Frum single females, summarized

Tears came to my eyes when I read this comment on Dov Bear’s blog about single mothers by choice:

You glibly write something about the woman feeling the need to have the baby NOW–as though this is an immediate gratification issue. This woman may be suffering of deep loneliness for YEARS, half destroyed emotionally without partner or child–and now after a kind of imposed infertility, in order not to lose what might be her last opportunity to have a child and be a mother, you imply this behavior to be a selfish whim that needs to be satisfied immediately? In terms of emunah, if a single female is still religious in mid to upper thirties you can never even dream of having a drop of the emunah she has. Also, this decision for a single female to become a mother in this way, even if she goes through with it is heartbreaking. It is not so simple at all. I have not, nor do I personally know who has, but I can only imagine.
anonymous | 07.15.09 – 1:21 pm | #

Emphasis added.

I have decided that I would be happier, and closer to getting married and having children if I had have dated my old friend who is not Jewish this fall, and I think I can’t let another chance like that pass. Like all living things, I need love and I need to give love, and at the moment I have neither.

Saw You At Sinai

Against everything that I believe in, I rejoined Saw You at Sinai, and my gosh. So far, I have gotten matched with the following:
1. A college classmate’s ex-husband. He lives nearby and seems like a nice guy. I never met him in relation to her. But he rejected me. Alas.

2. Brooklyn “modern black hat” guy, the type who doesn’t realize that Art Scroll is biased and doesn’t see that it’s a big deal just to go with the flow even if everyone is wrong.

3. The most average guy on jdate (this is through SYAS, I emphasize): secular, no Jewish education at all, completely clicheed profile (“I like to wear jeans and tuxes, and I like to have fun”), 7 years older, went to a third tier university and works in a generic business job, and on top of everything, he lives hundreds of miles away. I turned him down with a polite note to the shadchan. Two minutes later, I get:

4. Same as above, though slightly better written – this guy is “strong outside and sensitive inside” – except also 11 years older. WTF.

5. A guy who calls twice in one day, a third time the following day, I apologize for being slow for getting back to him in an email but I’ve been busy for concrete reasons, calls a few more times, and then writes a huffy email about how I was blowing him off and closes the match. Okay, I didn’t have to do anything there to discover bad qualities.

6. Four past dates. One of them is someone I may try to talk to again since it’s been awhile and we match up well on paper, and our original date was while I was living much farther away than I am now. But he kind of turns my stomach. That’s a bad sign, right?

7. A few other guys who have both unremarkable educational backgrounds and whose profile are just 2 clicheed sentences long. I’m glad they’re forward about not being so articulate, but writing a decent profile is so relatively easy. You can either spend 100k and 4 years to get a good college degree or you can spend 4 hours writing a lively and original profile, and both can give you the same effect.

On the other hand, I’m talking with a secular guy from jdate who writes extremely well, kept me laughing for an entire 20 minute phone conversation last night (I told him at the beginning of the conversation that I had to get off at a certain time), and has some serious interests in Judaism due to a Livnot trip. Thank you, Livnot! You’re a kiddush hashem.

Wallet pull fake

Frum Satire wrote recently about the wallet pull fake that many women do.

Single most embarrassing dating wallet pull: I had always done the wallet pull as a gesture that I didn’t EXPECT anything from him. First date coffee, and he paid the $2 (and I thanked him of course). On the second date, the guy picked the restaurant without consulting me, it was a really problematic choice and not a good experience. Nonetheless I did the half wallet pull, and he didn’t stop me. Given what was in my wallet, I could ask for separate checks or pay for everything with a credit card, or pay 80% of “my half” (which was about $13). Clearly the last was the worst option, and yet somehow that is what I ended up doing.

Third date was classical music and dinner and cost him about $150, and by then I learned to say Thank you profusely.

Sex and the single girl

I noticed that the post of mine that has gotten the most hits so far is the one about Friends with Benefits, so I will make another post about sex since I’ve been thinking about different approaches to sex in dating.

So far it seems like there are a few different approaches to sex in dating.

1. Shomer negiah, and they really want to touch. In addition to the obvious, you can tell because they ogle your standard-issue knee-high black leather boots, especially as you cross your legs or straighten them. Why have frum girls everywhere adopted such a sexy look.

One guy who was extremely hot by any standards, especially religious standards, told me that he once stayed technically shomer negiah with a date by taking off clothes in front of each other, but he doesn’t do that anymore.

That’s all reassuring. Creepy is when they talk about how difficult it is to be shomer because instantly all these images of wearing baseball hats to strip clubs flood into my mind. (And I know too many such stories.)

When these guys end up no longer being shomer negiah, they tend to become. . .

2. I want to label them impatient, insecure, needy, but that’s only part of it. They’ve missed out, and they want to make sure that they don’t miss out again and can stop feeling abnormal and left out of culture. Long, deep conversations, dates that last forever, talking into the night, randomly connecting, seeing each other as much as possible, seeking connection connection, validation of all those awful dates with nothing. Sex within a week if it seems possible.

3. Gentlemanly for a purpose. They are charming, reserved, respectful, all because they believe it will help them get into your pants. And it will unless you have a high smarm-o-meter. Another way to figure out whether they’re smarming for a purpose is to start conversations about hook-ups. If they have enough experience with them that they seem to feel that they can speak authoritatively, you have your answer about their past. Maybe they’ve changed their ways, but maybe you won’t know until they try to pick up some 27 year old in Beverly Hills while you’re home with your two kids. It’s your risk to take.

