Your parents know what’s best for you. Even when it comes to marriage?

Pratibha Poonia’s online marriage profile didn’t mention any hobbies, likes or dislikes, nor did it include any one-line zingers or hints about her personality. In fact, the information was as straightforward as it could be: 26 years old, 5 feet 5 inches, education history — including her bachelor’s and master’s degrees — and facts about her parents and her unmarried brother.

She had agreed to set up the profile, albeit begrudgingly, she told me over the phone in January, when I was visiting India. Pratibha, my cousin, confessed she didn’t feel entirely ready at first but after some nagging and pestering from her family, she warmed up to the idea.

Her uncle, my father, Raj Poonia, undertook the responsibility of finding the perfect match for her.

“My mom and dad had complete faith in my uncle,” she conveyed to me in Hindi. Pratibha grew up in a small village in Rajasthan, before moving to Pilani, a college town a few hours away.

After bumping into a few proverbial frogs, Pratibha, through an orthodox process with a lot of help from her parents and extended family, found her Prince Charming.

In India, home to more than 1.41 billion people, more than 90% of marriages are arranged. On her path to marriage, Pratibha had agency to make her own choices, signaling the modernization of an age-old custom.

This modern way allows the potential bride and groom to get to know each other before committing to spending their lives together, while families still retain plenty of say — as opposed to the orthodox approach, where families make all the choices without much input from the pair actually entering the union. Of course, Pratibha’s story is her own, and the degree of independence to make these types of personal choices during the process of arranging a marriage varies from union to union.

Pockets of cultures around the world take part in this type of matchmaking but the average American still perceives this idea as very traditional, said Dr. Brian Willoughby, professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University and a fellow at the Wheatley Institute. They typically view it as, “Our moms and dads get together, figure out all the details and let us know when to show up for the wedding,” but it is more involved than this, said Willoughby.

Apart from staged television productions like the “The Bachelor” franchise, arranged marriages don’t really show up in the Western pop culture bubble. There are always folks who’ve seen an odd Indian movie or two, and in those cases “the depictions of marriage in Bollywood heavily lean into the Western idea of love,” the professor said. But love doesn’t entirely define a contemporary arranged marriage, he added.

Shows like the four-season “Indian Matchmaking” have attempted to peel back the curtain. Smriti Mundhra, the creator, told the Deseret News last year she set out to make an academic and anthropological documentary series. “We’re not completely creating a false environment and storylines, and drafting them on to people. ... It’s still rooted in reality,” said Mundhra, who also produced “Jewish Matchmaking.” She also doesn’t think this phenomenon is too far-fetched for Americans to understand. “The idea of navigating tradition and a modern world when it comes to marriage and relationships is not unique to Indian culture,” she said.

Still, as Willoughby agrees, it’s easy to conflate arranged marriages with forced marriages that imply a lack of consent.

Pratibha knows many women who went through this process, and this guided her thinking on the type of man she wanted to marry. Someone who accepts and learns to love her family, as she would his. Someone who is well-read and doesn’t get bogged down by traditions she views as regressive, like imposing restrictions on clothing. She was open to settling abroad as long as the groom’s family lived in India, giving her, and him, an excuse to keep visiting home. For her, money wasn’t everything.

Together, Pratibha and Raj created the online profile on Shaddi.com — an online wedding website with a clientele sprawling across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States — and paid roughly $45 for a monthly subscription. These websites are an upgrade from the matrimony section in local and national newspapers in India.

Once the profile was live, the requests started rolling in, and Raj and Pratibha began shortlisting the ones who caught their eye.

A prospective groom, settled in Canada and from the neighboring state of Punjab, came to their attention. Even though his family background was respectable, his social media posts included too many bottles of alcohol for Pratibha’s liking. She questioned the future she could have with him since her more reserved upbringing was at odds with his flashy persona.

Raj pushed back, justifying that 21st-century men, especially businessmen types, live this sort of lifestyle, but she stuck to her morals. “I am not that bold. I couldn’t accept those things and live with him,” she said.

Another man, who lived close to Pratibha’s hometown, popped up on her radar, “but we quickly found out he was a fraud,” she said. Pratibha talked to him for two weeks straight and felt perplexed: Was someone feeding him the words? Why did it feel like he was trying to avoid meeting her?

Her family also began to see the hole in his story and rejected him as a match.

Willoughby said he sees two benefits of arranged marriages: an elevated level of familial support and multiple perspectives on a potential choice.

The extended family in the Indian culture not only offers verbal reassurances but also pools financial resources and social connections to help a young couple establish themselves, and this involvement is evident in the courtship process as well, the professor said.

This can “facilitate better decision-making around a spouse, especially in modern arranged marriages, where brides and grooms oftentimes have a lot of say in the process, as opposed to a lot of Western marriages where you could argue that a lot of the decisions to marry are more impulsive, emotional and less based on rational choice,” said Willoughby.

