Why does everybody want this?

I've been thinking about love and its discontents a lot recently.

Series like Nobody Wants This reignite my hope in love. Damn you, Netflix.

I have a confession to make.

I don’t know how to say this because it’s hard for me to speak about it, but I feel this is a space where I can be open and vulnerable and talk about important things happening in my life and besides writing is usually a good way to process complicated feelings for me.

Ok, here we go.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

I have a crush.

I am completely devastated by the news and I couldn’t believe something so brutal could ever happen to me. At the beginning I dismissed my spontaneous bouts of positivity, giddiness, and hope in the future as the effect of too much sugar, a completely plausible scenario on the other hand regarless of any nascent romantic feelings, but once that I accepted it for what it is, I felt it was very unfair.

What have I done to deserve this?

Have I not been away from dating apps for years now?

Have I not cut off ties with any man in my circle that manifested any signs of attraction?

Have I not given an eye-roll to any representative of the male species just because?

Have I not intentionally avoided speaking to any male colleagues unless there was a reason for it, and even then I ended our exchange with an eye-roll just in case they thought I was being nice for a split second?

Have I not consistently advised female friends in need of romantic advice to leave their partners immediately, without any futher consideration on their feelings, impact on their living arrangements or even children in common?

Have I not been closed off, aloof, and self-centered enough to prevent the seed of love germinating inside me, or nipping it at the bud in case it did for whatever illogical reason?

I need someone to sit down with me and explain what part of my being was sending a message out to the world that said “I am open to romance” without me noticing. This is sabotage and I feel cheated on and completely let down by my own body. Because I’ve done the bloody work and I don’t deserve this. Excuse the crudeness.

You may find it ridiculous -trust me, no more than I do- but the reality of the facts remains.

It’s as if you’ve been eating healthily for years, exercising regularly, not smoking, not drinking, sleeping 8 hours a day and on top of that you’re also a good neighbourgh, friend, parent, colleague, lover, you name it, and then one day you’re told you have cancer. You even recycle, are conscious about your carbon footprint, and didn’t stockpile on toilet paper during the pandemic, for fuck’s sake.

Wouldn’t you be a bit mad too?

If this was going to happen anyway, you may have as well drunk, eaten, smoked, and polluted your way to illness like the absolute selfish asshole that, when push comes to shove, you know damn well you can be.

A crush is the lowest risk expression of romantic interest for normal people.

But in my circumstances it is high risk because I usually don’t like anyone -at least not since I finally gained a better understanding of my own needs and why I was repeating certain patterns- so this means that, despite my best attempts at preventing it, I’ve managed to meet someone I can tolerate enough and I seriously struggle to find reasons for disliking.

To the point that if we were the last two people left on earth, I wouldn’t completely dismiss the possibility of engaging in the noble art of copulation with them. In fact, I may even welcome it with open, er, limbs.

That’s bad. That’s very bad.

Because once you start contemplating someone as a potential mating partner, you’re on a dangerous slippery slope that leads to an appearance on The Tinder Swindler or My Sweet Bobby discussing all your broken dreams and hopes for the future as you come to terms with the fact that the person you thought you were in a relationship with was actually scamming you and never existed.

Tinder Swinger would have also been a great name. Maybe next time.

A crush may look innocent to you but it’s the stepping stone towards a spiral of doom and self-destruction from where no woman escapes unscathed, also commonly referred to as a relationship. In my case it’d be even worse because it’d be an heterosexual one, the lowest in the scale of potential for long-lasting happiness and ratio of guaranteed orgasms.

Listen, if you have a significant other in your life who delivers the goods every single time I’m very happy for you, I really am, but you just can’t understand the struggle. So please, PLEASE, please refrain from sharing your repulsive tales of happiness and sexual gratification because we don’t need that kind of positivity and hope in the abilities of a capable heterosexual lover here. Show a bit of respect.

If I’m sharing something so heart wrenching as my unexpected crush it is to offer a cautionary tale to all those lonely hearts out there who haven’t yet come to their senses and insist on suffering unnecessarily because they aren’t in a relationship and feel time is running out and all good men (it’s always the good straight men that are more scarce) are taken and the clock is ticking and are they still in time to freeze their eggs? God, I never thought about children, but what if I want them and it’s too late? I should have been a lesbian. Well, no, same problem, innit? Oh shit.

