We have a problem. The land of Kama, Krishna, and Khusrau has been accused of being terrible at love. India ranked lowest among 29 countries in “partner satisfaction” and landed near the bottom of the Love Life Satisfaction Index 2026 in an Ipsos survey. This isn’t very Vishwaguru behaviour, is it?
But anyone who has spent even 10 days on dating apps shouldn’t be shocked. I certainly wasn’t. Is it a surprise that Indians trapped in endless talking stages and paying therapists to recover from non-relationships aren’t feeling loved? Is water wet?
But that’s not the whole point. The survey revealed something far more interesting: We are also the top eighth most romantic people in the world. It’s just that our needs are not being met. The issue, as the survey politely puts it, is that there is “a notable gap between relationship expectations and lived experiences among Indian respondents.” You start seeing someone with excerpts from Kafka on their Hinge profile, only to discover they want to “keep things casual” while their parents shortlist spouses in the background. That’s Indian dating for you.
As I go around sniffing resentment in the love lives of my fellow 20-somethings, I keep hearing two opposing complaints. One side insists modern dating expectations are impossibly unrealistic. The other insists the bar is buried somewhere near the Earth’s core, and people are still fumbling. Women raised in Faridabad now want matcha-and-croissant dates. All while expecting men to act like the Bollywood hero of their dreams. They still end up picking the Bharat Matrimony type. Men, on the other hand, are dating like they want to crawl back to the womb—all they want is a mother.
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Arranged dating
A 30-something woman in Delhi is tired of unpacking her attachment style for people who still seem strangely invested in figuring out her surname. Even though Gen Z insists they are not dating to marry, very few date people they cannot imagine marrying someday. And the scholars have clocked us. A 2025 paper from the University of Lucknow describes modern Indian romance as a “hybrid construct”—academic language for people acting emotionally available on Bumble until their mother starts circulating biodatas on the family WhatsApp group. The same paper called it ‘arranged-dating’.
This reminds me of a devastating story: Boy artist meets girl artist on Hinge. They hit it off, play the dance of romance for a year, and discuss marriage and the possibility of a blissful DINK lifestyle. The girl pulls the brakes: “Whoa whoa whoa. Who said I am going to work after marriage?” Never mind the four years spent studying jewellery design and the two years climbing the intern ladder at fancy South Delhi labels. She wants to retire gracefully into the care of an underpaid freelancer. I swear, choice feminism makes me want to scratch my face off a little.
Who knew the trad-wife economy would travel so well? Apparently, it’s a big wave among Indian girlies. The groundwork was already there for centuries.
Imagine this is all a computer system—arranged marriage is the software and hookup culture is the hardware. Now, add Instagram therapy-speak to it. The system is overheating. No wonder surveys are delivering huge upsets.
Shalini Singh, who runs the Delhi-based matchmaking platform called And We Met, reluctantly tried to explain (she was scared of being trolled for it) why there exists this gap between expectations and experience: “Indians don’t know how to date.”
Normal dating, according to Singh, is supposed to be a three-stage process: first, “getting to know each other”; then “spending time together”—which may involve multiple people; and only after that comes exclusivity. Indians, however, tend to get emotionally devastated somewhere around stage two itself. Someone talks to another person before exclusivity is established, and suddenly everybody is behaving like they’ve discovered an affair. “I mean, you barely know the person,” Singh added, visibly annoyed, on a relationship podcast.
Maybe that’s the real problem: We want to win love, but don’t have the patience to let it grow. We are still in the get-set-mandap mode, where romance usually comes after marriage. It’s a difficult habit to break. Nothing moves without mummy-daddy’s stamp of approval. Even the grand Instagram-worthy proposals—with violins and drones—come only after families, astrologers, and wedding planners have all signed off.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)