All it would've taken for this to not be this vile is to just actually make the protagonist tall, like say 3 cms taller than the love interest and some kind of interesting, sarcastic personality or something and instead of this “I am smitten with you at first sight" bullshit there's still the arranged marriage but they actually grow closer over time due to getting to know each other.

But nooo, can't have interesting relationships or dynamics and an actual romance plot that credibly unfolds because then the permavirgin author can't self-insert any more and dream about one day prince charming appearing out of nowhere for no good reason.

This is crippleware as a feature. They are actually purposefully making characters entirely hollow and uninteresting for maximum self-insertion purposes. The day that writers go out of their way to make characters in fiction as uninteresting as possible, unbelievable.