Endless options have made finding love harder: Aishwarya Lekshmi on modern dating

Actor Aishwarya Lekshmi opened up about love, dating apps and relationships in a conversation with India Today. The actor, who had recently been seen in the Netflix series #Love, said that while dating offered people more choices, the endless options had also made finding the right person far more confusing.Aishwarya Lekshmi believed modern dating had given people more options, but it had not necessarily made finding love any easier. Speaking about whether endless options on dating apps had made finding love harder, Aishwarya said, “Yeah, I actually think so. Because then you’re confused about which way to go about it. I feel the search is always for that one person who is your person. So, I do feel it’s a lot more confusing now than it was in the older times.”The actor also pointed to the ever-expanding vocabulary around modern relationships, joking about how difficult it could sometimes be to keep up.“We’re very confused about love. We have different terms — situationship, nanoship. Apparently, there’s bingeing. I just heard about it yesterday. I have no clue. I thought bingeing was only for Netflix! But apparently, that’s there for relationships as well,” she said. Aishwarya added that despite all the choices available at the time, the fundamental search remained the same. “I definitely think it’s very confusing now to find your person. These are confusing times that we live in, and the search for that person has become more difficult,” she said. For Aishwarya, her own understanding of love has also changed with time. “Over time, I’ve realised that love is comfort and safety, and being myself in front of another person. Right now, today, it means comfort,” she said. She added, “I think I choose compatibility first. I need to find that comfort from the first conversation onwards — the safety to be myself, to say what I want to say, and still be accepted for who I am. So, I’m team compatibility all the way.”Asked what mattered to her more at the time than it had five years earlier while choosing a partner, Aishwarya once again returned to the idea of emotional safety.“I would go back to someone being a safe space for me. I should be able to become a child in front of them. We should be able to tell each other anything and everything freely, and there should be no judgement. We are free, and free together. I think that matters the most,” she said.She also spoke about how her understanding of friendship within a romantic relationship had deepened over the years. “We grew up listening to Pyaar Dosti Hain. But how important that is has come to my attention of late. I keep seeing that in a lot of my friends who are married and have successful marriages. They are friends first before they are spouses,” Aishwarya said.Interestingly, while the actor had often gravitated towards emotionally intense love stories on screen, her personal preference had become very different.Recalling Mayaanadhi, the second film of her career, Aishwarya said the film had played an important role in shaping her sensibilities as an actor. “I feel it is one of the greatest films ever made, and I love the film, not because I am in it. It also formed my idea of how an artist or an actor should be and what kind of movies we should choose,” she said.She added that she continues to be drawn to love stories rooted in genuine emotions. “I have always gravitated towards very real emotions in a love story. The characters could be great, but if their emotion is real, then I would want to take it up as an actor," she said.Off-screen, however, her choice was much simpler. “As a person, I like happy, easy love stories. I’m done with the intense, painful ones,” she said, adding that while tragic romances might often remain memorable, she personally preferred a happy ending.- Ends