Dating Indian Women – Possibilities & Challenges
Dating Indian women remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of the world! If you are an Indian man or just someone that fancies an Indian woman, you have a treacherous path ahead of you if you are blind to India’s cultural background, societal pressures, and the chaos caused by the confluence of age-old traditions and modern fads.
If you are an Indian man or just someone that fancies dating Indian women, you have a treacherous path ahead of you if you are blind to India’s cultural background, societal pressures, and the chaos caused by the confluence of age-old traditions and modern fads.
Dating is a relatively new concept in India but it has caught on like wildfire. Recently, Tinder announced its India operations. Here is what the head of Tinder’s Indian business, Taru Kapoor, had to say about the dating market in India
India is already the second-largest market for Facebook. It is among the top three markets for most global social networks or, is at least, getting there. The number of young people coming online especially on the mobile phone for the first time is gigantic.
Suddenly, the forces of modernity are unleashing immense possibilities for desperate Indian men that want to interact with Indian women without the sword of marriage dangling on their heads. However, there are several challenges that men face when dating women in India. Here are a few.
1. Parents want to know every move their daughters make.
2. Dating apps have a creepiness factor for Indian women.
3. Enforcers of “Indian moral values” can show up anytime to enforce ‘decency’
4, There are limited public spaces to approach a woman in India.
5. A deeply conservative society that considers dating as an alien idea.
Unless and until men have a nuanced understanding of these factors, they will find dating Indian women to be a miserable experience.
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Tips on approaching Indian women for dating
Here are the 15 tips every Indian man with hopes of dating Indian women should know about.
1. Do pickup lines work in India?
There is no ‘official data’ on whether pickup lines work in India! The general wisdom we have gleaned after scouring the Internet is that there is a very slim chance of pickup lines working in India unless you are a celebrity!
So ditch the pickup lines. You can certainly approach random women in India, but make sure she is with her friends or alone in a public setting such as a mall. Any other scenario can get you into trouble. For pickup lines that actually work, click here.
2. Earn their trust
The best bet for you to ask an Indian woman for a date would be to pick one from your network of friends. In other words, if you have met her before in a casual social setting (such as when you are with your friends), it becomes easier to ask a woman out for a date. This approach will work better as you are a known “devil” and not some random guy that popped up all of a sudden. Women in India are harassed a lot by random men in public spaces and are prone to looking at your moves with suspicion.
Here is a useful tip from an Indian woman.
3. Sign up with dating sites
If you are someone that doesn’t have a friends network or all alone is a big city, fear not. Sign up with Indian dating sites to try your luck. Dating sites have seen a lot of traction in the market in the last couple of years and there are apps like Tinder, Woo, TrulyMadly, iCrushiFlush, Vee to name a few. Tinder alone has over 7.5 Million swipes in India every day!
4. Focus on shared interests
Here is an approach that will work for you provided you are willing to put in the effort. Just do what you do with passion and try to find similar groups of people that love what you do! Here is an example, if you love volunteering for a social cause, join a group that does just that. Who knows you may find a date or even your soulmate. There is even a site that tells you how you can find someone to date on Twitter by just doing your thing!
5. Get used to rejection
Here is a comprehensive article from Psychology Today to help you handle dating rejections! You should bookmark this page and we have good reasons for it.
The sex ratio in India is messed up completely. The average sex ratio in India is 908 females for every 1000 males. Indian men are at a disadvantage and have to ‘compete’ with other men for the limited group of eligible females. Invariably, if you are approaching women in India for dating, you will be rejected a lot. Just don’t give up hope and keep trying! The same is true with dating sites in India where the acceptance rate for Indian men is very low.
6. Dealing with Indian parents
Indian parents are involved in their children’s lives till they die! There is a reason why Indians still have joint families and married couples live with the parents (usually the man’s parents). They want to keep tabs on every move their daughter makes. Their concern is justified because of the harassment that women in India have to deal with in public spaces.
When you are dating someone, you are bound to meet the woman’s parents and they WILL evaluate you as a prospective son-in-law even if you have had only a few dates. Our recommendation will be to avoid meeting the parents till you know the relationship has a future.
7. Dealing with the moral brigade
The ‘moral brigade’ is everywhere in India. It could just be an overzealous Samaritan or a bunch of goons from a local political party that wants to enforce its version of Indian culture!
