My new mantra that helps me fetch peace of mind. Notify him about your interest and forget about it. he will definitely come back if he is interested, else, "he is just not that into you"

Really helps when you are in this groom-hunting phase...trust me

Are all Indian sigles facing this or is it just me?

I am a 26 year old girl of Indian origin. I have spent 24 years of my life in India after which I came to the United States to pursue my Masters. Like most Indians, I am also a Software Engineer, making very good living, I have an extremely loving family and a wonderful set of friends. Reading all this you will feel this girl couldn't ask for anything more. Well there is another story to me which very few people know of.

I have been on a low profile in the relationship world, reason being certain ideas I grew up with being from an Indian family, especially North Indian families. In India there is no concept of casual dating . You can only date someone if you intend to marry him or her. Simple example is when some girl is "asked out" by a guy, news will spread that she has "been proposed". So when I was in college, I was also so-called "proposed" by few guys, but I did not even think about them for the following reason:
They were not qualified to marry me due to the fact that they are from a different community or they were in a lower economic standing. Don’t blame me for this racist statements, I had been preached since childhood that marriages can only happen within same community and between folks from same economic status.

Ofcourse I had some cousins who married someone they had dated, but they all happened to date either richer or prettier people. And yeah, another thing that kept me on low profile is I suffer from inferiority complex about my looks. I am not blessed to be super-pretty which has kept me on a very low profile in the relationship world. I think I am fairly good looking, you could say I am 6 or a 7 on a scale of 10 with 10 being most beautiful.

So out of those few guys who proposed, one stuck around in the hope that someday I will strip these traditional ideas and realize how wonderful he was and that I couldn’t have possibly got someone better, which was not so untrue after all. He is tall, smart, die-hard romantic, extremely creative, very good-looking and extremely popular. He did countless things for over 3 years to woo me and entire college envied it. I thought that we could be great friends if not a couple and he agreed. Indeed we were great friends for 3 almost years. I grew very fond of him and he knew that. But my values still did not allow me to go ahead and start dating him. Honestly I think what went on between us was sort of like dating, it was just that we did not owe it up. Then one day he mustered courage to tell me that he could not take this anymore. I should either agree to be his girlfriend or we end our friendship. I did not want to lose him and I secretly liked him very much. I said yes to him. But honestly, I wasn’t prepared. I was still a chicken and within no time of committing to him, I chickened out when one day I suspected that my dad almost found out and I could not take the guilt any more. We ended and never spoke again.

During this same time-frame, my parents were busy looking for a suitable groom for my elder sister, who also shares similar story like me. Infact, she dated two guys and both the times she was asked to get out of the relationship by my dad who claims that he does not want us to get involved with wrong people. He claims to understand the motives of those guys better than her… I don’t disagree that he is better at judging people than most others, but his ideas are not completely unprejudiced either.

But anyhow, coming back to the groom-hunting for my sister..of-course, finding a match for highly-educated, talented and career-girl is not an easy task.. I guess there is a fundamental demand-supply problem in this “match-finding” world. Women who are highly educated with great bank-balances obviously look for someone with bigger bank balance than hers, but those kind of species are high in demand and less in supply. Also the problem comes in when those men are themselves also looking for someone who is less in supply, I mean to say, they are looking for beautiful, slim, educated, soft-spoken, gentle, kind-hearted, funny, sexy super-woman who can take care of his parents, siblings, great cook, perfect homemaker along with earning big bucks. Give me a break..you are looking for something that is impossible. My parents had already gone through several hundreds of guys, got meeting arranged, looked through Indian matrimonial sites and marriage bureau to find suitable match for her, but nothing was materializing. Most guys did not pass the initial bars that my parents had set, Ones who passed those weren’t exactly what she was looking for, or she wasn’t exactly what he was looking for and ones who were, did not pass the background check. My parents did not have lesser filtering-criteria either. There was a point where everyone had almost lost hopes of her marriage…those were the times when me and my sister were thinking about my coming to the US for my masters..My parents thought it wasn’t a bad idea to pack me off to the US for higher studies since although soon I was going to be of “marriageable age” as per Indian standards and they could not particularly start searching a match for me until my sister has been settled.

In the meanwhile, my sister was “proposed” by one of her old friends. Perfect!! She was completely melted by his romance and lifestyle..but was afraid that parents will play the devil’s advocate again. But surprisingly, same community, same social status, same economic status, good-looking, loving, caring, educated well-settled…everything check check check. Parents agreed, bride agreed, groom agreed and not too long after that did the wedding bells ring. Everyone was rejoiced!!

