21 February 2011

A Girl Can Get Burnt Playing with Matches

My favourite aspect of the shidduch is that I can completely avoid all the messy parts of dating. I am not very good at rejecting people. I’ve never perfected a good “that was fun but I would rather never see your face again” speech. The shidduch takes care of all that. After the first date you are supposed to tell the shadchan whether you want a second date or not. He then tells the other person. All of that when will he call me, why didn’t he call me bullshit is gone. The shadchan lets everybody know where they stand and nobody has to deal with any confrontations. I used to call it dating for cowards. The shadchan remains the intermediary until both people mutually decide that he is no longer needed. Usually a proposal soon follows since the goal of Jewish dating is marriage. Supposedly.

2 comments:

Travelingrant said...

Yeah, a friend of mine and I were talking about similar things the other day. Our generation especially has grown up with the world being our oyster. What do you want? Where do you want it? Nothing is out of reach. With at least the belief in the ability to do anything, how then do you compromise your dreams for somebody else? Any relationship, and especially a marriage, involves giving up a part of yourself, and that is something that we are finding hard to do.

Though on another, related note, I remember reading a newspaper article about a year ago that mentioned that almost 50% of people getting married didn't expect it to last. To go into your marriage not expecting it to last is just about the craziest thing I have ever heard of.

Mia said...

I've read that 50% of American marriages end in divorce but I can't imagine 50% of people getting married expecting to divorce. I always thought everybody expects it to last.