something fundamentally wrong with the companionship system

I mean there are probably a thousand things wrong, but it’s late in the night and I’m missing one of my exes, so here’s a fun perspective to ponder over, if you will.

I’m 28 this year, which means that my pursuit of women has now spanned over a decade. And honestly, at 18, first year of college I had no maturity, no stability and frankly no motivation to pursue engineering.

That version of me was something of a hit with women. I mean that’s probably exaggerating it a bit but I did have women come up to me and flirt with me occasionally, and I dated two women from my college, first was during the course and second was soon after.

Time’s relentless March has brought us to where we are now, and in that period post my engineering days, I had a stable job, a decent amount of savings which led me to prepare for higher education, eventually cracking CAT, Ending up at a top IIM, great job, nice car, secured future and what not.

So now, it should be easier to meet/date/marry right? Instead it’s not, it’s hard mode dialled up to 11 because arranged marriage has the parents of women setting up insane expectations that barely a thousand Indian boys under the age of 30 can stand up to, and the young are probably dating the young and the slightly older are probably married and we’re stuck in this vicious cycle of no matches on dating/wedding apps, pushed to loneliness with each left swipe.

I wonder if this generation of successful men will even want to be successful, knowing that building a life isn’t necessarily mandatory, and that makes me really sad.

My father sat down on the sidewalk today during our evening walk, admitting that he hadn’t anticipated the scale of failure he’s faced in the past year, knowing that I’ve been a good man. And I get it, the man is touching his mid 60s, running out of options and probably time.

I wish we’d actually built a society on equality, instead of just painting it on as a facade to hide unrealistic expectations. I wish I were 18, on my second hand scooty ready to bunk the 8:30 lecture in the college parents worked so hard to send me to, so I could go have coffee with her.

God, it’s all just too much.