Rishta in London

Reading a London profile properly

London is not one city: name the borough

The single least useful word on a London profile is London. Ilford to Hounslow is well over an hour by car and closer to ninety minutes on public transport across the middle of the city. Croydon to Walthamstow is the same. A family in East Ham and a family in Harrow are in the same city on paper and in different worlds in practice, and a proposal arranged without anybody thinking about that produces a bride who sees her mother once a month instead of twice a week.

So write the borough and the area, not the city. Ilford, Tooting, Hounslow, Croydon, East Ham, Walthamstow, Edmonton — one word that tells a reader where you actually are. If you are willing to move across London or out of it, say so in your preferences, because a reader will otherwise assume you are not. And if you are looking, read the area field before you read anything else; it will save you the proposal that collapses at the point where somebody has to move.

In practice London works as three or four pools. The eastern one runs from Walthamstow and Leyton through Ilford, Seven Kings and Goodmayes out into Barking, Dagenham, Romford and across into Essex, and it is the largest Pakistani pool in the country outside Birmingham. The western one runs Hounslow, Feltham, Hayes, Southall and Acton and continues straight out to Slough, Reading, High Wycombe and the Thames Valley. The southern one is Tooting, Balham, Streatham, Mitcham, Thornton Heath and Croydon, reaching down into Surrey and Kent. North London is Edmonton, Tottenham, Wood Green and Harrow, and tends to look towards Luton and Hertfordshire. Search your own pool properly before you search the whole city, and then search the commuter towns, because for a London family they are often nearer than the far side of the Underground map.

Where will you live, and will you leave London?

Every page on this site asks where a couple will live. In London it is the question, because the housing arithmetic here is harder than anywhere else in Britain and it dictates the first five years of a marriage.

Be plain about the starting position. Most couples marrying in London begin in the family home, not out of custom but because a deposit on a London house is beyond an ordinary salary, and they stay there longer than couples anywhere else on this site. That is a perfectly workable arrangement and millions of people have been happy in it. What is not workable is a bride who was led to expect a flat of her own arriving to a shared bedroom in a house with five adults in it. Say it exactly as it is: which house, who else lives in it, which room would be theirs, whether there is a second reception room or any private space at all, and whether there is a realistic plan and timescale for moving out or whether the honest answer is not for some years.

Then ask the renting question, because London families often skip it. If the couple intend to rent, on whose income, in which area, and what happens when the rent rises or the tenancy ends? Renting in London is not a staging post to ownership the way it is in Huddersfield, and a couple renting on one salary with a baby coming is a situation that needs discussing before the nikah and not after.

And then the question that decides more London marriages than any other: will you leave London? A great many couples do. They move out to Romford, Ilford's further edges, Grays and Basildon in Essex, Dartford and Gravesend in Kent, Luton, Slough, Milton Keynes, Watford, Peterborough or Birmingham, because the same money buys a house instead of a flat. Moving is often the right decision, and it is also the one that takes a young woman away from her mother and her sisters. Settle it as a couple and with both sets of parents before the marriage: are we staying in London whatever it costs, or are we leaving within a few years, and does everybody understand what that means for seeing family. One sentence in the preferences field — willing to move out of London, or looking to stay in east London near family — does more work than any filter on this site.

Born and raised here, or raised in Pakistan

This is the most commonly stated preference on London profiles and the one most often expressed badly. Families write that they want someone born and raised here, or they say they would prefer a match from back home, and both are legitimate positions held for real reasons. What is not acceptable is the vocabulary that has grown up around it. The slang words British Asians use for someone newly arrived are insults, they are used to mock people for an accent and a dress sense, and no family that uses them about a prospective son or daughter-in-law is in a fit state to be arranging a marriage. Say raised in Pakistan, or UK-raised, and leave it there.

