Arya News - Despite some versions of various matchmaking and dating platforms having been available in the country for nearly a decade, the topic is not openly discussed.
ISLAMABAD – Despite some versions of various matchmaking and dating platforms having been available in the country for nearly a decade, the topic is not openly discussed.
Waseem and Ezza met in 2022 and immediately hit it off.
Within a year, they were married. For most Pakistani couples, there’s nothing that stands out about this particular story. After all, rishtas [marriage proposals] here often happen based on rather truncated timelines. But what makes Waseem and Ezza’s story stand out is that it didn’t start over a cup of tea in a drawing room, or a coffee date near the office. It actually started online — on a rishta app.
Despite some versions of various matchmaking and dating platforms having been available in Pakistan for nearly a decade — albeit amidst certain controversies and bans — the topic of dating apps is not exactly openly discussed in many Pakistani circles.
But Waseem and Ezza want to change the conversation. They’re open about the way they met and even recommend that others looking to settle down follow the same approach.
“We’re sharing this story for all those people who struggle to find rishtas or get disheartened and feel that they can’t use different avenues,” Waseem says, adding that these people then resort to family members, cousins or “rishta aunties” [professional matchmakers], who don’t even give them good rishtas and instead provide rishtas according to ‘monetary packages.’ His concern for those struggling to find a partner provides a mere glimpse into the longstanding, complex and often convoluted matchmaking process that has become part and parcel of Pakistani society.
After all, despite Pakistanis’ obsession with getting married, actually managing to find someone to marry isn’t as easy as Pakistan’s TV shows would have us believe. If one takes the arranged marriage route, which many in the older generation still think is the only pathway to marriage, one has to cross the hurdle of impressing rishta aunties or whoever is facilitating the match from the other side and your potential spouse’s family before you even get to the point of meeting said potential spouse.
This is clearly still the more mainstream approach, with a 2024 survey by Gallup and Gilani Pakistan showing over 80 percent of Pakistanis get married through the arranged marriage process.
Going the other way and trying to find your own spouse may seem easier in light of the arranged marriage process, but it comes with the additional work of trying to convince families, and often society, that you did indeed make the right decision. Then comes the issue that several young people looking to settle down are facing these days: that despite actively looking for ‘the one’— no matter the route — there simply doesn’t seem to be anyone that ‘clicks’.
Young people are actively looking to expand their social circles and the digital world is helping with that. For years now, Facebook rishta groups have been a big part of countless hopeful rishta journeys. Statements such as, “Looking for someone serious only” or “Only approach if ready for marriage” are commonly found on these platforms. The digital scene continued to evolve with the introduction of platforms such as Tinder in Pakistan, which was Pakistan’s most popular dating app between 2018 and 2020, only for it to be banned in September 2020 for promoting “immoral content.” Tinder is still accessible via VPNs but its popularity has certainly dimmed. Other dating apps such as Bumble, however, are still accessible without technical workarounds and are popular with some women because they only allow women to initiate contact.
Fast forward almost five years, and there’s a new influx of more ‘Muslim’ matchmaking apps. Led by the likes of Muzz and Dil Ka Rishta, Pakistan has seen a rise in the use of the rishta apps as an alternative to relying on friends and family. Also, unlike their previous counterparts, this new wave of rishta apps are marketing themselves as being “for marriage purposes only”, making them more appealing to a range of Pakistanis who may not be okay with casual dating but do need alternative avenues to find someone to settle down with.
Still, despite these apps being around for a few years now, many still have concerns regarding the kind of people they do, or do not, come across on such apps. Others have issues with the concept of meeting online entirely.
However, the question remains: are the apps the problem or is Pakistan’s rishta culture itself the issue? And if it’s the latter, can these platforms make a difference, or are they essentially perpetuating the same cycle?
APPS OVER RISHTA AUNTIES?
Before Ezza decided to join Muzz, she’d been through the standard rishta process — the families coming over, the judgement and the rishta aunties. Yet, nothing was clicking. She shares that all of this started in 2018, after she graduated from university and her parents started looking for rishtas for her.
