a word on the "shidduch crisis"
First off, dating sucks. Regular Western dating sucks and frum dating sucks. Western dating involves a lot of dinners, going out, hanging out, living together and wondering what's going on and living in a limbo that doesn't mean anything until you're in a different age range. Shitty movies like He's Just Not That Into You get made. In my darkest moments, I reacted against Western dating with a full embracing of frum dating. Hell, I think I wanted to convert simply so I could make things easier on myself. I am now a frum Jew because I love Judaism and all it entails (or most of what it entails) but there was a time when I thought "I will go completely frum and buy every bit of bullshit that Aish dishes out and live in Bnei Barak and study Torah all the time and never own a television or go to the movies again and that will totally make me desirable to this really hot Sephardic girl that lives in my neighborhood and looks like Salma Hayak"
And I was actually even worse than that. I would think about how life would be so much easier under the old rules where parents set up their kids and everyone got married at 12. I even had a great justification for that as you don't really know who you are until you're 23 so you might as well let someone else determine your personality in its developing stage and adolestcents are awful so the marriage can only get better at the seven year mark because only then are you two semi-decent human beings.
Frum dating isn't that stark. But it's pretty bad.
In my more sardonic or pithy moods, I would say that Frum dating is like Western dating except it's much much harder to get laid.
But there are more problems. And this leads to the manufactured "Shidduch Crisis" that spawns a million dating profiles and shabbatons and really awful singles events where all the women try to dumb themselves down and all the men try to pretend to wealth and everyone leaves feeling like they were trapped in the most superficial nightmare around. The "Shidduch Crisis" is a situation whereby everyone in the Jewish community who is single feels like they shouldn't be single and rather than admitting that dating is hard and difficult, everyone thinks of ways of "fixing" it.
They give speeches like "don't be so picky. Just grab one and get married". THey give inspirational talks. They smugly talk about how you shouldn't have boyfriends or girlfriends because that's just childish.
The fact of the matter is that most Orthodox Jewish education and interaction is childish. The year in Israel, the bais yaakov schools, the yeshivot, the convention of never eating with people of a different gender who aren't related - these are all supposed to make people "serious" about marriage but the only thing these conventions do is to create a society where people have the emotional maturity of 15 year olds well into their 30s.
So these people stay away from the opposite gender and rely on rabbis and rebbetzins to tell them what women think or what boys are like. Of course, if the rabbi or the rebbetzin is pushing for gender separation in extremis than he or she doesn't know shit about the opposite gender and is going on generalized assumptions. So it's all the blind leading the blind over the precipice.
But back to the "shidduch crisis." The "shidduch crisis" may or may not have some kind of importance and it certainly seems pretty terrible when you are single but most of the "solutions" exacerbate it.
Dating is hard. We're all looking for someone that can appreciate us for our faults and recognize our virtues. SOmeone to see through our bullshit but is still crazy about us. Someone that can make us into the best possible version of ourselves. Oh hell, just someone that we can have fun with even if we are doing things that we don't particularly want to do in the first place (bowling, pool, ice skating, opera, poetry readings - oh G-d those fucking poetry readings) and we can't do that if we aren't honest. NOt unless we get very very lucky.
But honesty is the key. In order to find a healthy relationship, you have to be honest. YOu have to be honest with yourself and your identity. You have to be honest with the other person. You have to risk some amount of vulnerability.
Yet, all of the Shidduch Crisis people create a dynamic where you aren't honest. Check out http://www.frumster.com and weep for the blandness of the profiles. If you are in the Orthodox Jewish community you might see people that you know but good luck recognizing them from their profiles (this isn't always the case. I try to be offensive on my profile. Another friend talked about her autobiographical writing which was a surprise to me but an interesting surprise). Or sign up with SawyouatSinai and thrill to the invasive and totally random questions - do you want a television in your house? Where did your father go to school? What do your parents do for a living (this is especially useful if you plan to be a yeshiva bum) and completely bypass any question that might illumine your personality in any shape or form.
