What’s it like being the oldest bochur in the dorm — often by a good few years — wondering if life will ever go forward?

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azel tov, chassan!”

The exuberant shouts from his friends are enough to make any young groom feel great as he’s about to embark on the biggest change of his life. But when the chassan is an older yeshivah bochur who’s spent many years waiting for this moment, that “mazel tov” takes on entirely different proportions. As happy as his friends are for him, can they really grasp that wave of salvation, after years and years watching new groups of young bochurim come into yeshivah every new zeman, and then get married and move on with life, while they’re watching from the sidelines?

It’s a very specific demographic, these “eltere bochurim” still in yeshivah. Older single girls somehow get on with their lives even as they wait for their own yeshuah; but older bochurim in the beis medrash, watching one younger group after another pass through that revolving door while marriage seems to elude them, suffer a specific type of loneliness. What’s it like being the oldest in the dorm (often by a good few years), wondering if life will ever move on?

Eli Neuberger of Baltimore, who says he’s been “happily retired” from the alter bochur club for over a decade, was in the parshah as one of the “older guys” in the BMG-Lakewood dorm for nine years until his marriage at age 32. What saved his sanity, he says, was an attitude switch.

“The first two or three years were really difficult,” Reb Eli says, “but once I stopped saying, ‘Why is so-and-so matzliach and not me, what does he have that I don’t have,’ once I stopped listening to that hard-working yetzer hara and I learned how to be happy for someone else without it being a reflection on me — believe me, easier said than done, but a must for happiness after marriage as well — my general attitude and mood got exponentially better.”

It wasn’t easy though: He still remembers the Lakewood dating scene — the late-night homecoming after an unsuccessful date, or after a wedding or sheva brachos of a friend, “and there are all these younger guys, one just got engaged, one is about to get engaged, they’re all sharing their wisdom, and you just have to figure out how to be happy for them. You don’t want to be the old grouch. Because negativity will just drag you down.”

Reb Eli’s practical advice for those still in yeshivah a year later and another year later, when bochurim five and six and even ten years younger are already marrying and moving on? “It’s very important to have good chavrusas and to keep a strong seder,” he says. But the most important thing, to his mind, is to “make sure you’re as marketable as possible. Don’t develop a victim complex regarding shadchanim who you feel just don’t understand you, because that will not move you forward. People aren’t being malicious when they offer you a bad shidduch. Everyone means well. Don’t get insulted, don’t take it personally, and don’t become bitter. And to stay marketable, don’t become too extreme, don’t take on crazy chumros or go off the deep end. You have enough troubles just being normal. You might feel good momentarily, but it could be to your detriment.”