Love and Let Love - Tinder and SheThePeople talk freedom and agency

Love, agency and freedom was the theme of the evening and I couldn't have been more excited to attend the event organised by SheThePeople.TV and Tinder India. If you are a millennial you probably have countless stories of online encounters, dream situations told to you by friends and your own personal anecdotes. As a 28-year-old woman marriage is a hot topic in my social circle, with some vehemently against it, some already in marital bliss, and some desperately trying to join the club. I am honestly not sure where I stand in relation to these three options and what I want.  So it was interesting to see love, marriage and all the rest being discussed in an intelligent way by a group of highly accomplished women of different age groups.

Love and sex do not have to be connected to marriage, said Paromita Vohra, founder of Agents of Ishq

I think what I took away the most from the event was that everyone spoke about what it meant to shift away from and work against the notions they grew up with. Love and sex do not have to be connected to marriage, said Paromita Vohra, founder of Agents of Ishq. Therapist Sonali Gupta spoke about how her patients no longer view themselves as waiting in line to be married if they are single. In fact, many women who are single do not feel ‘single,’ she said, implying that women were challenging the commonly held notion that being single means being lonely or left out. She even said that one of her patients compared marriage to an Aadhar card- something society says she must get, but something that is useless to her. I found that really funny.

https://www.facebook.com/SheThePeoplePage/videos/261136414791031/

Acceptance was also one of the themes of the evening. It is okay to be single, married, looking for sex, love, commitment. It is okay to be very sexual and not be sexual at all. It is okay to have different types of love, to redefine romance and friendship. It is okay to find love as a teenager and it is okay to get married at the age of 72, and be looking for casual hookups in your fifties. I think acceptance is a pill that we all need to swallow.

It is okay to be single, married, looking for sex, love, commitment. It is okay to be very sexual and not be sexual at all.

Love and let love. Live and let live.

As for online dating, while some were hesitant to get onto the app, some confessed that they came to the app to find their one true love, and others said they used it for hookups. Some even said that they used it to shop, because they were bored, and to see what was out there. Either way, the app gives the promise of personal freedom and agency and that is exactly what the women of today, including myself, want.