4. Gentlemanly, stam. I’ve met this other class of men who is just so old-fashioned, I feel like I’m on Happy Days or Grease (imagined nostalgia for the 1950s). Two feet on the ground. It takes a month of dating for them even to take off their shoes. And it makes sense. When you first start dating you have never even met the person before.

Somehow I want to stay that this fourth stance is the Aristotelian medium and definitely how my and your grandparents were. But really who knows.

A la carte

One of my day school teachers used to talk about a la carte Judaism and halacha: following just what you want and making up the rules, and I agree it’s totally bs to do that, and yet that’s exactly what I seem to be doing.

I’m dating non-observant because I want to get married in time to have kids, and I think kids are more important than observance, if I had to choose only one of the two.

I went through a whole not-feeling-it phase about halacha and I wasn’t doing all that much, but lately I have sincerely wanted to be more observant and yet I’ve trapped myself into these patterns.

So when someone I’ve been on several dates with invites me to his small birthday party (he doesn’t have many friends) starting 15 minutes before shabbat ends, and it’s within walking distance, of course I will go. Not even a question. Since I could even be a little late and go after shabbat is over, but if it’s really important for me to be on time that’s okay too.

If it’s reachable by public transportation and starts 15 minutes before shabbat ends, I hesitate, but would generally go even if I am carrying outside the eruv, though I’m not so happy with that. When he reschedules it because the restaurant was booked to a different location, to start 2 hours before shabbat ends that would no exaggeration take 3-4 hours to reach by public transportation including a 2 mile walk at the end (and it’s also a long drive), and he hasn’t consulted me to see whether I am okay with this, I can’t blame him since clearly I’ve not shown that observance is paramount to me so maybe he didn’t think I needed to think about this. And yet what choice do I have. The whole reason I am dating not-frum people is because I feel like I don’t have a good choice.

Sometimes I think that I’m doing the wrong thing, and then I look around and notice all the women who won’t compromise who either marry observant men who are less smart and less together or don’t marry at all, and think that really the issue is that there aren’t so many good choices.

If I want to date a frum guy, my best choice at the moment appears to be someone with a serious heritable mental illness.

Dating updates

For awhile I felt like my luck had changed and I was incredibly lucky in dating. Now I’m not so sure. My latest dates:

1. The unibomber. Well, not really. He writes wonderful emails, but looks like the unibomber. Our first date I wore the frum uniform: knee-length black skirt (to the knee rather than below, how risque!), cute tights, knee high black fake leather boots. He wore a slightly stained grey sweatshirt and a beard that was not in his online profile. He just moved to my city the day before, but if he couldn’t get properly dressed why not delay for a week.

2. The beautiful neshama. Someone who is attractive, intelligent, well-liked, kind, religious, younger, absolutely the sweetest and most earnest soul, etc. etc., actually likes me. I was amazed. On the date itself we connected so well, finding far more in common than either of us had expected. But the day before the date I discover he has a beautiful neshama in the sense that that mathematician in the movie had a Beautiful Mind. I knew there had to be something wrong. If I were looking just to date, sure. But for life is another issue. Mental illness has the tendency to get worse with age, and he’s already had some disturbing episodes. I may go out on a second date with him. But don’t feel good about it.

3. Prince Charming. Let me just say: charming, attractive people really scare me. This guy is a professional persuader, and he’s good. No wonder he’s slept with so many women. He grew up frum except not really: I understand eating dairy out. He ate dairy out. And meat. And the two together. His brother had a brief bout of religiosity: so frum that he went only on dates with chaperones. Three dates then engagement. Prince Charming rightly told his brother he was crazy to be marrying so quickly. His brother was eating shellfish and pork within 2 months. His mother never wanted to keep a kosher kitchen so after 30 years of marriage decided to buy non-kosher meat, leaving his father no choice. We have a model of bad communication. And even worse stories.

4. The Russian. (Different one than in December.) Grew up going to day school and then NCSY and public high school with a friend of mine, but with him it didn’t stick. Sometimes I feel like we aren’t communicating very well. I’ll say one thing. He’ll say something where I’m not exactly sure the connection to what I said, but as if it directly addressed what I said. Definitely he’s kind-of emotionally repressed: he has incredible intelligence and discipline so has been very successful. But he doesn’t seem to have any intimate friendships. And he seems really to need the intimacy. If I just touch him on the shoulder he smiles and relaxes more than ever.

5. The early/mid-40s divorce whom I’ve not met yet.

6. The antidate antidote. The guy I didn’t want to go on a date with. This guy from a dating site, a classmate of the guy I almost married, has been writing to me on and off for about 5 years: initially I told him that I wore pants and short sleeves so he wouldn’t want to date me. He said I was right, but then came back 3 years later saying his rav told him he was silly not to date women who aren’t yet at the level to wear only skirts. Yet! As if. Eventually he found out I was going to be in his city, so we met. I wore pants and a t-shirt, and we walked around in crummy weather, and didn’t have coffee or anything, hoping to turn him off. I really wanted to like him, but just didn’t. And it made sense when I found out he has lived with his parents for his entire life except 2 years in college dorms. He called me a few times after our date until I sent him an email saying that it was good finally to meet and saying how it was nice to travel but also to be back with my friends and the guy I’ve been on several dates with. So he asked to be set up with a specific friend of mine.

