South Asians who wish to choose their own partners are changing generations-long tradition of arranged marriages. While this change is slowly being accepted by the South Asian culture, difficulties still persist. Even if the parents are open to talking about dating, young South Asians can rarely rely on their parents for advice on how to find their perfect partner since most often their parents never dated each other.
With pressures from parents, family friends and society in general to get married combined with a desire to settle down, young South Asians can be left in a lurch wondering how to find this perfect person. The key is that it has less to do with your future spouse and much more to do with you.
How well do you know you?. Do you know how you come across to others? Do you know why you think, feel and act the way that you do? The more you know about yourself, the better able you are going to be to attract the person that is the best match for you.
For example, if you think you are extroverted, you may consistently attract someone who is also very outgoing. As the relationship settles down, you may find yourself becoming frustrated with how much they need to be social when you would prefer to stay home. Similarly, if you think you are extroverted but they remain quiet when in a group, others might mistake your shyness for arrogance and may not approach you. Knowing that you are actually more introverted will help you identify why you have attracted the wrong people to begin with and how to find a person who is best suited for you.
What are your likes, loves and must haves? Countless singles can tell you a list of numerous qualities they want in their future mate including height, religion, ethnicity, financial status to even geographical location. The problem with such a list is that it does not help you narrow down which qualities are most important.
Take some time to organize these preferences into three categories: like to have, love to have and must have. Imagine yourself in various future situations: getting married, visiting relatives, raising a child, hosting holidays, etc. Is it really crucial that your partner be a certain height even if they don’t know your cultural traditions for a certain holiday? Is it more important that your partner speak your language or is it more preferable to you that they share your religion? Prioritizing your preferences will help you look past the people who have superficial qualities that you like and instead zone in on the people who will be best able to create the life that you want to have.
What will and won’t you change? In every relationship, both partners are required to change a little bit to accommodate each other and the needs of the partnership. This does not mean that core values or personalities will change but it should be expected that certain behaviors or habits will be challenged.
Identify what parts of your life you are willing to change and which ones, if you change, would feel like you’re compromising who you are. The best rule of thumb is to make sure that the compromise list is longer than the no compromise list. This does not mean that you will change all of those things about yourself but instead that you understand the success of the future relationship depends on knowing what’s best for the two of you and not what’s best for just you.
What went wrong before? Honestly reviewing your past relationships and identifying what went wrong can help give you insight into what to do differently next time. While it may be tempting to blame the demise of the relationship entirely on your ex-partner, take some time to identify your role in it as well.
Wanting a life partner and knowing how to find the best match for you are two entirely different things. Most of the time, finding your perfect partner is more dependent on understanding yourself and not how you dress, where you work or what you say.
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