They asked for help from family and friends, but also got professional rishta aunties involved. Speaking about how the process of hiring a matchmaker works, Ezza shares, “She would take money and show me certain kinds of rishtas,” adding that, in her experience, the amount of money she paid the rishta auntie was directly linked to the kinds of rishtas she would show Ezza and her family.
Those weren’t the only hurdles Ezza had to face. “I have just one other sibling, a sister,” Ezza says, “and people did not want to marry us as they assumed they would have to look after our parents too since we do not have a brother. She adds, “We had an old house in Ichhra, Lahore and potential suitors’ families would comment that our home was too small and old. My parents actually moved houses because of this very reason.” At one point, the constant rejections left her feeling “unlovable”, and she sought help through therapy. It wasn’t until she heard about Muzz through an office colleague’s experience that she realised that she had another avenue to explore. Even then, she says her first reaction was actually one of judgement, because she wondered who would ever be okay with meeting through an app. “Three years after that initial judgement, I met Waseem on that same app,” Ezza says.
For Ezza, after all the constant judgy rishta meetings, having a platform such as Muzz allowed her the control and freedom she needed. That’s not to say she didn’t face rejections on the app as well, but just that the process allowed her to have more autonomy over what was happening.
“One good benefit is you can blur your pictures, which I did,” Ezza reveals, “and, if you feel like moving ahead with someone, then you can change your privacy parameters, but you do need a little bit of patience.” According to her, being rejected on the app was still not as bad as the rishta meetings: “The good thing is that people on the app aren’t coming to your house, your family isn’t involved and parents aren’t doing all these preparations because, with that process, parents also get hurt.
“On the apps, if someone is rejecting you, there’s no emotional involvement. If it doesn’t work out, you just say bye. You don’t have to go through traumatic or humiliating conversations such as ‘Chal ke dikhao, muskura ke dikhao, barri gaarri kyun nahin hai? [Show us your walk, smile for us, why don’t you have a bigger car?]’”
MORE FEMALE AUTONOMY?
One key feature that apps such as Muzz and Dil Ka Rishta have consistently marketed themselves with is the idea that these platforms are geared towards women’s safety and autonomy. UK-based Muzz launched in Pakistan around two years ago and released its first major ad early last year, which focused not just on changing how women are treated during the rishta process but also their right to have a say in the entire journey.
Nayab Nazir, Pakistan’s marketing lead for Muzz, says, “When Muzz launched in Pakistan, we already knew lots of third parties were involved in the rishta process. There were a lot of aunties, khalas [maternal aunts], mamoos [maternal uncles] that single people didn’t want to involve in the rishta process because they wanted their own say. So we already knew that we had to remove the middle person.
“Muzz is like a reliable buddy in the rishta process, where you can match with someone who is like you by using all these filters,” says Nazir. The filters she’s talking about can include religion, sect, education, location and more, which allow the user to only come across profiles they feel fit within their requirements. Nazir adds, “It’s a process where parents and their children can sit together and feel like they’re all a part of the process.” Sara*, who found her husband through Muzz earlier this year, agrees with Ezza that these apps did allow her a greater level of control. She shares, “My thinking with the traditional rishta process was, why should I give someone the power to come and reject me.” She came to know about Muzz through friends and family, and she was willing to give it a try over the more traditional avenues.
But even though neither Sara nor Ezza were on Muzz for very long, they did come across a wide range of people — and they weren’t all good.
According to Sara, “The app in itself is really good, but some of the people on it are quite strange, so I wanted to be very picky, and I think it’s good to not just trust anyone on the app. I did match with a lot of good people, but my personal values didn’t align with most of them, which is why I only met two people in person.” Having all sorts of people on an app like this can be a blessing as well. Aliya*, who is 38, had been looking for a match for herself by using more traditional routes. She then saw that Muzz became a way for a divorced friend of hers to remarry.
“I know someone whose situation worked out,” she says, “where both her, and the person she met, had children from their first marriages. They met on Muzz, got married to each other and now they have a child as well.” In many ways, such apps are providing avenues for divorced or widowed women, who are often viewed quite harshly in Pakistan, to find another partner.
