Anyone here who decided to stay single and regret this later in life?

Hi Cocos, Does anyone here decide to stay single forever, only to regret the decision when they reach the other side of 40 or so?

I am 32M & employed in the Government Sector, and this is not stereotyping, but it is logical to say that I am surrounded mostly by narrow-minded people who think that settling down before 30 should be the norm. Each and every conversation with them leads to the talk of marriage and I politely talk down the subject citing that I have decided to stay single. It is funny when they mention phrases like "You're well set now", "market for the Govt. Employees", etc while in reality I am still confused over whether this is how I should perpetuate myself (career-wise) for the rest of my life.

Not just my colleagues, but relatives, naatukars and every other fella I see want to only go down the road of "marriage-talks". Whenever someone asks about my marital status, subsequent questions like "why still single?" "Kalyanam alochana oke evde vareyayi"? etc start to flood me. I have reached a point in my patience threshold where I have even started lying (not proud of it) to random strangers that I am married and have a girl child. An Uncle I met on the train journey kept bombarding me with questions about the family and I had to even talk about my imaginary child's school, class, roll number and what not!

The reason why I don't want to get married is because I haven't found any reasons to. Marrying someone just so that one is feeling lonely, FOMO etc are such self-absorbed motives in my opinion.

I am not going to lie, I feel low-key anxious sometimes when I think about the future. But I know that doesn't validate as the "need to get married". Does anyone here changed their mind about marriage in their mid-30s or thereafter? And how's your life now, whether it is single life/family life?