7. The rabid conservative. I dressed in prime Chabad-type style. Not that I have ever had any affiliation with them. I just like the way they dress. At the start of the date I answered my door. He raised his eyebrows and said how nice I looked. I reached inside and turned off the radio and mentioned I’d been listening to something with President Obama. He ranted all the way from my door to his car, including the word “socialism” at least once. I knew by the time he was opening the passenger side door for me that we would not get along. What kind of crank is this? He ranted for another mile, at which point I perhaps unwisely said that I didn’t think the conversation wasn’t going well. He asked if he should turn the car around. Our plan had been to go to the nice Barnes and Noble for a cup of coffee and then walk around in a nice area. He “suddenly remembered” there was another B&N so amended our plan to go to the one in the strip mall. During the ride, we covered two more topics: he has a hobby that people hire him sometimes for simchas, so he talked about how he’s sick of people not paying him in a timely fashion; and how, contrary to popular belief, gay people are perfectly safe and don’t actually attack men in the street so it is safe to go into gay neighborhoods, unlike some yeshivas where he’s heard of bochrim being raped by gay bochrim. After he parked the car he leered at me again and said how nice I looked. He didn’t order anything, so I paid for my own cup of tea.

Latest tales from the dating world.

I read something in the World Jewish Digest a few months ago that women who intermarry do so on average 3 years later than women who marry Jews. And it makes a lot of sense: if women can’t find Jewish men, if they want to have kids with someone around to help them, they have to marry either a woman or a non-Jew.

At the time I read that, it seemed completely hypothetical. Surely Orthodox Jews don’t encounter that dilemma — maybe they go for secular Jews. Now it seems directly relevant. Is Chris my backup? If I don’t find a Jew, is there an age at which I will say that I don’t want to be a single mom and move in with a non-Jew?

Here’s the scorecard:

- Russian: I’ve seen him a total of twice now, date 3 scheduled. I like him, but am slightly sketched out by him. He observes their own interpretation of kashrut, bearing little resemblance to real kashrut. For some reason the only people I meet with this habit are Russians.

- The guy I am seeing. I am on the verge of breaking up with him, but hesitate because I am not sure he wouldn’t be a good fall-back option. How depressing.

- The “no longer frum” yichus guy (i.e., no longer charedi; he’s still basically modern orthodox, though blowing off steam by breaking shabbat, I’m guessing temporarily): we’ve hung out a bit. I assumed that he just wanted to make up for lost time in dating, but the one time we hung out, he bought my coffee and emphasized that he really did want to get married, and he’s never had a secular date at all. I wonder if that means he’s never hugged a girl. I don’t see it, though I do really like him.

- This guy who moved from Israel. I looked back, but didn’t mention him earlier. I’ve known him from my time in yeshiva. He seems to have liked me. When I saw him in Israel last year, I stayed in his roommate’s empty room and for the first time saw him as someone I would like to date, and we had some date-like evenings together. He stayed up to wait for my sherut with me, and very hesitantly put his arm around the bench, and then around me, and it was great. And could picture myself marrying him (I never think such things.) I considered moving to Israel because of him, but the job I could find there was a terrible situation.

When he moved to the US I figured at least that was closer though he isn’t in even reasonable driving distance. I helped him get furniture and look for an apartment, but then he stopped returning phone calls and emails. I gave up, figuring he was dating someone. Over Thanksgiving, I gave him a call on the off-chance that he would want to hear from me. He did and apologized profusely that he got preoccupied with school and then embarrassed. He said he wasn’t seeing anyone, though: just a first date that will be a second. We saw each other and he kept looking at me, and my whole family really liked him. No dating explicitly discussed, but we made plans to see each other a couple times in the next month, and even exchanged a couple phone calls.

So all very promising. Except he has disappeared again. I think he is the most likely match for me, and he can’t even return a phone call or email.

I don’t think it’s a “he’s just not that into me” thing. Not to be conceited, but he definitely is. The whole time he was talking with any of my family members, he was looking at me instead of them. It was incredibly flattering.

Maybe it is a scared of relationships thing — I haven’t asked him for a tally or anything, but while he’s had lots of first dates, I don’t recall him having had any relationships that sounded particularly serious. He’s a very nice guy, but kind-of formal. European-like.

- Not sure if this counts, but there’s a guy across the Atlantic. He was frum, shomer negiah the whole business from 13 to early-30’s, and then just gave it all up last year because he stopped caring, partially because he doesn’t like being looked at as a pity case who always needs family hosts for shabbat meals. We saw each other a few times when he was in town on business, though he’s over there for the foreseeable future. He calls me at least every week, but almost never reaches me. He is excited about me, and of course I love his accent and I also think he’s smart and very considerate (he usually asked to do the dishes when I had him to dinner), but I am not terribly excited about him. The phone conversations often reduce to trading monologues, and are not very interesting, and usually we just end up having the same conversation over and over about how he doesn’t like being a pity case to the frum community and his thoughts about religion and transition out of it, but then his clarification that much of this is because he’s not married. I try not to interrupt, in which case he can talk for 5 minutes — he ends a paragraph and I start to say something and before I do, he goes to something else. His boringness is not for lack of intelligence, perhaps just a lack of imagination.

- Chris told me he loved me and wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and I could kind-of see that because I really enjoy talking with him and value what he says whereas I don’t especially enjoy talking with the guy I am seeing, but then I think about Judaism and how he is just such a gentile and that I just can’t picture so much of it. Still, if the choice is between having children with (1) a husband that I don’t enjoy talking with, (2) no husband, or (3) a non-Jewish husband, there’s not even a question.

He doesn’t have any interest in converting. I sent him the link to Chizuk Emuna, a 16th century sefer written by a Karaite against Christianity, in case it made a difference for him, but I assume it won’t.