Dil Ka Rishta, one of Pakistan’s most popular matchmaking apps, also prioritises safety and privacy for all their users, but especially women. Their recently introduced VIP Matchmaking Service, which allows users to sign-up for matchmaking without a public profile, came after their team received feedback from women not wanting to make public profiles. In this process, the user is in direct contact with their respective marriage consultant, who curates a set of profiles that meet the user’s demands.
According to Mir Ishaq Rehman, the CEO and co-founder of Dil Ka Rishta, “A lot of women told us they wanted help with marriage-related decisions but did not feel comfortable putting their photos and details on a public app. We created our VIP inperson service exactly for them. Instead of posting a profile, they work privately with a consultant who understands their criteria, speaks with families and presents a shortlist that reflects what they want.” When it comes to ensuring more female autonomy on apps, the influence of Bumble can’t be ignored.
After all, it’s one of the only ‘original’ dating apps that has stayed around and even seen some success — largely due to its feature that only allows women to initiate contact with men.
But Sabah Bano Malik — a radio-jockey, journalist and content creator — who’s been very open about her own journey on these apps as a desi woman, points out that, while the apps allow women more autonomy, the men on them don’t.
Malik finds Bumble more suited to her needs, particularly when it comes to speaking to men who match her values, saying, “I just don’t know if I am the target demographic, at least here in Pakistan. I think our attitudes towards marriage are different, culturally speaking, and so Bumble seems more honest in my case whereas, with marriage apps you feel like it’s still a lot more staged.” Malik has also attended five weddings in her own circle where the couples met on Bumble, so she does think that the reduced pressure to ‘be a certain way’ on Bumble compared to marriage apps may actually lead to more honest and successful matches.
THE PITFALLS
Despite hearing good reviews of the Muzz app and being willing to give it a try, Sara knew that a lot could go wrong, having heard of all the instances of cyber harassment and other problematic behaviours that women often have to face while using any sort of digital media.
This is why she was very mindful of using the app’s given filters and to not meet just anyone from the app in person. She also said that, in her eyes, it’s smarter to involve families early on once you’ve initially vetted the person before getting too emotionally invested and then having to go through your family possibly rejecting that match.
This issue Sara points out is one that Nazir says the team has noticed as well, with women often trusting too fast, too soon. According to Nazir, “One of the concerns we’ve seen is women trusting a match on the app too soon. We have to teach them to analyse the situation and what the kinds of questions to ask. So when we make educational videos, people comment and say we didn’t even know we had to ask this. This is especially true for girls, but also for boys, because many of them are not used to interacting in shared spaces with the opposite gender.” Sara agrees that it’s not just the men on the app one needs to be wary of, stating, “It’s not just guys. Even in my circle, men who used this app said that many girls were also not serious about settling down and that it was very hard to find women who are serious.” Waseem agrees with these assessments regarding the kinds of varied people that are using these platforms, even though he only used Muzz for a short while before meeting Ezza. Waseem also has less to compare the app process with as he never went through traditional rishta avenues.
Waseem says, “I’ve seen issues with both men and women on these apps. Women often demand a lot of money, high salaries and want the man to give them everything but he should expect nothing in return.
Meanwhile, the men often want lots of jahaiz [dowry] and demand that the girl takes care of his family and household chores, while also working.”
NEW PLATFORM, SAME PROBLEMS
Whether it’s Waseem, Ezza or Sara, all of them are aware of the problems people can face on these apps, even as they celebrate their own successful love stories. After all, not everyone finds love just because they change platforms. For many people, the issues that plagued their matchmaking process followed them into the digital realm as well.
Momin*, an Islamabad-born Pakistani now based in Dubai, says initially he went on apps such as Muzz and Salams (another matchmaking app) as a way to see his ‘options’ when it came time to get married and settle down. He shares that he did change the filter to ‘only Pakistanis’, as he hoped that would make it easier to find someone to meet. But, to his surprise, he saw many women with profiles on these apps who he knew were already in relationships. While he did pursue a few potential matches through Muzz, he came away from the experience more disenchanted than before.
For a lot of people, just these kinds of reviews can be enough to put them off using such apps, or even wanting to risk putting themselves out there online.
