal ads, arranged marriages through matchmakers or religious institutions,” she said. “We’ve used other people as intermediaries to finding romance in the past and [online dating] is the digital face, a sort of new version of that.”

And this new version is becoming a new norm. According to studies from the Pew Research Center, online dating has lost much of its stigma and majority of Americans now view it as a good way to meet people. Canadians seem to agree since one in three people (between 18 and 34) is looking for love online – and with the growing digital dating industry, each year, there are plenty more fish to choose from.

Likewise, Shaadi.com has seen a 20 percent increase in registrations from second and third generation South Asians (Indians and Pakistanis) in Canada. According to representatives from the site, a majority of its customers are Indian born and raised in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

“I’ve come to realize that it’s more about time and place with a lot of these relationships and that if the two people are both on the same page and both really want something to work, then it’s totally possible both with these dating apps and obviously arranged marriages,”Yesha Malik, 28, one of my many cousins and a user of Coffee Meets Bagel, Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble said. To her, whether you’re looking for a spouse or just some sexy times, these sites are really about taking control of your love life.

The concepts of dating and arranged marriages started out at opposite ends of the spectrum for me, but now that they have both moved online, they seem to have met somewhere in the middle where the main difference is not cultural but instead, what type of relationship the user is searching for. For instance, I learned that even though I’m shriveling away at 26.5 years old, I am still not yet ready for a super serious “let’s talk marriage”-type relationship, so sites like eHarmony, Match.com, and yes, Shaadi.com, are not where I will be clicking.

Neha Goel, 29, who used both eHarmony and Shaadi.com, said that whether you’re comparing profiles on online dating or marital sites, the idea is the same. “At the end of the day, every relationship is an arrangement in some sense,” she said.

If this digital experiment has taught me anything, it’s to keep refreshing your options and never to expect love at first site.