Transitioning to Adulthood, Single

“I grew up in Denver, went to Bais Yaakov there, and then attended BJJ for a year,” relates Rivkah.* “My sister is a year older than me, and she got married as soon as she came home from seminary. The expectation was that I would follow suit. But it took me thirteen years.”

One of the striking things about these stories is that they all start off the same way: The girls went to Bais Yaakov schools, seminary, and had loving, supportive families to help them in the world of shidduchim. They did not have any outstanding circumstances that would allow one to point and say — that’s why they’re single. It’s comforting to be able to put things in boxes, to ascribe labels and reasons and then sit back in relief and declare, “This doesn’t apply to me!” But the unwelcome truth is that in many circumstances, no one can predict who will remain single for years.

At age twenty, Rivkah decided to move to New York, and that’s where she says she developed into her own person. “My father’s parents live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and I moved in with them. I found a teaching job in a Bais Yaakov, and also went to college at night.”

She lived with her grandparents until she got married, and describes them as having a singular influence on her life, helping her to grow in her own self-awareness. “I had always had a wide variety of interests, beyond those of my peers, and these were finally actualized when I came to New York.”

Living in the midst of the Upper West Side’s fabled singles scene might seem like an unusual choice for a Bais Yaakov girl, but Rivkah says that she didn’t have much to do with that world.

“Geographically, we were a bit apart from the scene. While my grandparents did host a lot of singles for Shabbos meals, I was davening in my grandparents’ shul and shared their social circle.” For a girl in her twenties, this took some adjusting, but she came to develop a real appreciation for that generation. And, as it turned out, she eventually met her husband at someone’s Upper West Side Shabbos table.

Unlike Rivkah, Miriam* lived at home for a good part of her single years. Growing up in the New York area, her education took the usual trajectory of Bais Yaakov schools followed by a year of seminary in Israel. Her path veered somewhat as she started college and chose to major in engineering — not exactly your typical major.

“People set me up with a lot of professionals that I wasn’t so interested in,” she remembers. “They assumed that I wanted a doctor or lawyer, which I didn’t.”

Other than that, she did not feel that her unconventional major affected her dating in a significant way. However, it did affect her social life.

“I was living at home, so I wasn’t really part of any social scene. Had I majored in something like speech, I would’ve met other frum girls in my graduate program. But in engineering, I wasn’t meeting anyone.”

She recalls loneliness as being the defining characteristic of that time of her life.

“I lived at home until I was twenty-seven. As time went on, I felt that my life was becoming just me and graduate school. Nine years had passed since seminary, and I felt like another nine years could pass and I would still be at home— ‘Mommy’s little girl.’ So I decided to move to Israel.”

She says that she chose Eretz Yisrael because the singles’ communities in New York were not her type. Furthermore, she had always wanted to live in Eretz Yisrael. And thus began a new era.

“For the first time, I actually had a singles social scene. I had roommates, and I met their friends as well. I finally had friends who were in the same boat as me.” But it would be another eight years before she was to find her bashert.

Ariella* chose to move in with friends right from the start. With her family living in a small, out-of-town community, she came to New York after seminary to go to college and stayed on, living in an apartment with single friends as she finished her schooling and began her career as a special ed teacher.

However, after many years of dating and feeling that she’d exhausted all the possibilities in New York, she realized a change was in order and decided to make aliyah. She filled out the paperwork, had a tentative aliyah date set within the next two months, and was starting to pack. She’d asked a sheilah about what to do if a shidduch suggestion came up, knowing that she was about to move. Her rav responded that once her aliyah date was finalized, she was allowed to reject the suggestion. A shidduch came up just before the aliyah date was officially finalized. On the day before she was supposed to have made aliyah, she got engaged.

Single in a Family-Oriented Community

One of the hardest things about being frum and single is the feeling of not quite belonging.