But for some reason he is the only one that I have really felt excited about spending time with lately. And it is ironic that the only person who has ever said that he knows that he wants to marry me isn’t Jewish.

- My gentile neighbor, added just to complete the frustration. We’ve hung out a bit, played with his pets, and I’ve had him to a shabbat meal, and the more time I spend with him, the more good things I notice about him. For instance, he is really very smart. Don’t know if he would want to date me, but he did stop by fairly frequently, though less often after he met the guy I am seeing. In some ways I like him better than the guy I am seeing. Except for that Jewish thing. And he goes to church, so I’m guessing he doesn’t want to convert.

- Oh, and to complete the frustration more: a secular non-Jewish punk rocker. Maybe not punk. I just like saying that. He contacted me on a dating site, and I really liked his writing and said I am not looking to date non-Jews but would like to be friends, and I do like him. And we played Jewish geography, and know someone in common. The whole time we were having coffee I was thinking how much I would have loved for that to be a date.

The latter two, by the way, live closer by than the others. It’s unfair.

Weekend update

Here’s the scorecard:

- Eliminated the 39 year old. For a frum-related reason, no less. Go me.

- The Russian seems never to be free on Saturday night or Sunday. He asked me to meet in the city on Friday night. Which I don’t particularly want to do. He did offer to come to my neighborhood, but I nixed that because no matter how many walks we took we would end up sitting alone in my apartment with nothing to do. Though I think he said last week that he is seeing someone too, so maybe we really would maintain appropriate boundaries and would just talk. Call and cancel at the last minute or not?

- My best friend met the guy I’m seeing, and liked him, but thought he probably wasn’t my bashert.

- The yichus guy from Craig’s list. Not a date, but this is a funny story. A non-observant guy answered my Craig’s list ad and we emailed back and forth before I decided he was too young even to meet. About a month later, we meet in a frum environment (him in rakish penguin attire, albeit worn in that off-the-derech way) and he turns out to have the best yichus of anyone I know personally. I am totally smitten with him. He’s super cute and smart.

- Chris, my non-Jewish old friend, a new entry. Sort-of.

I have this friend Chris whom I’ve known for over a decade, and it is truly the classic story. I never saw him as anything other than a friend. He was unflaggingly loyal and sweet and always joked about how much he wanted to date me. He came to every seder. We drank mevushal wine together. (Just kidding.) And about two years ago I started feeling that perhaps we were not just friends. While deciding where to move, he was a factor in my decision, though not one that I admitted to anyone else.

Years before, though, the guy I almost married found Chris so obviously a possibility that he mentioned something about if Chris wanted to convert. And I have admittedly thought about the conversion details.

I haven’t thought that much about the relationship because that’s scary. I would have a husband who is bright funny mensch who wants kids and who my parents really like. No genetic tests necessary. He is as sweet as the guy I’m seeing, and at least as smart as many of my friends. And he makes me laugh all the time. Especially lately. And I am attracted to him. (Cynically: undoubtably this is the effect of time. The shorter guys with less charisma become more desirable.) He would solve his problem that he can’t find smart women to date.

The cons are obvious. It does risk the friendship. I would be dating a non-Jew and participating in that conversions-for-marriage trend that I find so distasteful. (I always wondered why they couldn’t have tried harder to find a Jew to marry.) He has chased me for seven years and I took him for granted for so long and didn’t always return his phone calls, and I am afraid that I would have the upper hand and he would change for me. He is not the most assertive guy. I would feel terrible if he changed his work patterns and stopped working Saturdays because he needs that time.

Amusingly, our friendship has been completely shomer negiah. We have hugged twice, ever. The most recent time was last weekend, and it was a real hug. Of course then he was all bashful about it.

Decisions in flexidox halacha

Ever since I became somewhat apathetic about halacha, I started facing all kinds of decisions that didn’t exist before, and I find them befuddling.

- If I take a flight at 6 am Sunday, my father will insist on waking up at 4 am to drive me, and will be completely miserable for the next day. And I will not be much better.

- Or I could take a flight that leaves immediately after shabbat, meaning that I have to leave the house an hour or two before shabbat. And my father will know I am compromising on halacha. Which will make him happy, but undermine myself if I want to be observant in the future.

Of course being willing to get into a car driven by a gentile on shabbat meant that I got to see my grandmother before she died. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have seen her. She held my hand and told me she loved me, which was generally not the kind of thing she did. She died a few days later.

When it rains, . . .

I moved for my new job and ever since I’ve been going on lots of dates. More than I have time for, in fact.

One  had cheated on his ex-wife a dozen times, but he never broke shabbat in his entire life.  Another was the stereotypically boring guy whose virginity seems to be weighing heavily on him. The latter had a tiny bit of potential, but fortunately I don’t have to try to pull it out because there are lots of interesting people, so Sunday is date day. Two or three dates every Sunday, and I’ve met some really fantastic people.

So far, three have real potential. One is a Russian with the usual mixed Jewish background ranging from Reform to Orthodox who mixes and matches at will. He clearly likes me — he’s invited me to some really fantastic dates, like a play, that I wouldn’t be able to make without traveling on shabbat — but has twice flaked out on me for dates that we scheduled. Over-committed, but also maybe not as serious. At any rate, not practical to date someone so busy. Very smart, though, and he seems like someone I’ve known my entire life. Not in a soulmate kind of way, more like a college group of friends kind of way.

A second is a 39 year old who is clearly serious, smart, loyal to his friends. Not that religious, but not totally opposed. We had a great conversation and I didn’t want to leave. But for some other reasons, I’m not sure.