And to make matters worse, people who should know better are setting up other people on dates. Because someone (it's not Torah and i doubt that it's gemara and I'm pretty sure that none of the great rabbeim spouted this meshuggas) said that when you introduce three couples to each other, your place in Heaven is assured. Unless of course you're setting up gay people. Then you're a wanton sinner who doesn't know that gay couples should give each other hand jobs under the table and make speeches about "choking on their salami".
My worst date was a shidduch date. You would think that the break up date with Nanda would have dropped Ann M. off the Worst Date of my Life standing (crush,year and a half of calling,asked out,really nervous,end) but my friend Zach went and set me up with the most depressing woman in the history of depressing women. He did it because we are both in our 30s and both college educated with Masters. Only her Masters was on bulimia. ANd we talked about suicide for the first ten minutes. And she was saying nothing. And I was trying to keep myself interested but I couldn't. I still feel that part of me is in Starbucks listening to that woman say "oh" in a very sad voice.
In essence, dating sucks. And when you date, you only have a chance of finding someone that you can spend the rest of your life with if you do it with a modicum of honesty. And this kind of honesty isn't something that you can arrive at without effort. You might just have to go out with several people before you KNOW what you can stand and what you can't. You might have to go on a hundred more dates before you are good at expressing this person that you've become. And then you have to find someone else who is also honest. Or honest enough. There's always a mixture. You still have to put your best foot forward because first dates are advertising and job interviews more than dates.
Shidduch dating emphasizes lying and hiding. You have to lie to yourself and your frumster profile to get anyone interested in you - so sayeth the rebbetzin. Cast as wide a net as possible and attract no one because everyone could be interested in something. Then go on these dates where you hide yourself.
This is all just a lot of time wasting. Instead of going out on dates with people that actually might be interestd in you, waste your time on shidduch dates set up by people who don't really know either of you but just want to do the setup. Or go by the frumster profile which says nothing but might hide some true awesomeness (but usually doesn't).
Going out and being honest is no guarantee that anything will work out. Hell, I've known women that would be perfect for me if they weren't allergic to cats. I've met others who seemed pretty cool and I wanted to go out again but they weren't feeling it. It happens. But at least this is a struggle in the right direction. Playing it safe is not going to get you anywhere and the shidduch crisis zealots would have us all play it safe - thus exacerbating the "shidduch crisis" to the point where you can remove the quotes.
And I was actually even worse than that. I would think about how life would be so much easier under the old rules where parents set up their kids and everyone got married at 12. I even had a great justification for that as you don't really know who you are until you're 23 so you might as well let someone else determine your personality in its developing stage and adolestcents are awful so the marriage can only get better at the seven year mark because only then are you two semi-decent human beings.
Frum dating isn't that stark. But it's pretty bad.
In my more sardonic or pithy moods, I would say that Frum dating is like Western dating except it's much much harder to get laid.
But there are more problems. And this leads to the manufactured "Shidduch Crisis" that spawns a million dating profiles and shabbatons and really awful singles events where all the women try to dumb themselves down and all the men try to pretend to wealth and everyone leaves feeling like they were trapped in the most superficial nightmare around. The "Shidduch Crisis" is a situation whereby everyone in the Jewish community who is single feels like they shouldn't be single and rather than admitting that dating is hard and difficult, everyone thinks of ways of "fixing" it.
They give speeches like "don't be so picky. Just grab one and get married". THey give inspirational talks. They smugly talk about how you shouldn't have boyfriends or girlfriends because that's just childish.
The fact of the matter is that most Orthodox Jewish education and interaction is childish. The year in Israel, the bais yaakov schools, the yeshivot, the convention of never eating with people of a different gender who aren't related - these are all supposed to make people "serious" about marriage but the only thing these conventions do is to create a society where people have the emotional maturity of 15 year olds well into their 30s.