Every year, Valentine’s Day in India generates a lot of news stories of goons forcibly separating couples or even thrashing them. Zelous cops also get into the act even in big cities like the recent raid on a hotel that had become a go-to place for couples looking for a private space! Just be aware of what’s happening around you and avoid taking your date to places known as couple’s hangout spots.
8. Stigma associated with dating Indian women
Unlike western countries, where even underaged kids go on a date and have prom dances at school, there is no concept of casual relationships in India. Dating Indian women is challenging because once a woman is seen in the company of a man, she is considered to be impure and not an ideal material for marriage!
Even a casual meeting can get tongues wagging! This attitude creates a mental barrier in the minds of women when it comes to dating. You will often find that women cover their faces even when they are with their boyfriends!
9. What is your intention?
Make sure you know your own intentions before dating. If you just want to have a casual relationship or even a short term fling, apps like Tinder work well. However, if you are interested in a long term relationship that will culminate in a marriage, you need to look at other apps or look within your network to find someone who can appreciate your personality and shares a chemistry. It’s OK not to have ‘commitment’ in your mind when you are dating Indian women. But, make sure she knows your intent.
10. PDA or not?
India doesn’t like a public display of affection (PDA) and this is true even in big cities. However, chances are you will get away with PDA in a big city while it is a big issue in a small town or a village.
The law regarding obscene behaviour in India also states that the ‘community standards‘ should be taken into consideration to determine if the act is obscene or not. But no one really defined community standard and it varies from place to place! To be on the safe side, no PDA when dating women in India.
11. Sense of humour
Women love men with a sense of humour. Just look around. The most popular guy in a class is someone with a great sense of humour. It’s true in all walks of life. Scientific studies have shown that men with a great sense of humour also demonstrate greater intelligence and hence attract women! Here is an interesting article that lists 10 tips to help you attract women with humour.
12. Conversational skills
Men who have the guts and the charm to ask women out for a date fall flat when it comes to conversational skills. It’s just not conversational skills alone, it’s the ability to connect and communicate with women that seem to be missing in men. Dr. Tom Stevens of California State University has published a comprehensive guide on this topic if you would like to improve your conversational skills for dating.
13. Get rid of these habits
If you have to impress an Indian woman on the first date, make sure you get rid of these habits:
– Use a deodorant, but don’t take a bath with your cologne.
– Don’t bite your nails.
– Don’t dig your nose or your ears.
– Don’t stare at the woman’s breasts.
Sometimes, all you need is common sense to be successful in relationships.
14. Choosing the right places
Make sure you pick a nice place, free from prying eyes, to go on a date. Having loads of money to afford fancy restaurants will be a definite advantage. However, you can also think of unconventional places that couples typically give a miss. For example, consider going to a bookstore where the two of you can bond over books, or maybe join a fitness club or even a cooking class.
The idea here is to not be one among the hundreds of secretive couples in parks and beaches and worry about who is going to bump into the two of you together.
15. Lose your desperation
Desperate men are a big turn-off for Indian women. If you are an Indian woman, you will find men of all sizes and shapes doing their best to catch your attention. Most of them will ogle at you, some of them will try to grope you and many of them think that you deserve to be raped because you came out after dark!
That’s not all, Indian women have to deal with out of the blue, Facebook friend requests from men that they have never met in their lives! Don’t show your desperation when you are dating Indian women. Take it easy and let the relationship develop naturally.
What about Indian women dating white men?
If you are a white male looking to date an Indian woman, things can get really strange depending on where you live. In India though, you are in demand!
Meeting Indian women through dating sites in India such as Tinder is apparently easy.
As early as in 2011, Times of India reported that more and more women in Bangalore seem to be dating and marrying caucasian men. Here is a snippet from the article.
Entrepreneur Payal Shah, who is married to an Irishman, says, “I knew my husband even before we began dating. We dated for three years before we got married four years ago,” says Payal.
And how different is her husband from anybody here? Payal replies, “Western men are more open. Indian men can get very picky about the gender roles in the Indian milieu and often expect their wives and girlfriends to toe the line.”
In fact, this GQ article in 2015 also reflected a white bias among Indian women on Tinder. The article is a first-hand account of a caucasian who created a Tinder profile and never had any trouble finding Indian women looking for white men.
So if you are a white man who chooses to meet Indian women looking for a date, you are in luck!
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