With the language settled, the substance is worth taking seriously, because the adjustment is real. Someone raised in Pakistan and marrying into a London household will usually be more fluent in Urdu or Punjabi than in English, may have qualifications that do not convert here, will need to find work in a market that does not recognise their experience, and will be dependent on their spouse's family for a period in a way that is uncomfortable for an adult. Someone raised here expects a degree of independence that a family in Pakistan may not have anticipated — a job, a bank account, driving, friendships, an opinion about where to live. Neither set of expectations is wrong. They simply need to be laid side by side before the nikah.

So ask the concrete things. What language will be spoken at home, and can the incoming spouse and the in-laws actually converse. What will they do for work here, realistically, in the first two years, and is anyone helping with that. Will they study or retrain, and who pays. Who will they know in this country apart from the household they have married into, which is the loneliest part of the whole business and the one nobody plans for. How much will be sent home, and is that agreed. And if the British side is the woman, has anybody asked whether she is content to carry the household financially while her husband establishes himself, because that is frequently how it works out for the first few years.

For what it is worth, the UK-to-Pakistan marriage is the commonest search on this whole site and an enormous number of them are excellent marriages. They work when both sides said the hard things out loud beforehand and nobody was sold a picture of London that does not exist.

After the number is released: what happens next

We introduce, and then we step back. That is the design, and it means there is a moment — the moment a WhatsApp request is accepted — where this site hands the whole thing over to two families. Nobody explains what to do at that point, so here it is.

First, who talks. In the ordinary way the two families speak first, elder to elder, and the young people talk afterwards with everybody's knowledge. Some families prefer the two to speak first and then bring the elders in. Either is fine; what matters is that it is agreed rather than assumed, because the commonest mistake is a young man ringing a girl directly the same evening before either set of parents has heard a word, which starts the whole thing on the wrong footing however good his intentions.

Second, the pace. A few conversations over two or three weeks, with the families involved, is a sensible rhythm. What is not sensible, and what a number released through this site is not for, is a private relationship conducted nightly over WhatsApp for six months with nobody else aware of it. That is not a rishta. If you find yourselves hiding the volume of contact from your own parents, stop and bring them in.

Third, the decision. Say yes or no within a few weeks, and say it to the family rather than going silent. Going quiet is the single most resented thing in this entire process, and it is also completely unnecessary — a short, warm, final message costs nothing: we have thought about it carefully and it is not the right match, we wish your family well. No reasons are owed. A family that argues with a no, or keeps ringing after one, has told you something useful about itself.

Fourth, if it goes wrong. You can stop replying, block the number on your phone, and if someone will not leave you alone, report it to us at the complaints address in the footer, which is read by a person. An account that behaves badly towards one family is almost always doing it to several. And remember what the token system is for: a number request costs one connection token and it is refunded in full if the other side declines, so there is no penalty for being careful and no reward for spraying requests at strangers.

The photograph you were trusted with

When a member accepts your photo request, they have not published a picture. They have handed one specific family one specific photograph on the understanding that it goes no further. In a city this connected, and with everybody carrying a camera and six WhatsApp groups, it is worth saying exactly what that means.

Do not screenshot it. Do not forward it to a cousin for a second opinion, or to a group of friends, or to an aunt in Karachi. Do not save it and keep it after the proposal has ended. Do not show it around at a wedding. Do not put it anywhere near social media, and do not go looking for that person on Instagram either, because searching out someone's private accounts after seeing one picture is not due diligence, it is prying. If people in your family genuinely need to see the photograph in order to advise — and often the mother does — look at it together on one phone and leave it there.

The reason is not squeamishness. A woman's photograph circulating in a community without her permission does her real and lasting harm, and the fear of exactly that is why so many good families will not put a daughter on a matrimonial site at all. The locked photograph on this site is the promise that persuaded them. Every person who forwards one makes that promise worth less for everybody's daughter, including their own.

The same applies to the rest of it. The biodata you were shown is not yours to pass on. The divorce somebody disclosed to you in confidence is not a story to repeat. A declined proposal is not gossip, and the family that declined you is entitled to have that forgotten. Discretion is not an optional courtesy in this business; it is the whole basis on which families are willing to take part at all.