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Teen Talk: To Date or Not to Date…

By Gia Agarwal Email By Gia Agarwal
February 2025
Teen Talk: To Date or Not to Date…

While it is normal (and even encouraged) in mainstream American culture, dating is no bed of roses for desi high schoolers.

February 14th: Valentine’s Day. For most adults, it’s a day of starry-eyed romance with its trappings of hand-written cards, red roses, and dark chocolates. Not so for many teens—especially desi ones. It eerily approaches us brown high schoolers every year like a creature on its hind legs—ready to pounce, attack, and ambush. It is a time of waiting with bated breath and guessing games: “He loves me, he loves me not.”

Add this to the constant drumbeat of schoolwork and assignments—trust me, the pressure is very real. Honestly, if I have to sit through one more melodramatic declaration of love, I will be ready to pounce, attack, and ambush.

But it's not just my personal vendetta against good old V-Day. Since the dawn of time itself (well, the dawn of our time anyway), Valentine’s Day has been the curse that follows us brown kids, and not just because movies paint us to be nerds with no other social skills. Frankly, many of us do have crushes. Many of us do go on dates. Many of us do secretly stalk our future prospects on Instagram (or maybe that's just me!). Regardless, our issue with dating is certainly not that we’re “hard to date.” Instead, it lies with… drumroll please… our parents.

16-year-old Neha Iyer explains: “For Americans, dating is simply the culture.” While our non-Indian friends may be allowed to bring a boyfriend home or speak openly about their first kiss, dating is a big no-no in most Brown households—something to sweep under the carpet and hide when Swati Aunty comes over to tell you how many AP courses her son is taking. It is, in fact, so taboo that if I told my mother I had a boyfriend, I promise you that curtains would be drawn, diyas would be brought out, and there would be a full-on exorcism—desi style.

And yet, as soon as you hit your 25th birthday, suddenly, the same parents and aunties make it a sin to not have a ring on your finger, if not also have a kid on the way. 25-year-old lawyer Rhea Sharma explains, “I definitely feel the pressure to make decisions and put myself out there on the path towards getting married soon, but in my head, I don’t think that I feel ready or [even believe] that I should get married soon.”

This contradiction of not allowing dating but then pressuring children into marrying soon just into their twenties is not only extremely frustrating but also extremely unrealistic. After years of being told to disregard that aspect of your social life, how is anyone supposed to simply know what they’re looking for in a life partner? How is anyone supposed to know what defines their happily ever after?

It’s impossible! But that certainly doesn't stop our parents from forcing us to jump through Indian matchmaking hoops and take notes from the Sima Aunty herself (which all amount to one word: #compromise). But why? What fuels this pressure? Is it simply one more “Indian thing” that we have to come to accept and internally roll our eyes at? Or does this stem from a place of love? A hope for a better future?

TeenTalk_02_02_25.jpgAm I missing out?

Whether intentionally or not, the values our parents instill in us often make us think ten times harder about the whole landscape of dating when compared with our non-Indian peers. While it’s true that many of us Brown teenagers go on dates, it’s also true that many of us decidedly choose not to. Neha explains that, to her, dating as an Indian American teenager is unanimous with overthinking. “Even if it’s a small crush, I always think more into the future. Like: should I really be doing this? Am I about to throw my life away?”

Neha explains that her parents are relatively okay with her dating, to the point where she feels comfortable telling her Mom about her crushes. Yet, she does not necessarily know how they would react if she were to act on those crushes. This constant internal dissecting often makes it hard for her to relate with her American friends. She says, “It's a cultural difference. It can be hard to talk about those struggles to your friend whose boyfriend can just come over for Christmas dinner with the family.”

It’s not just Neha who feels this cultural divide. One sophomore, who chose to be anonymous (let’s call him Arjun), explains that unlike some of his friends, he could never tell his parents about his girlfriend. He says that his parents believe that “dating will distract me.”

Meanwhile, many of us feel that by not dating, we’re missing out on some “great American high school experience.” However, in trying to fill that hole, I think we limit our own happiness and lose the narrative of why we date in the first place. Arjun says “I don’t date simply to have the ‘high school experience.’ I just love my girl.”

For me too, the American high school experience is much more than just dating. It’s a time to laugh, to work hard, to be embarrassing, and to drop gossip with your friends. It is frankly a little stupid to define high school as only being meaningful if you have a boyfriend.

I don’t want to die alone!

While dating in high school is not crucial to being a high schooler, does it have benefits for when we’re older? I mean, let’s be real. Getting married is scary. I mean, what if he wakes up one day and decides that he hates Taco Bell?? *shudders* For me, that would be the end. The possibilities are truly terrifying. Marriage is a huge decision. But does dating in high school help make that decision easier?

On paper, the low-stakes relationships that high school provides make it the perfect place to start figuring out what it is you’re looking for in a life partner. But does it always play out that way? Neha does not necessarily think so. “You don’t really know yourself in high school. Dating is more valuable after you know yourself and, unfortunately, it takes time to know yourself.” She raises a good point. If you don’t fully know yourself, then how can you possibly begin to start knowing somebody else?

Personally, I find that it's easy to forget that we are young and have our whole lives ahead of us. It's easy to view high school as the be-all and end-all when there are so many more experiences we have yet to live through. As much as I would like it to be, we won’t find the answer to our happily-ever-after in high school—in part because what we define to be happily-ever-after is constantly changing, reshaping itself as we get to “know ourselves,” as Neha says. Rhea agrees with me, explaining, “Every year, as I get older, my perspectives on both romantic and platonic relationships shift a little. There are so many changes happening in high school and college that I think who you would date in high school is completely different from who you would date in college and then after graduation.”

Now, that doesn’t mean we should not date at all. After all, we are kids! However, it means we shouldn’t feel pressure to date out of fear of being single and ending up alone. Neha reminds us that college, along with all the independence it provides, is just around the corner.

Devi Vishwakumar, not Lara Jean

Dating is a complicated process, especially when you're Indian American in high school. Whether we date or not, our culture does mean that we may not always fit in with the American standard. Our culture does mean that we’re different. But is that truly such a bad thing? Maybe we should embrace that difference—the annoyingness of it all and also the beauty of it. Maybe instead of trying to be Lara Jean, we should be proud that we are the Devi Vishwakumars of the world.

Though we may forget it sometimes, all of our parents' advice does come from a place of love and their hope that we have a bright future. While they may be wrong in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham-ing us if we come home with a boyfriend, they are right in reminding us that we have so much time ahead of us.


Column host Gia Agarwal is a 10th-grader who, when not crushing it in her advanced writing classes, is out there living every book lover's dream. She can be reached at TeenTalk@Khabar.com.


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