It’s time to take dating out into the real world again, says Simran Mangharam

There is no substitute to having a living, breathing person by one’s side. Not all the apps and virtual interactions can adequately compensate for the warm touch, affection, chemistry and intimacy of simple proximity.

PREMIUM

This is being acknowledged by a clique of new services that use digital connections as a first step, but work on the principle that real-life meetings are an immediate goal. One of these is Pear Ring, a company that produces just one product: a small, subtle pale-green accessory that lets people know that the wearer is open to being approached. Launched earlier this year, the ring costs ₹2,100.

It is, in a sense, the opposite of the wedding ring. Where that gold band has typically been worn to indicate that the wearer is taken, this one can be slipped on and off depending on context and mood, whether one is at a bar, on a flight, on vacation or at the gym.

The second such initiative is called Thursday. Launched in 2021 and currently operational in London and New York, it allows people to set Thursdays aside to meet new people, with the short-term goal of dispelling loneliness and the long-term one of finding love. The experience begins on an app that comes to life only on this day and is inaccessible through the rest of the week. The app matches users with other single people in the area and offers a chat option; but more importantly, it releases a list, each time it comes alive, of venues that it has partnered with, for that week’s informal meet-ups.

Users can then chat on the app and decide to go together, turn up solo or in groups. The idea is that when one walks into said venue, one is saying, “I’m open to meeting someone”, and can be guided to a group of people with similar intent.

It’s been heartening to see these new approaches take shape, because the truth is that it can be hard to find love. The process was simpler when the aim was simply marriage, a sharing or joining of estates, a continuation of the bloodline. Add in the ephemeral elements of chemistry and emotion and — essential as these are — each pairing becomes less of a handshake and more of a tightrope walk.

It’s why Sima Taparia on Indian Matchmaking can’t seem to make sense of some of her client’s perfectly reasonable demands, and why they can’t seem to find love through the show (the matchmaker has not had a single wedding result from her reality series, which recently began screening its third season).

What Taparia keeps foisting on her clients is the handshake, and maybe a bit of a waltz. What her clients are looking for is Cinderella’s ball.

This is the way of many traditional matchmakers, because the handshake-waltz can be planned, scheduled, orchestrated. The bolt of love and happy ending simply cannot be manufactured. The most anyone can do is say, here are some options, and here and here and here, until by some undefinable alchemy, something clicks into place between two people, and a stable bond is born.

With traditional matchmaking, all these options must also come from within a small, prescribed circle. Alchemy becomes even harder. Far simpler to ignore the intangibles of what a client’s heart desires, and say “Here are some options”, even though most of those are no options at all.

The dating world offers a different process, one defined by personal choice, direct engagement and, admittedly, greater emotional exposure. Within the dating world, I’m particularly glad that new approaches are refocusing on real-world meetings again, rather than online interaction. Meeting in real life injects an energy and excitement into the search. It requires effort and commitment; far more commitment than scrolling through an app in one’s pyjamas. It alleviates the sense of ennui that can infect the search for love. And perhaps most vitally, it offers proof to the loneliest seekers that they are not, in fact, alone.

(Simran Mangharam is a dating and relationship coach and can be reached on [email protected])