Let’s be honest: it’s not statistically possible that everyone who is in a long-term relationship is happy and is consistently getting their daily dose of orgasms. People change and are curious to explore what’s out there, that’s why relationships end and new ones form. That’s what keeps the romantic market dynamic and fresh. Offer and demand are the pillars on which the belief that if you end a relationship, you’ll find another one, and maybe with the perfect match for you, is sustained.

Except that for some reason that’s no longer happening and people hold on to bad relationships, and even worse situasionships, like they hold on to awful jobs during an economic crisis. They may as well hate them and feel miserable in them, but they still pay the bills so you have no intention of quitting any time soon, not in this economy anyway.

And that’s how we’re in the current romantic paradox of today. With half of the people complaining about the relationship they’re in, while the other half complains about the relationship they’re not. All paralysed by the fear of making the wrong choice and ending forever and irremediably alone. Whether they’re in a relationship or not.

At first I thought this was only a London-issue, or a big city problem in any case as they’re more challenging when it comes to meeting people and forming new relationships. Then I thought it was a straight women issue in a big city, but speaking with friends and family over the years in Spain, France, and Italy, I’ve understood it’s a global phenomenon and it’s every woman, man, and non-binary for themselves when it comes to being single at a critical time in your life, which, for some reason happens to be your mid-30s.

A symbolic age of no return of sorts from where if you’re in a relationship and decide to break it, you’ll be cursed with eternal singlehood (or singledoom) leading to a spiral of overthinking, self-doubt, need for validation, online dating, terrible sex, the fear that you’ll die alone, brief hope in the future when you meet someone who replies to your messages, more self-doubt when they never want to meet in person, more terrible sex when they eventually do, and ultimately a lack of hope in romantic love and the confirmation that yes, you’ll be dying on your own and your dead body will be found rotten, months after you’ve passed.

A very real possibility of which I was reminded when the latest issue of Camden New Journal was delivered to my door and forced me to rethink my stance on relationships with a strong call-to-action on its cover, “Woman Lay Death in Flat for Months.”

I confess that wouldn’t mind making the headlines of a newspaper but I always hoped it’d be for my vivacious personality and thirst for life, not the total absence of it. However, the more I live in London, the more I realise this is my best shot at stardom considering this is a country that in 2018 appointed a Minister for Loneliness.

As if I needed help to fuel my anxiety. Even Paddington is shocked.

Which brings us back to the problem of my crush.

Because, and this is important, is obviously unilateral and can’t never lead to anything ever. Trust me, it really can’t.

I too have felt in the past the need to hurry up to snatch the last straight decent man standing if I didn’t want to be left out in the dark and join the ranks of single women who die alone.

Maybe that’s why my crush is a benign one after all and it’ll probably go away on its own with repeated exposure to flashbacks of past romantic experiences and the endless grimacing they caused me.

The truth is I’ve made some poor decisions when it comes to men and the memories still come back to haunt me when I least expect it, whether I’m doing the dishes or in the middle of a work meeting. I seriously wonder what on earth came over me (besides them, obviously) to end up with men who were clearly unsuitable for me and who only cemented insecurities about myself which I’ve spent years shaking off.

That is enough reason to stay well clear and away from anything and anyone that may open a door to repeating the same mistakes I’ve committed multiple times already as I naively believed some of these men surely wouldn’t let me die alone.

I’m a wiser woman now. I no longer let the ephimeral sparks of a crush blind me. I have attained knowledge and enlightenment from my single years, spent studying and closely observing human nature. More specifically, from the multiple rewatches of Indian Matchmaking which has provided a great number of laughs as well as unexpected pearls of wisdom.

As someone coming from a culture foreign to the concept of arranged marriage, this show has been an interesting education in love and relationships. There has been no shortage of lightbulb moments when it comes to what keeps people happily together in the long term and how both partners are responsible for the good health of a relationship and must contribute to it by embracing their respective roles.

The notion, which sounds very logical, caught me completely off guard the first time I watched the show. Do they mean that these people just don’t get carried away by an explosion of hormones that are released to wreck their nervous system and cloud their judgement with the sole purpose of having them obsess over something they can approach from a practical point of view? Don’t they agonise about whether they’re happy with their partner? Or leaving them? What kind of dark magic was that? Aren't they afraid of dying alone???

