30M- What do you value more in AM?

To give the context, I am a guy who just turned 30, currently employed in the central government in Delhi. Also, working on some side hustle to augment my income. All physical and other attributes are good.

So, I have been talking to marriage prospects for the past 3 months. What baffles me is that people are too concerned about income, caste, community, property, practicality, what not. For me, most of these traditional things don't really matter much except financial stability. The love and the connection part is what matters to me. Like you have to spend your whole life with a person and that is no joke.

I have said no to multiple prospects because I want to marry someone not because of these useless criteria but because I want to share our good times and bad times together. To have someone to look forward to coming home to. Someone I'd want to listen to, to talk to, to just enjoy spending time with. But the girls I have talked to or met are just so stiff. The families are so stiff that there is absolutely no connection. No one is really worried about the love and the compatibility part. I see so many people miserable in marriage, just because they get married to someone that fulfills their pseudo criteria and not to someone they really feel a connection with.

Of course situations change, people change but I believe that if both the partners sync closely in emotional, intellectual and maturity sense, the chances of spending a happy life increase by a lot.

Now, I know why our parents are fixated on this window shopping of groom/bride but why are guys/girls our age are doing the same thing. To people our age, I'd love to know your reasoning. What is it that you value in a marriage? Why is it that people have made this process so complicated?