The most promising one reminds me of the guy I almost married, but more liberal. I don’t want to say too much, but we’ve been out five times and spent the entire day together one day. We speak very openly with each other. We’re both pretty optimistic, but going slowly. We’re not exclusive yet, and he knows that I’ve been on lots of first dates since he and I started seeing each other. Very topical, given Rav Aviner on multi-dating for older singles. And he sees my point there. While we were talking about this, he kept asking about all these good signs. Yes, I wanted to hang out motzai chag so he can meet my best friend because I want her to know who he is when I refer to him. And he was really happy about that, which was incredibly sweet. And, yes, it really has just been first dates with others.

I am a bit hesitant because he reminds me so much of the guy I almost married, both for good and bad. We went on an outing with a group for our second date, and sometimes he would just look me in the eye and smile, and we would hold the gaze for awhile before blushing. He has similar smile, similar habits, similar warm presence that makes total strangers feel comfortable baring their souls, his bookshelves look similar. On the negative, he’s like the guy I almost married in that he’s also not as smart as many of my friends, and we’re both aware of it. Only I think the guy I almost married is smarter than this guy is. So far it only comes out in very small things, but it is sad to feel inequality with someone you hope to fall in love with. I remind myself what a great person he is, and that he would be a fantastic father and husband, and I really could see myself falling in love with him. I could also see myself being enormously uncomfortable with the inequality and the feelings of guilt for the thoughts that are already in the back of my mind, such as, “I don’t know anyone who finds that difficult. Why does he?”

To give concrete examples, he’s been “traditional” religious from birth and has been wearing tzitzit and davening from an all-Hebrew siddur for years and years, but he doesn’t know some really basic things like which bracha goes with which fruit and why, where to find the bracha achrona for the species/mezonot/wine in his siddur. I find myself using entirely English when speaking with him because he doesn’t know many of the standard Hebrew/yeshivish words that people use. And he sounds out new Hebrew words very slowly. Yes, I know all the chassidic stories about less educated people, but as beautiful as the stories are, I’m not sure anyone wants to be married to the guy who says alef-bet instead of davening.

And I’m really afraid that I will start to condescend to him. I don’t think I have yet, but I was treading on the border as we had this didactic “Bracha Bee” discussion, and somehow it pained me like I could feel he was stuck in a fog. He started it by asking which bracha for what, which lead into what’s the difference between the eitz and adama brachot. And I asked him what do you think the strawberry bracha is. And raspberry and blueberry. And this is how bananas grow, and what are they. And tomatoes. And I made a joke that completely confused him — the really clicheed smart-alek point about how many vegetables are really fruits, and he didn’t understand and asked me to explain and I did, but he still didn’t understand. And it was painful to me to feel his lack of comprehension. Seemingly everyone realizes when they’re 8 years old that pumpkins are technically fruits, and feels so clever for it, and he didn’t get it.

In other ways, he is thoughtful and educated. He brought up Dante randomly, something I’d never known before. And inconsistencies in that story about Rabbi Akiva and his wife. I’m going to have to go back and find all those English books that teach basic concepts like Rav Gruenfeld’s and leave them around for him to find and read. Maybe he is better at reading than listening. Or something. I still feel like he must truly be smarter than he seems, and just has some kind of block. But maybe he doesn’t, and that’s just how he is.

I wondered if marrying him would count as settling, but I reread that depressing article on settling from this spring (it was called Marry Him! or something), and this doesn’t come anywhere near what she’s talking about as settling. He’s great in every other respect.

So we’ll see. I keep hoping someone will swoop out of nowhere who is maybe a bit less sweet than he is, but just as smart as my friends. That probably won’t happen. Or maybe he’ll figure out that he’s really smarter and has just been learning all wrong.

Single woman in Boro Park seeking kidney donors

Chaya, a single woman in Boro Park, is a shadchanit for kidney donors. It’s the second part of this episode of This American Life. She feels like doing this is a substitute for being married.

Epilogue

Zvi, Zvi’s mother, and I had coffee together, his mom gave me jewelry from Israel and a Pesach invite to their family, and that was it. Weird.

The next day, the lapsed Chabad-BT that I’d been on several dates with very seriously sat me down and told me that he just wasn’t feeling it. I hadn’t been either, starting with the second date, but hadn’t said anything, but had just started to feel closer to him.

As long as I was skeptical about the possibilities for a relationship, he was eager and enthusiastic. As soon as I started to find him particularly cute and really appreciate him, which was the time he came halfway across the city at the last minute to meet me at an outdoor event, and we walked through the park at night as he pointed out all the plants, apparently he decided that was too much and had to tell me.

We’re still going to see each other, in the end. We’re not ruling anything out. He just didn’t want to deceive me into thinking that we were verging on falling in love or anything, which is sweet but a little weird.

Best dating moment ever

Remember Zvi? Zvi was the guy who would only go out with me when I asked myself out — that is, I would ask him if he were free, and he would say anytime, and then he would take me out and pay and everything as if we were on a date, and give me little presents like heart-shaped refrigerator magnets, and then total silence afterwards unless I asked myself out on another date. He had a girl 10 years younger than him chasing after him who at times claimed to be dating him because evidently they spent all their time together, who transitioned from being kind-of mean and snippy to me to being outright junior high-worthy. Eventually I said that I wasn’t comfortable going out with him unless he clarified his relationship to her, and he claimed it had never crossed his mind to date her, so I never asked myself out again.