Maybe that’s the advantage of being raised Hindu as opposed to guilt-ridden, god-fearing, obsessive singledoom-avoider Catholic. You approach life from a calmer mindset because you know that you reincarnate, so whether you die alone or not it’s beside the point. You can always give it another shot in your next life.

I was positively surprised when most of the older couples that appear in the show displayed genuine affection for each other, with many declaring that love hadn’t been there initially when they met but it flourished organically as they got to know each other and respect their individuality and contributions to the relationship. Fair point considering many of these people married shortly after having met for the first time (some of them after a couple of days at most) and are still together and going strong 40 years later.

The reasoning behind this practical thinking isn’t so different from what bell hooks stated in her seminal work All About Love:

“To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We are often taught we have no control over our "feelings." Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that parents love their children, or that one simply "falls" in love without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as "crimes of passion," i.e. he killed her because he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning.”

However, the focus of Indian Matchmaking was not on these well-established couples. They already knew the virtues of arranged marriages and that if you put in the work to build the relationship with actions, it’ll probably go well. What they wanted was for their children to try a different approach to finding love.

The show therefore focuses on young Indian people both living in India as well as the US or UK (in season 3) who engage Sima Taparia, expert matchmaker from Mumbai, in the hope that she would help them meet THE ONE via a highly curated biodata listing the characteristics and likes of potential matches.

Season after season, however, it was obvious that Sima’s more traditional and practical approach to relationships -urging their female clients to compromise and settle for getting 60%-70% of what they hoped to find in an ideal partner in season 1, and being slightly more open minded in season 2 and 3 and asking men to compromise as well-, didn’t always land well with this younger generation.

Regardless of their individual approach to relationships or gender, it’s soon obvious that Sima’s clients are all on the same sinking romantic love boat as the rest of us, and just as desperate not to be left behind, racing like headless chickens towards their ideal partner -or somebody close enough if Sima has it their way. Someone who chooses them and saves them from the minefield that modern love is, if not from the fear of dying alone. Reincarnation can do wonders for you.

Navigating the incomprehensible newspeak of XXI century romance with all its orbiting, bread crumbing, situasionships, sexting, thirst traps, catfishing, ghosting, and ethical non-monogamy¹ is exhausting.

It makes one really question whether a relationship it’s really worth the hassle and why it’s so important to be in one in first place. Even the most seasoned couples in Indian Matchmaking wouldn’t have stood a chance in today’s instant-gratification world where it’s not uncommon for people to proclaim passionate feelings for each other they day they meet even though they know perfectly well that, after sleeping together once, they will never see each other again.

In that hopeless context, is dying alone really that terrible when the alternative is a lifetime of disappointments? You can of course become a Buddhist and remove the problem of death from the equation, but you are still left with how to get into a relationship, if that’s what you really want.

And yes, we’re metaphorically talking about not dying alone as in having someone who cares enough about you that they notice when you’re gone for a few days if they’re a friend or in case they’re a romantic partner that you can trust they’ll be gracious enough to inform others promptly that you’ve checked out early when they discover your inert body in the house. In any case, you’ll still be going through the ordeal of departing this world alone, it’s not that you can nominate your partner as a proxy to spare you the process.

So what’s the point of obsessing over being in a relationship when you’re not in one or not wanting to break up one that makes you unhappy for fear of ending up alone when that’s where we’re all headed either way?

I wonder if Aparna is still looking for someone

Perhaps the answer is that romantic prospects for single women nowadays are very dire.

Unlike our single male counterparts, we’re so used to hearing from a very young age that we need to settle more and be less demanding that the words of Sima in season 1 didn’t even shocked me.

It’s millennia of cultural conditioning, it’ll take time to fully eradicate it and stop judging women -for whom the stakes of being in a heterosexual relationship in particular are a lot higher due to childbearing and the unequal division of household chores plus the heavy lifting of providing emotional support and caring for those around them- for wanting to find a partner that it’s up to their high emotional, intellectual, material, and physical standards with whom they want to build a future with without having to make themselves smaller.

