While running on 30...

I turn 30 in a week.

This wasn't an excruciating landmark for me. I thoroughly enjoyed my 20s. There are not many things which I might have missed out. Unlike other conservative parents in India, mine gave me enough freedom to be independent, become successful and stay single until I am ready to settle and find a match for myself. Honestly, while I was passing the average marriage age, they were panicking.

And frankly, finding someone who's a close fit seems like a much more difficult task than I thought. One of my cousins said the more you look, the more you complicate the chance of finding your match. I do not completely agree with him. Dating sites are gaining popularity more these days, for some reason :).

During the teenage years, we have very few criterias to look for in a guy - looks and a smile-to-die-for was all that mattered. After a decade of single adulthood, forming a relationship is a little more complicated because we kept adding more filters and have developed individualism. This is not a constraint in finding a match because a well-developed individuality is an asset to rule out unsuitables. After all, we are looking for an equal to settle with.

I was advised to trim down the criterias and to believe that people tune with each other once married. Now that was a huge risk I didnot want to take (despite being a risk-taker in my life). And it was not just about criterias. Yes, they helped me in filtering people who did not match the image of my partner. However, it was about finding someone with whom I could humbly be myself. Hiding who I really am was not how I wanted to enter into a relationship.

There were times when I almost felt I should hide my true self or reserve it for only those guys who would not be intimidated. The main reason was how much I was depended on my individualism when approaching a relationship. It is unwise. Sometimes we count our interests, successes and hobbies as some kind of check points while finding a match. Those are facts about you, not you. Things like personality, lifestyle, basic nature and daily routine are much better parameters.

I was looking for a person who appreciated my individuality and has some matching criterias. Just when I thought that I was losing confidence in my ability to find someone, I met this person who accepted me the way I was. The first time we met, I was just so myself in his presence. Of course, a little alteration it will take to slip into each other's skin. But there was something about him which made me not pretend anything what I was not.

I knew my search ends here...And the unknown is always exciting