Zvi’s mom is in town from Israel, and he keeps saying that he wants me to meet her. Why, I don’t know. It’s been months since we’ve even spoken. The one time we tried to talk at kiddush, I got side-tracked and the girl comandeered them away from me.

So last night I was sitting in a park miles away from our neighborhood, holding hands and absorbed in conversation with a guy that I’ve been on several dates with. Zvi approaches us. It took me half a minute to register that it was him, but he points to his mom and says that she would like to meet me, and we should make a time for that. So here I am, clearly on a date, and he’s prodded on by his mom to ask me on a date.

I am guessing that his mom took one look at the 10 years younger woman who is running Zvi’s life right now and said he could do better at finding a woman to run his life, and Zvi feels the need to produce me as evidence to the contrary. I don’t know otherwise.

I don’t feel obligated at all to go on this date with his mom, but I’m super curious what will happen. It will make the story so much better if I go, won’t it?

Second verse, not quite as good as the first

Last night I went on a second date with the earlier-referenced guy. I had been ecstatic on the first date, primarily because I didn’t expect he’d be interested in anything other than friendship since I am 5 years older, and so outside his stated age range; I was also thrilled because I gained a bit of weight in the past 2 years, and while I can wear many of the same clothes as before, I won’t feel fully at ease until I lose them, so I really appreciated the burst of confidence; and finally because I hadn’t realized he had any Jewish background at all and it turns out we had similar backgrounds: raised miles apart, public high school, becoming observant at same point in our lives, though he went pretty right-wing while I was always at the left fringe. Since then, he’s left observant society for the most part (and never really had a chevre) and has a pretty negative view of it, while I am socially very much a part of the observant crowd even if I act frummer in public than I really am in private. In fact, he’s pretty much the opposite: socially he is not very affiliated at all, but privately he davens daily which is more than some Orthodox.

The second date was different: I had been trying not to have expectations, but nonetheless I did. I had expected conversation to be really a flow and interchange, and was instead disappointed when our conversations were mostly either Q&A or monologue. We shared some very personal facts, but the pauses were awkward rather than comfortable, and there were few times when one of us would seize on a conversational morsel and say “exactly!” rather than nodding understandingly and with empathy. Empathy is not to be underestimated, but conversational chemistry is just so essential. The chemistry before might have just been over the commonalities. To give the chemistry the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was nervous — although I would have expected him to have had many girlfriends, he’s very inexperienced for his age — and maybe he is just seizing up and worrying I don’t like him.

My inclination when faced with such a nervous guy is to try to comfort him somehow, and reassure him that I really do like him, but I know that leads to reversal of the see-saw.

After dinner he asked me back to his place to listen to music. We had not spoken about music the entire time, so it’s not like there was any particular music we should listen to, so it was not a particularly good “line” especially since he repeated it a few times. (We walked around a bit before leaving the neighborhood where we’d had dinner.)

He lives in a huge dorm/house with many people, and he showed me around, ending with his room. He closed his door. I didn’t feel like making a production about going to a common room or opening a door — I’m not shomer negiah, but I just don’t know him well — so decided to go with the flow. He sat down on his bed, so I sat on his desk chair. Conversation did not flow any smoother than earlier. We spoke a bit about negiah, and I said it’s always a choice. He said that sometimes it seems like it just happens. I said you could always set it up so that it doesn’t happen. Which was a bit blatant. We spoke a bit about dating, and he said that it’s so hard for him to find women that he’s so very attracted to — he didn’t say anything about me, thankfully, but I was touched. Almost enough to touch him, but not quite.

The time passed reasonably pleasantly, but I’d wanted to live a little earlier than I did. I just was not comfortable with how he had set up the situation: in a common room, I might have snuggled into him eventually, or at least held his hand, but in his room with the door closed I didn’t want to get closer than 3 feet.

He walked me out. I hugged him, and we hugged for a long time which also somehow felt awkward, and I said that I didn’t want him to think that I wasn’t attracted to him; I just don’t feel like I really know him very well and wanted to get to know him first. Also I mentioned that it seemed like we were in different life stages: I’m looking to get married, and given that he’s had only short relationships, it sounded like he wasn’t. He said that he would really like to get married. That was one thing which attracted him to observant Judaism, and he doesn’t like dating because he’s shy.

I don’t know if it’s an age gap, but the experience gap really showed: I was really reminded of a post I saw on how experienced daters shield themselves due to experience with rejection. He hasn’t learned how to shield himself yet, nor has he really become comfortable with the dating script. It should be refreshing, but so far it’s awkward. Good dates feel smooth even when you have nothing in common.

Dayenu: the dating theme song

If I got a response back on the dating site, but it was not well-written, dayenu.

If I got a well-written response back, but he never answered my second email, dayenu.

If the correspondence continued, and we didn’t have a good phone call, dayenu.

If we had a good phone call, and he didn’t ask me on a date, dayenu.

If he asked me on a date, and he turned out to be really unattractive, dayenu.

If he turned out not to be unattractive, and we found on the date we had nothing in common, dayenu.

If we found on the date we had a huge number of things in common, but he had no connection to Judaism, dayenu.

If he had a connection to Judaism, and he was a really chinyuct frummie, dayenu.

If he wasn’t a chinyuct frummie, and the date lasted less than an hour, dayenu.

If the date lasted more than an hour, but we had no chemistry, dayenu.

If we had good chemistry, but he didn’t pay for my coffee, dayenu.

If he paid for my coffee, and I didn’t feel like he had become part of my life, dayenu.

