No, Millennials Aren’t Happily Single

If anyone ever told you or if you have ever read an article on how cool Indian millennials are and how they are “staying single” by choice, you will be surprised to see what The Male Factor has found about India’s marriage aspirants in this latest study.

This study conducted in the month of July of 2016 and 2018 across two different prominent matrimonial websites has found that millennials are simply ‘not getting married’ despite best of their efforts. This study conducted between Bengali Matrimony and Shaddi.com websites has found that overall there is an increase in the number of women ‘Never Married’ people aspiring to get married through these sites. Even though the number of males ‘Never Married’ gave us mixed results, overall comparison gave a higher number of males who wanted to get married through these portals in 2018.

Partner Search – Male V Female

In Bengali Matrimony the number of males ‘never married’ people have seen a fall in numbers to some extent, but it has increased substantially on Shaadi.com. Whereas Shaadi.com has shown a growth of somewhere between 15-34% between these two years, Bengali Matrimony has shown mixed results. That may be due to some of the profiles in Bengali Matrimony closing down because of constant follow up with the registered profiles by the website and pestering them to create paid profiles (they will pester you almost every day and I am not joking). This is driving many marriage aspirants crazy and they are closing down their profiles just to stop those irritating calls.

What this shows is the growth in the number of women profiles in both the sites for all age groups. For Bengali Matrimony, this increase is around 5-6% whereas for Shaadi.com it was as high as 17-32%. The table below shows the percentage change –

Online Variety Attracts But ..

This overall growth of marriage websites means that our traditional custom of choosing our partner through our family contacts is decreasing and also even though millennials are getting into multiple relationships, they are not able to commit to anyone. Now many of you will say, what is the need of committing to one when we can enjoy our sex life with multiple partners, but the fact that millennials are still creating their wedding profiles proves that they want to commit to one and maybe this multiple partner relationship is still not worth it.

This also shows, that millennials are open to more choices and want to exploit every possible chance available to them, before committing to one. But at the same time when they are getting more choices online, (as an increase in 2018 also means), this situation has made it impossible for prospective spouses to commit to one.

The Eagerness to Get Married

There is one interesting fact to notice in this data. The number of males for any prospective spouse category is at least double (if not more) than that of the number of women in that same category. This means men are more desperate to get married and continued to be the same way in 2018.

Males outnumber women in all age groups by at least 2.5 times. It goes up to approximately 4.69 times in one category.

To understand the eagerness of the two genders for getting married, we have created two different profiles of two different genders without photos. To make them similar we have made the male profile more educated and earning little more than the female profile, and everything else was the same. We noticed that the male profile received two interests in one day while the female profile had received 14 interests in one day.

While this data definitely shows that Indian males are more desperate than women to get married, a definite trend of an increasing number of women in both sites shows women are also not able to find partners now, either through these marriage portals or through their wedding consultants.

How Millennials Have Changed Their Behavior 

To understand when the millennials are actually trying to tie the knot and getting ready for the nuptial bond, we conducted another study with the same data and checked the registered population for each age group as a percentage of total registered profiles on the sites. We found this –

This study to see the number of ‘Never Married’ population in different age-groups as the percentage of the total number of ‘never-married’ is shown above. This data shows that the percentage of males registered with these websites in the age group of 31-40 has increased by 2% in 2018 for both the sites. This increase came at the expense of the age-group 21-30 years where we see a 2% decline. This shows a shift in focus on getting married at an older age for Indian men. For females, however, we continue to find this eagerness in 21-30 age-group of prospective brides. This may be due to the fact that men are taking a long time now to get settled in life before they get married.

Why Millennials Are Not Finding Soulmates

To understand the reasons behind why millennials are not able to find soulmates I continued my study over the last five years on different matrimonial websites. I found several reasons why millennials are not able to get married and it’s only going to be worse in the coming years.

Marriage-Boycott By Some Men

From my personal experience of being attached to men’s counselling, I found reasons why men do not want to marry and I have already written about it in a separate article –

Read – Top 12-Reasons Indian Men Do Not Want To Marry

But that is about those who wanted to stay single or did not want to get married. In this case, those who registered their profiles and wanted to get married but still could not find a partner had some reasons very closely related to feminism.

Feminism Influence

The influence of feminism is a big reason why many are not finding soulmates. In a different article, I have already shown how feminism affects partner search for both men and women and why many are not able to get a partner online –

Read – When Feminism Influence Your Partner Choice

The influence of feminism is seen mostly in women who are either divorced or separated. Normally, for women with 40+ age, the effects of feminism reduce but I still found some examples for good looking females who were not able to get married because of their feminist mind.

Distance

Believe it or not, the physical distance between the prospective couple is a big factor in today’s partner search. This is because while for men we don’t recommend getting married in a city where he doesn’t belong to or travel frequently; for working women, it is a big barrier too. Since being independent is a fashion for women nowadays (probably inevitable too); many women do not want to change their present location and marry in a different city. Some even propose to stay in different cities and getting married, which is catching up too. But it will take some time to override the main barrier.

Children

For second marriage very often, the existence of children is a barrier. For grooms with children from a previous marriage (but living separately) is more difficult to find a soulmate than women with children living with them. There are men who are willing to marry women with a child, but no woman is willing to marry a man with children from a previous marriage. Most often this calculation is for a potential future share of his property when the child grows up.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle has become one major constraint in partner selection. While in earlier times, it could be taken for granted that an average Indian girl won’t smoke and drink but it’s not the same today. Other choices like one’s spending habits, travelling habits, night-out / partying habits etc. are adding to the woes of the millennials. One’s liberal outlook can also scare away prospective mates. This is because while many support liberal outlook and lifestyle like the one claimed in Deepika Padukone’s My Choice video in others, they never want the same kind of behaviour from their own spouse.

LGBTQ problem   

Another problem that is still not discussed very frankly but exists is the fact to understand if the marriage prospect is one from the LGBTQ++ community and is hiding the reality before getting married. Asking these questions openly can end the prospect there, but the problem of people hiding these issues and getting married is also increasing. Even though this comes free with feminism and liberalism, women trying to behave like men, very often scare men away from those women.

Parents

Believe it or not, parents have become another big hindrance in many marriages, especially second marriages. Millennials do not want to stay with other’s parents but want to keep their own parents with them. This adjustment may be possible when they get married at a younger age, but at an older age, when parents are even older, this adjustment is very difficult. For females, because they need to take care of those ailing parents with whom they hardly have any bonding, and for males, they need to spend money on someone else’s ailing parents. This becomes more complicated when many women express their desire to keep their parents with them despite having brothers or other sisters. In some cases, women want to keep their other relatives as well.

Why You Need To Worry

Now that you understand how staying single isn’t a choice but a compulsion for the millennials, it’s needless to explain further that you as an individual are sure to get affected. You will be affected as one of those prospective spouses, you will be affected as children or even if you are any other relative or parents. This growing population of India’s lonely hearts in this hyper-connected and hyper-sexual age will only lead to indiscriminate sex, illegitimate children and a much bigger social law and order problem. Very often these people get psychological issues that may turn into bitter and bigger problems including depression, suicide or even murder.

Tell us what you think.

Is the availability of more partner choice ruining our relationships? Cast your vote here –

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