“There’s a somewhat condescending attitude toward singles,” says Miriam. “I remember when my friends and I were looking for a new apartment, people were hesitant to rent to us. Three single girls? They saw us as an oddity. When I’d go to people’s homes for Shabbos meals, they would ask, ‘What seminary are you in?’ They had no concept that there could be single girls beyond that stage. We were a nonentity.” She found that one of the hardest parts of life as single, once she moved out of her parents’ house, was Shabbos and Yom Tov.

“I had my adopted families, but it was still hard making Shabbos plans every week. Some girls preferred to stay home, but I felt like that was giving in. I didn’t want to make Shabbos until I had my real home. Yom Tov was hard. I didn’t have a succah. Who was going to give matanos l’evyonim for me on Purim? These are the types of things a man does, and a single woman has no recourse. She has this feeling of disenfranchisement, like she’s not really part of the community.”

In that way, Miriam feels that single men have it easier, since by going to shul they are automatically members of the community.

But Ariella saw her disconnect from the community as a positive, in that it helped her avoid being made the object of pity.

“I would go to different places every Shabbos — mostly to married friends. I think it would have been harder if I’d gone home every week. This way, I never placed myself in a situation where I was known as ‘The Single’ in the community.”

Devorah* grew up in a chareidi family in Israel. Single until the age of thirty, she lived at home for most of that time. However, what took away a lot of the pressure was that her family didn’t live in the same city as most of her friends.

“For parnassah reasons, my family lived in a city that was mostly not religious. My neighbors were left-wing, high-society types, who weren’t getting married until age twenty-six — although they did ask me why I was frum and not married!”

Devorah emphasizes that, in her opinion, much of the nisayon of being an older single in the frum community stems from the perceptions people articulate, rather than the actual state of being single.

“They say, ‘She’s so picky,’ when they have no idea what’s really going on. It’s so hard nowadays for girls to get dates — maybe she’s not even being set up. If you have an idea for a shidduch, say so, but otherwise don’t make comments.”

She recalls that when her younger brother got engaged before her, whenever she would tell people the news, they would respond, “Oy, im yirtzeh Hashem by you!” As if they were comforting a mourner instead of wishing her mazel tov on her brother’s simchah. So she stopped telling.

Rivkah states that the hardest part of having younger siblings married before her was dealing with people’s assumptions of how she must be feeling.

“I was twenty-one when my younger sister got married — she’d met someone while she was in seminary. I wasn’t told about it until it was very serious. That’s what hurt me more than anything else; did they think I couldn’t handle it? At her wedding, I remember feeling forced to smile all the time, or else people would start pitying me.”

She subsequently had two younger siblings get married before she did, and she says that she helped them along in their shidduchim. “I felt an achrayus toward them; I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to them.”

The Issue of “the Issue”

When someone hears about an older single, often the first question asked is, “What’s wrong? Why isn’t he/she married yet?” The superior attitude evinced in such a question can cause untold pain to a single.

“Once, someone was redting me a twenty-eight year old bochur,” relates Devorah. “The shadchan starts explaining: ‘This is the reason why he’s still single.’

I said, ‘I don’t want to hear it. All people have “issues.” Why should his be pointed out more than anyone else’s?’ Our community does so much chesed, but when it comes to singles, they have this attitude that it’s their fault.”

And yet, many agree that it’s a fair question to ponder, if not for the tactless stranger, then for the single himself.

We are taught that when troubles afflict a person, he should scrutinize his actions. Although for many singles, the nisayon of getting engaged is a direct decree from Hashem, for others, some serious soul-searching can reveal a cause for the delay. A cause may be lurking in the subconscious and can only be resolved with responsible analysis.

Maxine Freedman is a life coach based in Brookline, MA. Since 1992, she has been coaching people through life transitions, and specializes in helping people get married.

She explains that every person has certain “blind spots” relating to their self-knowledge. Often, people are not even aware that they’re missing certain life skills. In her work, she helps her clients find and understand their blind spots. She speaks about a forty-five-year-old single woman, a psychologist by profession, who came to her for coaching.

