We often confuse the celebrity and excitement of dating and engagement with the deeper human feelings that emerge in a relationship.

My daughter has been meeting a nice boy for several weeks, and now it’s decision time. She keeps saying she can’t say yes, but she can’t say no. She is very torn. Some of our friends have advised us that every girl needs to be pushed a bit, and that is our responsibility. However, others have told us that pushing is wrong. Two of our friends did the same thing and had opposite results. One set pushed their daughter into a shidduch, and their daughter is now very happy and thanks her parents every day. Another set did the same, and their daughter is divorced today. How can we know the difference: when it’s only a matter of indecision and it calls for parental prodding, and when she’s hearing warning bells that we should also listen to? I’m enjoying your column and hope you can advise me as well.

Shaya Ostrov LCSW:

Without meeting you or your daughter, it is difficult to give advice. However, I can mention several points worth bearing in mind.

Firstly, there is a difference between encouragement and pushing. No one should ever be pushed, but they may need encouragement. It is of utmost importance for you to have a deep understanding of the middos and family of your daughter’s dating partner. You need to know and respect the boy, and feel a sense of comfort and security with your child marrying him. If you do feel that this is a good opportunity for your daughter, and that she is frightened only due to her own lack of experience, then you can certainly encourage her. At the same time, let her know that whatever decision she makes, your love and respect for her will not be diminished whatsoever. Don’t push: once someone is pushed they may never get their balance back.

Secondly, it’s important to differentiate between a clear definable aspect of the dating partner which bothers the individual and the common refrain of, “I just don’t have any feelings for him.” There is a stark difference between seeing a troublesome middah— a bad temper, impatience, disrespect towards parents, always taking on the cell phone even when together with others — and not feeling deep connection. A bad middah is a red flag for the future. A lack of deep connection is normal.

We often confuse the celebrity and excitement of dating and engagement with the deeper human feelings that emerge in a relationship over years. We want things to be exciting. But a tree — and a marriage — takes time to grow, and it’s not exciting. It takes years to build a deep meaningful relationship with another person. That comes from accepting the good moments gratefully and the bad moments gracefully. A couple connects by living a life together and sharing the moments that are the warp and weft of one’s life, not by sitting in a hotel lobby. To expect those feelings earlier is unrealistic.

Not only is it unrealistic, powerful feelings at this point in the relationship are actually destructive, and a sign of deep immaturity. The feeling of ahavah is a state of mind that emerges at our very best moments, when everything is working perfectly. It cannot be sustained emotionally or physiologically over a long period of time. One certainly can’t have a mature sense of ahavah for someone for any length of time in the dating process. While dating, one must keep adapting to new information, and the perception of the other person is continually changing; it’s a fluid state. If there are strong feelings too early on, they will surely be lost, and if the relationship was based upon them, what will the partners be left with? They will not have the resilience to deal with the reality of accepting a person who has both good qualities and bad.

This isn’t to say your daughter should have no feelings at all for the person she is dating. She should feel comfort, security, and respect, but not expect, or want, intense, powerful feelings of connection.

The last point to bear in mind is that people need to quiet themselves down, to have yishuv hadaas, and then learn about themselves and the other person. Getting engaged is a momentous step and comes not from excitement, but from courage. Courage comes from having a strong sense of bechirah. With encouragement, parents can evoke a sense of bechirah and help move the process along.

Shaya Ostrov, LCSW, is a family therapist practicing in New York. He is the author of The Inner Circle — 7 Gates to Marriage, and the director of the 7 Gates Institute

Rabbi Yisrael Pesach Feinhandler:

Being undecided is a very painful place to be; your daughter is in a difficult position. A person who is stuck like this often has general insecurity about marriage. In that case, you job as parents is to provide encouragement and help your daughter believe in her abilities.

It’s important that she understand that every marriage requires great siyata d’Shmaya. No matter how well you know another person, until you are married to him, you can’t be sure he will be the right one. We get married because that is what Hashem told us to do. We try to find someone who is compatible and tolerable, someone with whom we feel comfortable and at ease, but we shouldn’t wait until we find a paragon of perfection.

My personal belief about marriage is that, in the vast majority of cases, success hinges not upon whom you marry but upon how you treat them. Both Rabbi Simcha Cohen and Rabbi Ezriel Tauber, renowned experts in the field of shalom bayis, claim that in theory, a man could marry any woman in the world — providing he is willing to work very hard to make his marriage happy. Marriage is about giving, not taking, and as long as that is your outlook, and you consistently give, the person you give to will respond positively no matter who they are.

If your daughter has any compelling doubts, if there is anything about this boy that she really can’t stand, the match should be broken off. However, if your daughter is simply torn with indecision, she needs to be pushed and encouraged; and if she really likes the boy she should go for it.

As far as your friends whose daughter got divorced, it’s possible that the daughter continued feeling ambivalent about her decision even after marriage and then lived with regrets. You need to make sure that your daughter goes into her marriage feeling good about it. Bring her to a point where she feels that she is a wonderful person, willing and able to work hard at her marriage, and she’ll be able to manage marriage whatever her spouse may be like. Emphasize to her that success in marriage hinges more upon her efforts rather than on her spouse’s personality, and then she won’t be so torn.

If your daughter regularly has a hard time making a decision or keeps dating and doesn’t get past a few dates, then she may have a psychological block towards marriage, and she should get professional help.

Rabbi Yisrael Pesach Feinhandler is a Rosh Kollel and Rav in the Romema neighbor of Jerusalem. He also works as a marriage counselor, and is the author of books on various topics, among them  “Finding Your Spouse in Thirty Days.”

Mrs. Joanne Dove:

The first thing to do is to go through the full checklist of all the things that are, or should be, important to your daughter in a future husband. If she doesn’t yet have such a checklist, she should make one immediately. When the little hiccups come, you have to know what is truly important to your child. If the fellow she’s dating matches everything on the checklist, that’s a very good start.

However, if she has a strong negative feeling, she should trust herself. She should be able to put her finger on what it is that is bothering her, and go out again to discover if her feelings are correct. Nobody is perfect, but a girl should not be going into marriage if there is a personality trait in the boy that seriously disturbs her. What traits bother a person is individual to each girl. If she says, “He’s really wonderful, and I like him, but I’m very nervous,” then we are talking about normal fear and she needs some hand-holding to go through with it. A sense that something is wrong is different from anxiety. Many have anxiety, and it’s perfectly normal. The bottom line is to find out what she’s nervous about — is it about him specifically, or is it marriage in general?

We have to listen to both what are children say and what they don’t say. How does she go out to a date? Is she excited? What kind of mood is she in when she gets back? How does she describe him? What do the two of them talk about? Does she feel comfortable with him? The most important thing is to trust your child. If she knows that you trust her intuition, that will often give her the confidence to listen to her inner self and make the right decision.

As with everything in the world, there are exceptions to these guidelines. We need a lot of siyata d’Shmaya and have to daven hard that we, and our children, make the right decisions.

Mrs. Joanne Dove works for Seed, a London-based adult kiruv organization. She also oversees and advises the volunteers of Made in Heaven, an organization that both makes shidduchim and advises singles, and has personally been involved in many shidduchim over the years.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 90)