In India it is very typical that the attention turns to the younger daughter once they marry off the elder one. So you guessed it right, my parents along with my sister was now all of a sudden worried about me. Gawd!! Please you don’t need to worry about me. Nothing evil is happening to me. Anyhow, now they started looking out for me..I was still completing my Master’s then. I did not care too much coz I always knew that this was gonna start someday and I was kind of prepared. Another reason was I was secretly hoping to find a great boyfriend among one of the guys they were suggesting me to talk to. I started attending phone calls and chats from boys who were given my contact numbers by my parents. After speaking to a few I realized that I was a prejudiced about so many things. I just was finding it very difficult to speak to people who have not lived most of their lives in the same city as me. I was a locationist you know like racist. It is hard to explain what is different, but something certainly is different. Sadly enough my parents don’t get that. All they are interested in is whether we astrologically match or not. If it does, then I have no choice but to speak nicely to the guy even though every sentence from him would be considered as an insult in the feminist world.

It has been 2 years since they have started looking for me and I am exhausted. I have met five guys in person and several over the phone. My initial hope of finding a boyfriend through this process has far faded out. So you are curious what was my date with those five guys like, I can briefly tell you.

First one was not particularly the kinds I would like to be with just because we were completely different personalities. I am bubbly and cheerful city-girl. He is a quiet, serious small-town-boy. I am sure I wont be able to handle him nor will he. We started talking two years ago when I was still in school. I had found some of the things he said to me then were pretty mean. He basically was disgusted by my optimism and ability to appreciate small things. He admitted that he gets irritated when I say “that person is awesome”. He had gauged that we could not handle each other and it won’t work. However fate got me to work in the same company as him and we were in the same town. My parents still thought we were a great match since some pundit said we astrologically matched very well. Their persuation led me to think that maybe there was something nice about him that I missed catching when we first spoke. He initiated the meet and he seemed to be well-behaved and nice, but he did not get back to me after that and I did not bother contacting him either. Long after that one day he pinged me. Apparently he had just returned back from an India trip and was engaged. He asked me whether I found anyone or not. I felt like asking him to go boil his head somewhere. Well, I just congratulated him and we have never spoken since.

Nothing particularly interesting about this second guy I met. We met, spoke, parted, he came back to drop me home where he met my parents. I did not have any good or bad opinions of him yet. He had asked me whether I could meet him for a movie sometime and I had agreed. However, my parents did not particularly like him. I am guilty of not returning his calls and I still regret being so indecent and rude. That was the end of the story.

The third guy I met had flown down from another state to meet me. We had a few phone conversations and exchanges of pictures before he actually decided to come down. My phone conversations with him were not particularly exciting. They were mostly on the lines of quick information exchange. Honestly I was not too excited about him coming down. But during the course of two days while he was in -town, I grew fond of him, but he could not reciprocate the same feelings. He is now engaged and we have never spoken since he left my city that weekend.

The fourth guy I met was from the same company I work for. We started talking on phone where he confessed he was a workaholic. I could gauge that from the timings and frequency of his phone calls. We set up a dinner date where he was nice and sweet. We spoke a couple of times after that too. However, things just did not go anywhere. After a few days we got busy with work, we started calling each other less often and I was offended it took him 2-3 weeks to return my phone call which went to my voice-mail. During those days I watched “He ‘s just not that into you” and decided not to return his phone call and pretended that I never got his voicemail.

The last guy I met also lives in a different state. We spoke to each other over the phone for almost a month to find whether we felt anything. He decided to come over to meet. We spent two days together and he left me confused. I spoke to my friend after he left that I did not feel anything was there between us even though we had two day long dates after a one month of phone calls. She just advised me to still keep talking. There may have been something that I just missed catching about him. That very evening he called up and confessed that he would like to discontinue talking and would like to explore other options. That was the last time we spoke.

The reason I am writing all this is that it has been very long that I have been single now. Lately I have been highly frustrated. It is not that no one is interested in me. Its just that no guys who pass my parents filter are both interesting to me and interested in me.

Is the reason may be that I am competing with many prettier Punju girls for these guys. I may be more successful, smarter and I have almost the same position in my jobs as those guys and similar bank balance…Online dating is not working..yes I am talking about Shaadi.com..No one out there is serious.

Do most guys take my success as a threat more than asset?
When will I ever meet my Mr Right?
Are my parent’s expectations too high?
Am I doing something really awful on my dates that is keeping me single?

Somebody help...



Are my expectations too high?