So when someone eventually finds what they want and who they want when they want it, it’s inevitable to wonder what’s the catch. And that’s why everyone frets to snatch somebody as they feel there’s still hope. Except that when they finally dip their toes in the muddled waters of the dating pool the only thing left to catch seem to be tadpoles. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I actually meant ethical non-monogamous specimens.

We’ve become so cynical at the prospect of genuine love and interest in getting to know someone -and only one person at a time- that “How come they’re single?” is usually the first question that comes to mind when someone finds what to appears to be a rare gem. It reflects poorly on how we no longer trust the ability of adult people, men and women alike, to choose not to be in a relationship unless it’s the right one for them with the right person and for the right reasons.

I’d be lying if I didn’t understand the surprise it causes to find eligible, happy single people by choice when every person from their mid-30s upwards seems to be operating from a scarcity mindset instead of from a place of wholeness. And for whom having to chose between leaving a bad relationship or staying in one is still a better prospect than not having anything to choose from. I’ve told you I’ve done a lot of work on myself so this crush thing is really uncalled for.

But when you eventually meet someone that looks like they could be the last choice you’ll ever have to make, the mind starts playing games and panics because this is an unfamiliar situation. What if there are no more choices ever again and this is not the right one?

No wonder Sima rolled her eyes every time one of her clients put on the table the possibility that love is vast and varied and they wanted to be given options, a concept that to her must have sounded like a luxury, but also a potential distraction for her well-engineered matchmaking based on the infallible science of spreadsheets listing personal qualities and hobbies, as well as height, zodiac sign, cast, university they studied and eye colour. If I didn’t know any better, I would think Sima has invented an analogical version of Tinder that fails to fulfil expectations just as well as the digital one.

So when you operate from this scarcity mindset and the belief that there are not enough people for you, the problem is that you go in overdrive and start considering all the potential worst-case scenarios instead of the possibilities when meeting someone you like. You limit yourself and what a potential relationship with them could be.

Surely you will have to convert to another religion if you want to keep this relationship going in the long-term. Or move to another country, far away from anyone you know. And quit your job, which you love. Maybe they have a crazy ex, or exes, or are still working through past relationship issues and are extremely needy and co-dependent. Or, gasp of horror, they’re useless in bed (no, please, don’t let them be useless in bed, I’ll take the crazy ex over that). In any case, you’re bracing yourself for a life-changing sacrifice that you aren’t quite sure your capable of in order to defeat your fear of dying alone. How bad can it really be?

But when your worst fears don’t materialise, and you’re finally happy with someone who thank god isn’t useless in bed -nor has a crazy ex, or not more than any regular ex would be, yourself included- you can’t help but be grateful for having found someone who has saved you from having to go from bad sex to terrible sex and then missing the bad sex because compared to the terrible sex at least is was better and there was tangential margin for improvement. If the guy you had bad sex with hadn’t ghosted you, that is.

There’s no way this person exists, you think, and has chosen you out of 8 billion people, what are the odds! The starts have truly aligned, as Sima would have said. This is a hyperbole because, give or take, there are at least 7’5 billion who wouldn’t touch the person you are so enthralled with with a stick so it’s not that they had so many options to begin with; and you on the other hand are so extremely picky that it was meant to be the moment you finally met because you had already rejected any other single man on earth, so it had to be them.

That lie about infinite possibilities that dating apps have successfully managed to instill in the collective single person mind has really done romantic love and hopeless romantics dirty, for we all have a type of person we’d like to be with. I refuse to believe that just about anyone would do because if that were true, everyone would be coupled up by now and that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. Quite the contrary. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re the last generation to remember what being in a long-term, committed and healthy relationship was like.

Given the high volatility of the single market, it’s nothing short of a miracle when a female friend who has been single for a while surprises you with the news that they’ve met a straight man they like and who is normal, open with their feelings, and secure on who they are. And fully, 100% certified, single. Not one of those ethical non-monogamous dicks. They’ve landed the white unicorn every straight woman wants to find, and into which they hope to transform the little ponies they come across, often with terrible results.

And for the record, being normal, open with one’s feelings and secure on who we are should be the baseline for every adult single person interested in a romantic relationship albeit no guarantee whatsoever of perfection, because no one is. In fact, it’s more important wanting to work on things that we are aware we can improve to become the best version of ourselves and that would make us better partners.

