The New Age Hookup Culture – Joie Bose & Raksha Bharadia

The dynamics of love and marriage in India are undergoing a tremendous shift. Living together without marriage, men dating older women, being with someone of the same gender are all new ways in which people are now finding and expressing their love.

But moving from a traditional set-up and understanding to a more modern outlook can take it’s time and even bring lots of hurdles along the way. Dealing with parents, society, friends and the legalities of it all can be quite tricky in a country like India. Our idea of marriage and love used to be pretty stringent – especially because of the concept of arranged marriages that is prevalent and common even now.

Youngsters are now however, writing their own rules of dating and loving and it is as beautiful as ever. The pressure of being a marriageable age for women is now gradually decreasing. Earlier families would be very rigid about the average age to get married for a woman or making sure that a son gets hitched at the best age for marriage for a male. But we are slowly moving away from all that now.

Young People And Romantic Love Is Now Changing

Romantic relationships now are just not what they used to be. Women are growing more comfortable in their skin, shunning all societal norms around beauty, embracing an independent lifestyle and enjoying financial freedoms along with finding love and happiness. This allows them and men to love more freely and erode all the boundaries that used to restrict them before.

For example, living together before marriage is now something that most couples opt for! It’s almost become like a prerequisite in some relationships. Trying a live-in situation is not only very emotionally freeing, but also reduces divorce rates dramatically as it allows people to undergo a sort of trial phase.

Another thing that the new wave of love brings us, even in India, is the whole dynamic of massive age gaps between people who are in love. At first it was looked down upon for a middle-aged woman to be in love with a younger man or people always labeled a woman who was dating an older man to be a loveless sugar-daddy relationship. But all that is going out of the window now.

Related Reading: 10 Bollywood Age Gap Movies That Show Love Transcends All Bounds

That being said, let’s look into understanding these concepts a little bit more.

The average age of marriage in India has increased drastically. Now there is no perfect age to get married. Usually the pressure of this used to be more so, on women. But slowly, that is fading away.

Girls tend to be observant of themselves but that’s not always a good thing. A woman looks at her own self while employing the ‘Male gaze’ lens trying to be the perfect, attractive girl.

No matter how much we talk about being unique, confident in your own skin and beautiful in every shape and size, women do tend to perceive themselves from the eyes of another. Most girls are very concerned with how young men look at women.

Women should be explorative and creative when expressing themselves in terms of how they look and how they dress. Instead of being so affected and becoming conscious and eventually secretive of expressing themselves, women should instead go on an internal journey to discover how they like themselves best.

Living together before marriage can be confusing for Indian families to welcome and embrace. As tricky as that may be, many Indian couples are still choosing to get into such relationships of living together without marriage.

Attraction these days is very fluid. It now has less to do with gender, age gap or any of those things. Falling in love is something that can’t be helped so there is no mystery around men dating older women or an older woman falling for a younger man. Love is love!

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