So these people stay away from the opposite gender and rely on rabbis and rebbetzins to tell them what women think or what boys are like. Of course, if the rabbi or the rebbetzin is pushing for gender separation in extremis than he or she doesn't know shit about the opposite gender and is going on generalized assumptions. So it's all the blind leading the blind over the precipice.
But back to the "shidduch crisis." The "shidduch crisis" may or may not have some kind of importance and it certainly seems pretty terrible when you are single but most of the "solutions" exacerbate it.
Dating is hard. We're all looking for someone that can appreciate us for our faults and recognize our virtues. SOmeone to see through our bullshit but is still crazy about us. Someone that can make us into the best possible version of ourselves. Oh hell, just someone that we can have fun with even if we are doing things that we don't particularly want to do in the first place (bowling, pool, ice skating, opera, poetry readings - oh G-d those fucking poetry readings) and we can't do that if we aren't honest. NOt unless we get very very lucky.
But honesty is the key. In order to find a healthy relationship, you have to be honest. YOu have to be honest with yourself and your identity. You have to be honest with the other person. You have to risk some amount of vulnerability.
Yet, all of the Shidduch Crisis people create a dynamic where you aren't honest. Check out http://www.frumster.com and weep for the blandness of the profiles. If you are in the Orthodox Jewish community you might see people that you know but good luck recognizing them from their profiles (this isn't always the case. I try to be offensive on my profile. Another friend talked about her autobiographical writing which was a surprise to me but an interesting surprise). Or sign up with SawyouatSinai and thrill to the invasive and totally random questions - do you want a television in your house? Where did your father go to school? What do your parents do for a living (this is especially useful if you plan to be a yeshiva bum) and completely bypass any question that might illumine your personality in any shape or form.
And to make matters worse, people who should know better are setting up other people on dates. Because someone (it's not Torah and i doubt that it's gemara and I'm pretty sure that none of the great rabbeim spouted this meshuggas) said that when you introduce three couples to each other, your place in Heaven is assured. Unless of course you're setting up gay people. Then you're a wanton sinner who doesn't know that gay couples should give each other hand jobs under the table and make speeches about "choking on their salami".
My worst date was a shidduch date. You would think that the break up date with Nanda would have dropped Ann M. off the Worst Date of my Life standing (crush,year and a half of calling,asked out,really nervous,end) but my friend Zach went and set me up with the most depressing woman in the history of depressing women. He did it because we are both in our 30s and both college educated with Masters. Only her Masters was on bulimia. ANd we talked about suicide for the first ten minutes. And she was saying nothing. And I was trying to keep myself interested but I couldn't. I still feel that part of me is in Starbucks listening to that woman say "oh" in a very sad voice.
In essence, dating sucks. And when you date, you only have a chance of finding someone that you can spend the rest of your life with if you do it with a modicum of honesty. And this kind of honesty isn't something that you can arrive at without effort. You might just have to go out with several people before you KNOW what you can stand and what you can't. You might have to go on a hundred more dates before you are good at expressing this person that you've become. And then you have to find someone else who is also honest. Or honest enough. There's always a mixture. You still have to put your best foot forward because first dates are advertising and job interviews more than dates.
Shidduch dating emphasizes lying and hiding. You have to lie to yourself and your frumster profile to get anyone interested in you - so sayeth the rebbetzin. Cast as wide a net as possible and attract no one because everyone could be interested in something. Then go on these dates where you hide yourself.
This is all just a lot of time wasting. Instead of going out on dates with people that actually might be interestd in you, waste your time on shidduch dates set up by people who don't really know either of you but just want to do the setup. Or go by the frumster profile which says nothing but might hide some true awesomeness (but usually doesn't).
Going out and being honest is no guarantee that anything will work out. Hell, I've known women that would be perfect for me if they weren't allergic to cats. I've met others who seemed pretty cool and I wanted to go out again but they weren't feeling it. It happens. But at least this is a struggle in the right direction. Playing it safe is not going to get you anywhere and the shidduch crisis zealots would have us all play it safe - thus exacerbating the "shidduch crisis" to the point where you can remove the quotes.