That’s usually a good departing point as well as a strong basis for why we want to be in a relationship with someone: because they make us want to be better people, capable of confronting our worst fears and embrace whatever life throws at us standing by our side. And yes, there might be differences and obstacles, but they’re more than happy to work with us on overcoming them together.

I told you we all have a type. That’s mine.

Apparently, so is that of everyone who has watched Nobody Wants This, the Netflix romantic comedy that has managed the impossible and has got both the comedy and the romance just right, receiving rave reviews and drawing comparison with When Harry Met Sally.

If that wasn’t enough, it has re-ignited many cold hearts with the warm flames of what true love is, does and feels like and how you behave when you’re in a relationship with someone you deeply care about and whose happiness and wellbeing is paramount to you. Even if that means making hard choices.

While season 1 is still fresh on our minds, a season 2 has been already confirmed and I can’t wait what it brings for sex podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) and rabbi Noah (Adam Brody) as they keep unfolding layers of their relationship and what it has brought to their lives.

I’ve always been of the opinion that a relationship is not a goal, but an organic by-product of meeting a person who has the power to transform our life and expand it, not constraint it, by making us realise how much more space they are able to create for more love, more compassion, more support, more understanding, more freedom. More of us, never less.

And as a result you want to be in their company as much as you possibly can because why wouldn’t you? They’re not orbiting or bread crumbing you or throwing casually a “let’s see where this goes”, to keep you at arm’s length. They know where it goes already: straight to calling 911 without hesitation if they’ll ever wake up next to your frigid body instead of letting the papers report that you died alone. In this time and age, I think that’s quite something.

Maybe that’s why people want a relationship ultimately, but also in first place.

To save ourselves from exploding up into pieces we won’t be able to put back together as we risk stepping on landmine after landmine in our wild-goose chase for true love while we race through life towards the inescapable encounter with death.

And perhaps, against all odds and my better judgement, this unexpected crush, even when it’s for the character played by Adam Brody in Nobody Wants This (I told you it had no future), is the way my body is showing me that it knows me better than my mind does, and it’s giving me a sign to let me know that it’s about time I stopped fighting.

Because for all my conviction about how love is doomed and my reluctance about being in romantic relationships after the many discontents, frustrations and insecurities men have caused, perhaps it’s time to open my mind to the possibility of love entering my life again to expand it like it once did, instead of contracting it.

Not because I’m desperate for a relationship to avoid being alone, but because I have stopped fearing ending up in one even when I know it can end. The couples of Indian Matchmaking would be proud of me if they could hear me.

Maybe it’s time that I admit that I too deserve giving myself the chance of finding someone I can turn to, while we’re both comfortably tucked in bed, wrapped in the blanket of safety that our romantic alliance provides, the uncertainty of singledoom long behind us, and with whom I can feel safe revealing my biggest fear with the knowledge that they won’t shy away from fighting it with me. No matter what I reveal or in which context.

So when I look them straight in the eye and say, “Please promise me my mummified body won’t be making the cover of a local London newspaper,” they’ll look back at me and without trembling they’ll respond, “I promise you that your body, mummified or not, will never end up on the cover of any newspaper.”

Love is as love does, as bell hooks said, and this time I’m sure I’ll recognise it when I see it in front of me.

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Abroad is an independent publication about identity and belonging, living in between cultures and languages, the love of books, music, films, creativity, life in London, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.

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1. Ethical non-monogamy is a way to meet what Esther Perel explains as the need for safety and the need for adventure in romantic relationships, something I can perfectly understand because I’ve been through enough romantic dark nights of the soul, so no judgement here. But let’s call things by their name instead of making up complicated terms to say, “I’m not leaving the person I’m already in a relationship with, but I would like to sleep with someone else, so if you’re cool with that, I’m cool with that, and my partner, provided I tell them in advance that I plan to have sex with a stranger, will be cool with that as well. Or so I think because this is not technically cheating if we have spoken about it, right? I mean, it was just this one time, when we were about to break up. Anyway, I’m not doing anything wrong. I seriously hope not, because we have a mortgage and it’d be a shitshow if we split over a linguistic technicality.”