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- author, Yesra Jabin
- position, Journalist
‘I am 35 years old. After a long time, when my engagement ended in April last year, someone suggested me to try my luck by joining Rishta app as only serious people visit Rishta app for marriage.’
‘Following this advice I installed a relationship app. I used this app for five months during which I liked many profiles. When after an initial contact with someone I felt that things could be taken forward, we would exchange phone numbers to get to know each other better.’
“By the way, in the marketing of this app, it is said that Pakistanis do not ‘date’ but get married, but in five months, I found many men on this app who made fun of a serious relationship like marriage.”
‘While looking for a relationship for myself, I encountered at least five men who tried to trick me with their misinformation. But since I am a government employee, I used to do initial screening of every person who wanted to meet me by using their name and phone number, after which I came to know that the people who are showing themselves to be single on the app. They were already married.’
The story was told to the BBC by 35-year-old Haba (pseudonym), who is among hundreds of women in Pakistan who want to determine their future partners through relationship or marriage apps instead of the traditional methods prevalent in society.
In a society like Pakistan, most of the relationships are settled through parents, relatives and women and institutions, but this has changed to some extent in recent years.
Speaking to the BBC, many women who use relationship apps claimed that on these platforms they have also come across married men who not only provide false information about themselves but also seek marriage in various other ways. They also try to trap women.
Women-specific groups on Facebook and other social media platforms often see users discussing similar issues. Many unmarried women talked about opening the pool of lies of such men after becoming an emotional relationship, some women also discussed issues like the presence of their husbands on relationship apps and cheating on them and men using these relationship apps. also talked about using it as a ‘dating app’.
A man had a 17-year-old daughter.
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Talking about her experience on Rishta apps, Haba said, ‘I came to Rishta apps to find a suitable relationship for marriage but found out that although these are relationship apps, many of the men here are only interested in ‘dating’. Had. There were also some who wanted to establish a temporary relationship by giving wrong information.’
“I found five men who expressed seriousness about getting married without revealing that they were already married,” Habba said. I had even met one, while in another case it was later learned that a man who claimed to be single had a 17-year-old daughter of his own. I was very disappointed. I am looking for companionship but men are not getting leisure to play with women’s emotions.’
Recounting one such experience, he said, ‘I openly spoke to a married man on the app and asked why he was pretending to be unmarried while the women on the app were marriageable. They come with the intention of looking for relationships.’
“I said that if I was interested in a relationship or dating, I would go on Bumble or Tinder. Why do I use Muse? To which the man replied, ‘I wish you had found me on Bumble.’
Although the policy of most relationship apps strictly prohibits creating images for relationships using artificial intelligence and using fake identities to fabricate fictional life stories and harassment, women still face such incidents.
The BBC tried to find out about married men hiding their marital lives from hooking up with unmarried women on relationship apps and spoke to one such person.
Arsalan (pseudonym) said that he is unhappy with his married life and that he has separated from his wife, but is not currently divorced.
‘My first marriage was not a good experience and I am not interested in my second marriage. I want to enjoy life, but I was afraid that if I told unmarried women about the end of my first marriage, they might be reluctant to develop any kind of relationship with me.’
Arsalan said that ‘I first created my account on a dating app with this in mind and turned on the ‘travelling’ mode in the app. It was written in my profile that I live outside Pakistan and came here to celebrate holidays, but in reality it was not so.
He said that after some time, he created his profile on dating app as well as Rishta app, but after being informed by a friend, he deleted his account from Rishta app.
What steps are apps taking to prevent such incidents?
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After such unfortunate incidents came to the fore, although most of the dating and relationship apps have introduced many new tools to protect the users, but still such incidents are heard every day.
The BBC contacted such apps operating in Pakistan to find out what they are doing to prevent and prevent the misuse of matrimonial apps by men and how they protect women’s private data. Making safe.
“Our detailed sign-up process on Muz reflects the seriousness and marriage-focused nature of the app, where we ask users about their religious views, marriage intentions, family involvement,” the Muz app said in a written response. And ask questions about married life.’
“Users of the app are asked for their photo and official documents to verify their identity and only verified profiles are given a blue tick,” MsApp says.
He further said that ‘In future, consideration is being given to making verification through government documents mandatory for all consumers in Pakistan.’
In addition, our ‘Guardian’ feature allows users to add a guardian to their profile and engage them in conversations for added security and support. Apart from the technical features we educate our users on how to use the app effectively. Through our social media platforms we collaborate with relationship experts and organize seminars.’
In response to a question, Muz said that it is not possible to tell the number of complaints of misuse of Muz by users, but they have a community team of 30 women who work on complaints of violations of the rules and regulations of the platform. does ‘Through automated and manual methods, if we find that a married man is fooling women, we block his account forever.’
However, the matrimonial app says that the number of such complaints is very few, while six lakh marriages have been done through ‘Maz’ so far.