Another contrast is that in Western marriages, parents don’t hold as much sway, he added. But the professor cautioned that some more traditional arranged marriages offer “very little choice for the bride and groom” — who may feel less engaged and committed to the process — and may be more “male-centric,” both of which can create an unhealthy power dynamic.

He said such matrimonial setups can turn into constraint commitments, where a couple feels bound to remain together because of financial considerations, children or societal pressures, despite stark differences. “The divorce rate probably is low, but unhappiness and satisfaction might also be a little bit lower,” he said.

Scholars expected a decline in this tradition but instead, they’ve observed a Westernization, where love plays a supporting, if not leading role, Willoughby said. The couple also has more agency before making a commitment. The average age for a woman to get married in India was 19.3 years in 1990. It increased to 22.3 years in 2018, as women opt to go to university, get degrees and even work.

Like every other girl, Pratibha met her fair share of unsuitable men.

“Then Nitin came into my life,” she said, chuckling.

Pratibha was mesmerized by Nitin Hooda, 27. “His way of talking, his family values ... it all matched perfectly!” she marveled. Her uncle found him impressive, too, so she told him to visit the boy’s family and learn more.

Raj traveled from New Delhi to Jaipur, a four-hour drive, to see for himself if the man, and his family, were right for Pratibha. Some other family members tagged along.

Pratibha laughs while recalling the visit, where Raj snooped through every corner of the house, including the bathrooms. “You get to know what kind of person someone is just by looking at how they keep their house,” she said.

After the initial meeting, Raj advised Pratibha to consider Nitin. “The boy was polite and led a very simple life. I thought he was dedicated to his work and going to the gym,” the uncle recalled. “He didn’t eat junk food and stayed away from drinking. I told Pratibha if she found him good-looking, she should go ahead.”

Seeing Raj’s happy face, Pratibha agreed to see it through. But she didn’t expect her first encounter with Nitin to go so poorly.

His parents and a few other relatives came to the house she grew up in. Since all her clothes were in her apartment in town, she threw on what she could find: A pair of palazzo pants with a light peach kurta, a long shirt, and a dusty orange jacket on top.

“You won’t believe the kind of things his family asked me,” she said, laughing. They asked what she enjoyed eating. “I told them I loved pizza,” she recalled blurting out.

Other pointed questions included what she liked wearing and what her hobbies were. They told her Nitin didn’t enjoy traveling much or going to the movies, but she quipped back, “He is the one who doesn’t like it but I do.” All this while Nitin, who had already rejected nine girls, remained silent.

Pratibha’s parents, cousins, uncles and aunties felt stressed, she said. They thought the marriage proposal would fall apart because of Pratibha’s over-the-top honest and strange answers, Raj admitted to me. She justified her behavior by saying her dislike for anything would not stop him, declaring, “We are getting married, not striking a deal of some kind where you have to follow a list of rules.”

Nitin might have soured, but his parents and sister felt positive about her. “They liked my bold answers,” Pratibha said. The boy had later confessed he initially perceived her as too talkative and didn’t like the clothes she wore that day, which didn’t shock her.

Pratibha and Nitin got a chance to talk alone after the first, slightly strange encounter. This time, they met at a cafe without any chaperones. She positioned herself like an open book while reserving her own pressing questions for later. Raj had already told her what he thought of the boy at great length, and her curiosity was satisfied for the time being.

“I trusted my family. They have more knowledge and life experience than me. So, I knew their decisions came after careful consideration.” Pratibha said. “You also feel shy talking to a boy in front of your elders,” she added.

To her surprise, Nitin was chatty and talked about his work and college days before blurting out he liked her. Nitin had already inquired about Pratibha behind her back, only to receive “a positive review,” and a confirmation about her single status, with no history of big flings. This investigative tactic is pretty common, she said.

When he offered to drop her home, she joked, “That’s good, I don’t want to spend money on a cab.” Afterward, he spoke to his sister to help him formalize things with Pratibha.

The next day, Nitin told Pratibha it was a big yes from him but Pratibha wasn’t as forthcoming. “I told him I would tell my parents first, not him,” she said despite knowing in her heart she liked him too.

The families talked it out and greenlighted their marriage, all the while Pratibha and Nitin began falling in love with each other. After a pre-engagement ceremony, she felt more comfortable spending time with him. They would take long drives, eat out and continue to get to know each other. The pair also began shopping for jewelry and clothes for their wedding, a task typically left up to the parents.

From start to finish, “I didn’t feel like this was an arranged marriage,” Pratibha told me.

Within six months of meeting each other, they tied the knot. It’s been nearly two years since their wedding day. If she’s learned one thing it’s that whether it’s a love or an arranged marriage, compromise is vital.

“If you’re too stubborn, or don’t want to adjust,” Pratibha said, “then the marriage can be bound to fail.”