Never too late to live in

The Telegraph, Ananya Sengupta

New Delhi, Sept. 10: Single men above 50 years want to marry. Single women above 50, if ready to seek a partner at all, prefer live-in relationships. This is one reason matchmakers like Natubhai Patel are struggling to find wives for their 50-plus male clients - bachelors, divorcees or widowers. "Single women above 50 don't want to wash clothes or clean houses - most of them are widows and don't want to get trapped in household chores again," Patel, the president of the Ahmedabad-based Anubandh Foundation, one of the country's handful of senior citizen marriage bureaus run by NGOs, said. "The 50-plus women are looking for retired government employees who have pension and a house - they are only seeking financial security and companionship in their old age," Patel added, speaking ahead of a matchmaking event in Delhi this month. In an inversion of the received wisdom about gender roles, many of Patel's male clients balk at live-in relationships, preferring the emotional security of marriage. N.M. Rajeshwari, the president of Thodu Needa, a Hyderabad-based NGO that tries to unite single elderly people, echoed Patel. "Many women who get in touch with us don't want to get married because they don't want any legal entanglements," she said. "They are happy in live-in relationships as they can maintain their independence and also balance the needs of their existing families, consisting of grown-up children and their spouses." One other reason that elderly males struggle to find wives is that far fewer single elderly women are looking for partners at all. Anubandh, for instance, which has held 41 matchmaking sessions across states in its 15-year existence, has 8,802 men on its register but only 982 women. "Of the women, 70 per cent want a live-in relationship to avoid the hassles of marriage," Patel said. Of the 600 over-50 clients registered with Rajeshwari's five-year-old organisation, only about 200 are women. Most of her 150 clients who are seeking a live-in partner are women, Rajeshwari said. It's a trend that prompted Anubandh to start facilitating live-in relationships since 2011, after exclusively promoting marriages in its first 10 years. "We realise that some of the participants may choose to live in for a few years before taking the next step," Patel said. The agencies promoting elderly marriages offer their services free and take care to ensure that the women are not exploited, Patel said. All participants must register by producing valid identity proof and a copy of their divorce papers or the death certificate of their spouse. Patel, a former central government employee, seeks CVs and then organises group meetings. The matches are made through a process similar to speed-dating and personal interactions. Both Patel and Rajeshwari said they wanted more 50-plus women to come forward to seek a partner - whether a husband or a live-in boyfriend. "I think it's society that holds them back. I want to tell single women to seek a companion who will be their friend for life, even if they don't want to marry," Patel said. He listed companionship and sex as the primary reasons the elderly marry, citing how his organisation helped an 83-year-old former professor, who has 15 grandchildren, acquire a 61-year-old bride last year. It has been a tough journey: over 15 years, Patel has aided 95 marriages and 23 live-in relationships. "I want to tell single women that marrying or living in at an older age is not a stigma," Rajeshwari said. "Staying alone can be extremely lonely." V.B. Sharan, 69, a former CRPF commandant who had married at 62 after his first wife's death, offered his own experience as example. "I married because I needed a companion. Today, I have six children, three from each of our previous marriages. I took care of my (current) wife's three children, who were still studying, after we married. Now, we are a happy family." Sharan runs the Senior Citizen Forum, which is helping Patel organise his matchmaking session in Delhi. Patel, however, has a word of caution for the over-50 men seeking matrimony: three such marriages he has organised have ended in divorce. He now counsels the couples in the dos and don'ts. "One of the marriages broke up because of this and I had to speak to the man. Companionship should be the goal," he said. The other two broke up because of property issues and family problems, Patel said. "So, the bottom line is that the elderly too get into similar problems in marriage as the young," he laughed. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160911/jsp/frontpage/story_107594.jsp#.V9vOZ_B961v