Despite what Aliya saw with her friend, she herself never chose to be on such apps because she describes herself as wanting to be too “anonymous” to put herself out there.
Aliya says, “I guess for people like me, if you’re not seeking out a rishta auntie, these apps are the only option available. But I’m kind of old-school. I don’t know how you can get to know someone on a 30 minute or an hour-long date.” She was further put off from using these apps after she came to know that her cousin’s husband had been matching with women on Muzz while her cousin was pregnant with their child.
Aisha*, a single mother who did choose to use the rishta apps, came off them echoing Aliya’s sentiments.
Aisha initially chose to go down the app route by making profiles on Muzz and Dil Ka Rishta as her parents were older and couldn’t be involved in finding a partner for her, as they had done for her previous marriage.
She says, “I left Dil Ka Rishta after a month because, even though they have a strict vetting process that involves giving your CNIC details, the kind of rishtas that were coming my way just seemed bizarre, even though I had spent time and energy in building my profile and in connecting with their customer relations personnel.” Aisha felt the intentions of people on the two apps were quite different. “From what I saw, on Muzz, men were interested mainly in sleeping around, not marriage.” “Traditional matchmaking relies heavily on personal contacts and limited information,” Mir Ishaq Rehman tells Eos. “It also places users in a dependent position, where they wait for someone else to take the lead. Dil Ka Rishta gives users more control, while keeping in mind the cultural sensitivity that families expect.” According to the Dil Ka Rishta team, their approach improves compatibility and trust within the process.
Rehman further elaborates, “At Dil Ka Rishta, we combine two things that rarely come together in Pakistan.
We use a modern matching algorithm that learns what users are looking for, and we pair that with trained marriage consultants who bring a human understanding of culture, families and values. Technology helps with scale and accuracy. Human insight helps with context and trust. This approach reduces random swiping and focuses on real compatibility.” Some argue that, ultimately, Dil Ka Rishta’s VIP Matchmaking Service is basically the same as the services offered by rishta aunties and is an attempt to appeal to a society that is still wary of digital matchmaking. Nonetheless, Dil Ka Rishta’s online matchmaking algorithm still allows individuals a respite from the trials of dealing with ‘judgy’ rishta aunties.
ARE DYNAMICS ACTUALLY CHANGING?
Many of the bad experiences that leave people justifying their refusal to use these apps in the first place actually come from just how deep-rooted and patriarchal rishta culture is in Pakistani society. When that same mindset is transplanted on to digital platforms without actually solving the issue at its root, it can end up creating spaces where toxic behaviour and misuse can thrive.
Shifa Lodhi, a “humanistic integrative” psychotherapist, has observed a growing number of clients being impacted by their experiences on matchmaking apps. According to Lodhi, “My clients have had bad experiences because they’ve been ghosted [ending all communication without explanation] and this feeds into their abandonment wounds, so they get even more paranoid with the app. Every time it pings, their heart skips a beat, so it’s becoming quite heavy for a lot of people.” She adds that these apps have also dehumanised the entire process for some people. “Yes, the app is the middleman, but it’s also a checklist. So it just becomes a process of constantly checking off things.” Lodhi shares that she’s seen clients rush into marriage through these platforms, under pressure to get married from their families. Many go ahead with the marriage because the person ‘matches their checklist’, only to get divorced later.
While she does agree that these apps give women, especially older or divorced women, more autonomy, she also thinks the issues that plague the Pakistani rishta scene can’t be solved by digitising them, “because the cultural tension is the same at the root, so that’s not changing.” What’s even more interesting — especially when talking about these apps perpetuating the same culture — is how these platforms have recently come on the radar of older Pakistani women, who are often against innovations to the rishta process. Aliya observes, “I think these apps have found their way to aunties, because one auntie recommended it to my mom to help her find a bahu [daughter-in-law].” So, while the apps may be innovating the rishta process, there’s still a long way to go before we root out the deep-seated patriarchy that continues to shape and define Pakistan’s rishta culture. But is that the fault of the apps? Not really. Maybe we should instead ask ourselves about the kind of society we’re creating that’s making it so hard for people to settle down.