Where did you meet your other half?

Recently a few young people around me got married. When the wedding invitations arrive, I sometimes get curious and ask:

"How did you two meet?"

The answers turned out to be quite interesting.

One is a friend in China, born in the 1990s, now in their thirties. Their parents started to worry, so friends introduced friends, someone's child got to know someone else's child, and a meeting was arranged.

In short: a matchmade introduction.

Another is in Malaysia, also born in the 1990s, towards the late end. When I asked how she met her husband, she said:

A dating app.

My first reaction was: wow, so these dating apps really can find true love, all the way to marriage. 😂

Then I also asked my colleagues.

Many of our colleagues are Malay, and quite a lot of those aged around 24 or 25 to 34 are already married. After asking around, I noticed another interesting pattern:

Many of their spouses were people they'd known since secondary school.

Some met in secondary school and dated all the way through. Some were friends back then and, after some twists and turns, ended up together.

Thinking about it later, this may have to do with culture, religion, and the social circles they grew up in. For some people, secondary school, family, the community and religious activities are the most stable circles, the ones where they meet people most often when young, so their other half showed up in that circle very early.

That's when I realised that where we meet our other half may never have been just "luck".

The office, the campus, then the app

I was born in the 1980s. Many of my friends also met their partners while studying.

Secondary school, college, university: classmates, seniors, juniors, or friends of friends. Because around the age of twenty, the place where we met the most new people was campus.

Then I asked my parents.

Many in their generation actually met at work.

Think about it a bit more and it makes sense.

Those born in the 1960s and 1970s grew up during Malaysia's rapid urbanisation. Many young people left kampungs and small towns to work in the cities. In 1970, only about 28% of Malaysians lived in urban areas; by 1991, it was more than half.

So factories, offices and banks back then weren't just places to work. They were young people's main social network.

Wherever people gather, romance is more likely to happen.

For my generation, more and more people went to college and university, studying for longer, so campus became the new social centre.

And today, the scene has changed again.

Cities are bigger, and work is more scattered. Some people are at small companies, some freelance, some work from home. Your chances of meeting strangers in real life every day may not be any higher than before.

So what dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel do is, at heart, not that different from friends introducing friends in the old days.

It's just that the algorithm used to be your auntie.

"My friend has a lovely daughter. Want to meet her?"

Now software does the matching for you. 😂

China is even more interesting.

On one hand, society as a whole is extremely digital, and young people of course use dating apps and social media to meet people. On the other hand, families are still very involved in marriage.

So today you see a very particular combination:

A highly digital era that still keeps traditional matchmaking.

Love itself hasn't changed

Writing this, I've come to feel that although love seems very personal, it has always been shaped by a lot of things behind it.

Which era you were born in, your culture, your religious background, the schools you went to, the work you do, the people usually around you: all of these slowly decide your social circle.

And your social circle, in turn, largely decides:

Where your other half will show up.

For our parents' generation, perhaps the office.

For our generation, perhaps school.

Some people met theirs back in secondary school.

Some were introduced by friends or family.

And today, some people open an app, swipe a few times, and end up finding the person they'll spend their life with.

Maybe love itself hasn't changed. What changed is that each era, each culture and each way of life brought us to different places to meet that person.

So what about you?

Where did you meet your other half?