Again and again, you find yourself repeating the same age-old mantra: “What can I do, there just aren’t any guys!!”

Of course this is never the correct response, since your mother will always have a manila folder stuffed with biodatas fresh from fob-country at hand to prove you wrong, but that’s irrelevant to this article. If you’re a girl coping with marriage pressure from your parents, your society, and yourself, check out this article.But for now, it’s the guys’ turn to fight back.

Desi girls have always had to deal with societal pressures to get married and start a family early, and this usually results in a great deal of angst between parents and daughters of “marriageable” age – whatever that is. But what’s it like for the guys? Do they really have it as easy as we’d like to believe, or do they enter the race to the altar with similar feelings of trepidation?

“I see all the stuff that girls say, that there’s no guys,” says Sohail Suleman, 28, a software developer from California. “Where are you guys looking? We’re here, I’m right here!”

Suleman says he’s at that age where he’s definitely ready to get married, but he’s having a hard time finding ‘the one.’ “I thought making a decision that I was ready was going to be the hardest part,” he says. “I figured it wouldn’t be very difficult to meet a girl once I was ready to meet a girl.” Unfortunately, he quickly found that he was wrong. The pressure to find someone has been building, but he’s been through every means at his disposal to find someone, to no avail.

But while a lot of guys claim that it’s just as hard for them to find compatible partners as it is for girls – though clearly they must be blind, since we’re all right here – the fact is that the marriage process has its own host of challenges from the male perspective. While desi women usually feel that their looks are the only thing on display when they enter the marriage market, men quickly see that their financial stability is often the only thing that matters.

According to Saud Khader, 26, a wireless data engineer from Atlanta, his parents didn’t even think about getting him married during the two years that he was laid off from work. “They were not ready to get me married because of the financial responsibilities that I’ll have,” he remembers. “But since I’ve gotten a job, it’s like no holds barred. My mom’s all about getting me married.”

Sohail found himself in the same boat not too long ago. “I didn’t have a job for one-and-a-half years while I was in school, and there was no way in hell I was going to bring someone else into the picture,” he says. “When I didn’t have a job, my parents were like, ‘You need a direction, you need to get settled.’ Now they want me to get married. They want grandkids, they want a bahu [daughter-in-law], they want all that stuff.”

So while youth and beauty seem to be the primary factors behind when girls start getting married off, financial security is the biggest issue that surrounds a guy’s marriageability. Desi girls may see their options dwindle as they reach their 30s, but guys can kiss their marriage prospects goodbye if they don’t have a good enough job.

And of course, what constitutes a “good enough job” for desi parents? Ahem-DOCTORS-ahem.

“For desi girls, an MD is like a golden ticket,” says Shakoor Khan, 26, an MBA student in Boston. “They could care less about looks, personality, religiousness, or a connection between the girl and guy. All they care about is the degree and that sickens me.”

And so this unearths a whole new can of worms. Yes ladies, it’s true: guys have their own insecurities and concerns as they enter the marriage meat market too! “Nowadays girls are being so picky,” complains Saud. “They want a guy to be this height, or they want him to be a doctor, or they want him to be a model. No one’s perfect!”

So it seems that while girls are concerned about why guys aren’t ready to settle down as early as they are, in reality men are simply dealing with their own form of matrimonial pressure – making enough money to keep the girl, and her parents, satisfied. Even the all-desirable doctors generally can’t rush into wedded bliss until their late 20s at least, after they’ve finished their grueling residencies.

While guys rush to make money to keep prospective wives and their families happy, they still often resent the financial pressure they face. “You need to find someone you’ll be happy with,” says Saud. “Eventually money is not going to make a difference. The real difference is if he’s going to make you happy.”

Desi men may face an entirely different set of challenges as they begin to contemplate marriage, but they can still relate to the difficulties their female counterparts endure – and more often than not, they do concede that girls have it a lot harder. “I feel bad because my parents worry so much, and they make me feel guilty,” says Sohail. “But I don’t feel like I get pressure from extended family, or from random aunties and uncles as much as my sisters did. It’s a lot tougher for girls.” But Sohail still sees himself in the same boat at times. “I want to settle down too, so I definitely empathize with the girls who ultimately create pressure for themselves. I feel that too.”

So in the end ladies, we can rest assured knowing that guys go through the same sleepless nights we do. OK, maybe “sleepless nights” is pushing it, but either way, matrimonial matters aren’t a piece of cake on either side. While girls deal with aunties breathing down their kurtas at every family gathering, and people constantly whispering about why they’re not hitched yet as soon as they graduate college, guys too find themselves under the social microscope when their net worth and bank balances are analyzed by the entire community. Women fear losing their youth; men fear losing their jobs. Girls worry about getting fat; guys worry about going bald. The same anxieties exist on both sides, just under different facades.

But what baffles me is that both guys and girls claim that it’s impossible to meet people of the opposite sex – clearly there’s some huge misunderstanding going on here, kids. Y’all are out there – I should know, I interviewed all of you! Now go out there and find each other so you can start balding and gaining weight together. And before you know it, you’ll be aunties and uncles hounding your own kids to get hitched. And you’ll have Sarah Aunty to thank.