If I felt like he was somehow part of my life by the end of the first date, and he didn’t ask me on a second date, dayenu.

If he asked me on a second date, …

It’s amazing to think about how many steps there are for a dating relationship to work out.  As my earlier post indicates, I’m about to move, so not actively dating, but this one came up.  Right now that’s where I am.  And I’m not going to look ahead and what might be.  I’m just marveling at what already was.

On top of everything else, he’s 5 years younger than I am.  !  I had wanted to treat this as unserious, so when I wrote to him, I said that my friend in a different city had suggested him to me, and I thought it was funny that he seemed like her type, but I was looking for friends so maybe we could do a specific activity together that we’d both listed in our profiles as a hobby.  But so far he seems to be treating it as serious dating potential.  Dayenu!

Choosing connection

The neighborhoods of every major city can be mapped to New York neighborhoods, so you find the equivalents of the UWS, where singles are a world unto themselves untouched by civilization; Park Slope, with people who consider themselves consciously different and independent, about which outsiders remark either “There’s nothing there!” or say they aren’t really frum (not totally unfairly); and the numerous neighborhoods of the city where new chumrot spread like wildfire (or shigella) and singles feel invisible and are sometimes living in basements and attics while they wait for their real lives to start. The saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my life was the basement apartment of a 30-something year old “girl” in Har Nof, the size of two galley kitchens stuck end to end: about 6′ wide and 20′ long. She had been living there for at least five years, and although she could have been attractive, judging from the way she dressed and carried herself, she probably lived there for at least another five.

New York has other neighborhoods which have no equivalents outside the city, such as Washington Heights, though many neighborhoods aspire to that.

In moving, you have the chance to situate yourself in a new community, and the decision affects your level of alienation. Choosing to live in Flatbush if you’re an UWS-er or especially a Park Slope-er is trouble. You wanted to discuss NPR, and instead you’re discussing sleeve length and hashgacha reputability at every meal. Lots of things are bad for one’s neshama, but mostly the set of things bad for the neshama boils down to Orthodox politics, including chumrot.

The farther I am from Orthodox politics, the better the state of my neshama. I don’t want to know about what the frummies are doing to my religion. I just want to pray, eat, learn, and go play frisbee in the park. Ideally I could find a way to live in any neighborhood and do all that, and just ignore the politics.  I don’t need to think about these issues. I can practice my religion, and they can practice theirs.

But that’s not really the issue. My nightmare situation for arriving in a new community. Most of the singles are under 25, and I pass for their age too until we start talking. I have those awkward times where someone realizes suddenly that I must be much older than they are, and they slowly edge away without making it seem like they are doing this because of my age. “Excuse me. I feel a sudden urge to discuss Reagan’s presidency with people who don’t remember any of it.”

The people my age are all married with two or three kids, and they look at me with pity. When they find out that I’m more accomplished that they are, they look pityingly at me for having not had good priorities when I was young, back when I could still get married easily. They may not have a post-college degree, but they got their MRS, while I was presumably out letting myself get used by men who wouldn’t give me a commitment, they might think. They can do their best to fix me up with someone, but I have to be realistic now that I’m over 29. Not that I asked for a shidduch, mind you, but they attempt to make these wild ones, like a guy who is 5 feet 3 inches tall without a college education who looks and sounds like he’s on drugs in his SYAS profile. That’s a real shidduch proposal I got when I was 29.

It’s terrible to try to think about what other people think about you because you’ll never know. You do know what you thought when you were in their position. When I was a shomer negiah new BT up until 26, I sometimes thought that many women with advanced careers could have gotten married, and just hadn’t made it a priority. Or hadn’t gotten married because they hadn’t been shomer negiah. If I’d gotten married in short order, I might have continued thinking that. Not that I bore them any ill will. It just made sense.

Rather than thinking about what I’m afraid of in choosing a new community, I want to think about what I want. I want to know that there will be both men and women approximately my age who aren’t crazy whom I can spend shabbat with. Educated men willing to date women their own age. No pity. No religious judgement. No insanity. No major aversions against pants. That’s all. That’s reasonable to expect, isn’t it?

Single cynicism

I noticed myself rolling my eyes at the latest entry on House of Joy about Hashem helping her raise kids because it’s too big of a job for one person. I didn’t mean to be. I really want to be sincere, but it’s hard, and trying to understand her mentality makes me sad because right now it feels like rubbing salt in my wounds; having children within a marriage is such a remote and fanciful notion to me. I can barely picture myself having a relationship successful enough to make it to the marriage stage, much less in time for me to have children quite so safely (just a few more years until mandatory amniocentesis!) In fact, I have started thinking about having kids outside a relationship so much that I now identify strongly with the plight of single mothers.

People talk about why single religious people become more distant, and I know for me that’s what it is: every time I hear about anyone from a similar background, especially whom I knew while they were still single, I feel like I must have done something terrible. I claim that I want more than anything else to get married and have children, so what’s wrong with me that I didn’t, especially since I didn’t lack for dates.

When it’s men having relationship milestones, it’s even worse. Of course the “almost”s sting, but in some ways the ones that I dated briefly feel worse: reminders that perhaps I was too picky. This one was obese and suggested that we play cards at a restaurant while waiting for our food to come instead of conversation (it’s not like we lacked things to talk about); when the food came, the poor waitress had to keep holding the food while we picked up the cards. That one was in rehab several years ago, rebounded to be charedi, and then moderated, but always kept this weird veneer of control that made me afraid of whether he might lose it. Another was so aggressively interested in me that I didn’t feel like I had the space to think about whether I could be interested in him; at one point we watched a movie together and I had to sit on the floor because he sat too close if I sat on the couch. In spite of the description, all are great people and are in fact my friends. We were close enough friends that I was at two of the three weddings. All now married.

