Before I discuss my recent dating challenges, I want to say first off that I know that these are good problems to have. I am healthy, have a graduate degree and a good job, a happy family, and close friends, and that puts me ahead of 99% of the world, so I don’t want to seem to be whining. Still, I would like to get married and have children, so I need to date, and that’s where the challenges come from.
Every year or so, I have a small-scale dating crisis where a confluence of events makes me feel much less hopeful about my chances at getting married in the near future. To get married “in the near future” is perhaps a lot to ask: while I am pretty certain that I will eventually get married, I would rather do so when I have a better chance of having healthy pregnancies and healthy children, and while men my own age will still agree to date me. My latest dating crisis was caused by having a boyfriend break up with me and start a serious relationship immediately after, and losing a relationship I might have had, both in the past 2 weeks.
I recently moved and I had no frum dating possibilities for months. Then I met a frum guy who was really fantastic and close to his parents, who I trusted. It looks like he got close to someone else while were were dating and didn’t break up with me until the new relationship was in the bag, so I felt totally duped. The letdown was even greater because he broke up with me was by saying that I’m everything he ever wanted, but he isn’t ready for a relationship, creating false hope (yes, I’m that gullible), so I was even more shocked to find out about his relationship the very next day, and to discover a week later that it was really a serious relationship. It’s not just losing the relationship that bothers me, but discovering whole new reasons for cynicism: I believe in direct communication, and do not look for signs that someone is going to break up with me, but if I had, I might have seen this coming and could have broken off the relationship sooner. The painful irony being that while dating this guy I had the chance to date three other men, and I turned them all down because I was dating this guy.
Upon being dumped, I got back in touch with guys that I might have otherwise dated: 1 was married, 1 engaged, and 2 were in relationships. Only one of these guys’ relationship really bothered me.
Right before I moved, a frum guy revealed his feelings for me; we did not date because we didn’t want a long-distance relationship, but we became close fairly quickly during my visits back, and we planned to date if I moved back. He had met a woman and felt that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He just started dating her. Even worse, she’s almost 8 years younger than I, making it clear that I’m reaching an age where men who are my age have this whole new pool of younger women to date, while women don’t, so dating becomes uneven. (Nothing wrong with older men, but marrying a man 10 years older means that you’ll be a widow 10 years longer than if you married someone your own age.)
Since I’m in a new city, I don’t have much social support. My roommate was my only friend in town. I introduced her to a guy and they got along amazingly well from the start, and I think they’ll get engaged within 2 months. I’m happy and excited for them, but also sad to have my friendship with my only real friend in town change so much; it’s harder to be close friends with a couple than another woman, especially if they act like they pity you slightly because of your recent string of bad dating experiences, which makes it feel worse.
That’s what’s gone wrong in my dating life lately. Why this makes me feel distant from HKBH, I don’t know, and it’s a good question to explore in another post.
Whine whine whine, I know.
January 23, 2008 at 11:21 am |
[...] he really did so much for my emotional state, which was completely despairing after feeling like the floor had fallen out from under me.That’s the story with Jack the indifferently secular Jew. Hopefully we’ll hang out [...]