So then I start thinking about the men around me who are going to get married and become the men that I regret not having dated more.

Mikvah use by non-married, on Jewcy

On Jewcy, there’s a long discussion about mikvah use by non-married people — the original poster is in her early 20’s and started a sexual relationship when she was 20.  The relationship sounds solid, but they haven’t made it a huge priority to live in the same place yet, so don’t want to think about marriage.  They just started living in the same city, and she went to the mikvah for the first time of their sexual relationship.  The commenters on her post are questioning her and raising all kinds of controversies about premarital sex.  

Obviously, it’s all her choice, and I am not questioning her choices.  I really relate to her mentality, though it’s been a long time since I’ve had that mentality myself.  When I was just out of college, life seemed big and long; I knew that I wanted to be married and have one baby by 35, within 13 years of graduating from college, but 13 years seemed like such a long time.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about marriage in the near future.  That’s the modern American life cycle.  Becoming a fabulous, beautiful, smart single 35 year old women didn’t seem like an immediate risk when I was just out of college; heck, it doesn’t even feel like an immediate risk to me now, and I’m a lot closer to 35.  If a relationship is going well, the end of a current relationship doesn’t even feel like an immediate risk.  When you love someone, it’s hard to imagine that you might ever part ways and end up without them.  

Even if you did break up, it’s hard to imagine lacking replacements (to the extent that anyone could replace your beloved).  In and right after college, you’re so surrounded by your peers and have so many dating opportunities, it’s hard to believe that the situation will ever change.  Obviously, relationships are valuable because you love the person, but surrounded by peers they’re replaceable enough that if your boyfriend decided to permanently move to Siberia, you could find another boyfriend in the next semester or two, and not feel like your new boyfriend was somehow not as good as the earlier one.  Relationships are less replaceable as the dating pool gets smaller, and the quality diminishes noticeably.  

The long-term relationship holding-pattern is so easy to stay in when you feel like you have forever to find someone:  this relationship is great for this year, and probably for next; you’ll see about later when the time comes.  It’s not forever, though.  The popular age for educated people to get married is 30, and the 7 years from 23 to 30 is not that long: it’s the length of medical school plus the shortest residency, a PhD program, or two long-term holding-pattern relationships.  The margin of error with long-term relationships, when you are thinking about relationships that can be three years long, is not great; you can’t have more than 3 of them during your 20’s, and even that’s assuming that you find the next relationship partner right away.

Holding-pattern relationships are comfortable, and that’s their great danger.  Religion aside, I would argue that it’s important to think about marriage because it makes you think about whether the relationship is any good, rather than staying in the relationship because it’s there.  Holding-pattern relationships not strong enough for marriage can literally persist happily for decades if people aren’t forced to think about them.  The Jewish atheist who wants kids and the Christian who doesn’t want kids know they could never get married unless they agree on these issues, but they could have a relationship for 10+ years without the differences mattering (and that’s a real relationship, which still continues.)  That’s an obvious difference, but there are less obvious differences that don’t come up as long as the relationship is comfortably indefinitely long-term.  

I am not opposed to premarital sex.  I think that it has its place, but perhaps ironically I think it’s best for people who are older who lack immediate prospects for marriage.  They want to be married, but don’t see any possibilities, and feel a great deal of frustration and alienation at their isolation and lack of human connection.  Having sex may alleviate one small part of a life that feels otherwise fractured and hopeless.  

Premarital sex has a role in long term relationships too:  to keep people from getting married just for the sex.  But there’s a tension because you don’t want to get too comfortable.  Having been in many fantastic but not-marriage-material 2-4 year relationships (none shomer negiah, but not all of which needed a mikvah), I now wish I had been more uncomfortable about them.  If someone is an adult and in a mutually loving relationship and could marry, I don’t see why they wouldn’t just give serious thought to getting married, which is the real test of dedication and whether it’s a good relationship.  As soon as people think about getting married, they notice issues that they overlooked when it was just a long-term relationship.   

 

Finding a marriage relationship is so much easier in one’s 20’s, assuming one’s stable and confident.  To make my reasoning really concrete, I can frame it in terms of my current dating life.  When I was in my 20’s, all of the men that I dated were tall, thin, well-built, attractive, within 1 year of my age, as well-educated and smart as I am, with good job prospects, loving, never married, no kids, attracted to women, knew all my friends, and could pick me up and carry me.  I’m thinner and more confident than I was at the time, and yet several years later, it is difficult to meet someone with most of those characteristics, and probably impossible to meet someone with all of them.  There is one advantage to dating later:  you know who is going to lose their hair because they’ve probably already lost it by now.  Even for the most selfish superficial reasons, there’s a strong argument to marry young!    

FWB2: “Casual sex is never casual”

Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher on National Public Radio says that any kind of sexual stimulation drives people closer to falling in romantic love, and that orgasm makes people feel attached:

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/02/20080213_b_main.asp

 

 ”Casual sex is never casual because you are likely to trigger brain systems that you didn’t expect to get into.”

 

The entire episode is worth listening to, but this part is around minute 31.  She distinguishes between love as lasting and lust as temporary, and that attraction and sex hormones come from different places in the brain.  

Frightening

“Marry him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough” in March 2008’s Atlantic, written by a woman in her 40’s who did the Murphy Brown thing.