“She said she felt that she’d exhausted all the possibilities, that there were no more Jewish single men where she lived. I suggested that she go to New York, just to see the number of Jewish men there, because this feeling, that there was no one out there, was her blind spot. Yet each time I suggested the idea, she would start crying. At a certain point she felt that she needed to take a break. A few months later, I called to see how she was doing, and she said, ‘You’ll never believe it. I went to New York and met someone! He’s a psychiatrist. And, I met him in New York, but he actually lives around the corner from me.’

While everyone is unique, Mrs. Freedman says that she tends to see certain common blind spots holding some singles back from marriage. The most prevalent that she encounters are: fear of marriage, fear of being vulnerable, seeking perfection, anxiety, and indecisiveness.

She often helps her client define a list of values that they are looking for in a spouse.

“There’s a Hollywood culture in our society. The ideas creep into our culture. Real relationships aren’t like that.”

Rabbi Shmuel Skaist, rosh yeshivah of the Yeshiva at IDT and counselor at Ohr Naava Women’s Torah Center in Brooklyn, NY, agrees that the image singles have in their mind of what a spouse should be is often unrealistic.

“If they’ve been going out for many years and have ‘held out’ for the one who fits all their very specific criteria, they become heavily invested in that prototype. To seriously consider another prototype seems to be admitting defeat. For example, the idea that ‘I’m only going to marry someone who is learning full-time/lives in Israel/has a degree etc.’”

In such circumstances, he tries to help them see that many of these criteria are superficial and often don’t turn out exactly the way they seem for couples who insisted on them.

At the Right Time

Mrs. Freedman believes that, whatever the issue a person is struggling to overcome, there is a certain time in our lives when we are ripe to deal with it. When we reach that point, the change can happen quickly.

In confirmation of this, the women interviewed agreed that had they met their husbands at an earlier point in their lives, they likely would not have gotten engaged.

“I wouldn’t have married at twenty whom I married at thirty,” says Rivkah. “It was difficult for me during my twenties to find that combination of nonconventional and ehrlichkeit. I needed the security to understand myself. My shadchan helped me understand that you need to marry someone with whom you can live.”

“I believe my shidduch had to wait,” concurs Devorah, a born-and-bred Israeli who ended up marrying an American. “At twenty, I wasn’t ready to hear about an American, and my husband would never have gone out with an Israeli. We both had to wait ten years to get to that stage.”

Ariella says that various changes in her life in the previous year played a role in helping her get engaged. “I’m very analytical. I would analyze all my dates, and decide, well, if this happened, then it must mean he’s not the right one — and I’d close the door. Even when I was dating my husband, I did this at first, but what helped me get past this was telling myself that Hashem’s in charge.

“The fact that I was about to make aliyah played a big role. I was doing all this hishtadlus to finalize aliyah plans even while dating, and with both of these situations going on at once, I felt like I was doing something that Hashem wants, but I didn’t know which. So I just said, ‘Hashem, You lead me in the right direction.’ I learned to relinquish control. It was this realization that helped me let go and finally get engaged.”

Miriam says, “I think that every one of my friends achieved some kind of personal growth — some on their own, a lot with the help of dating mentors. Once that growth happened, they were able to get married.

“Personally, I came to a point where I was really depressed. Then I heard a shiur from Rav Ezriel Tauber, who spoke about how Hashem puts you in a certain nisayon. You can daven to change it, but you can also accept that that’s what’s best for you. That gave me a lot of relief, that I can accept who I am. That was my first Rosh HaShanah that I didn’t daven out of desperation. Right after Succos, my husband was redt to me.”

The Making of a Crisis

It’s a much-discussed topic in frum circles today, and those most deeply involved have a lot to say. Some like to blame the singles, some the shadchanim, some the schools or the media.

“Most shidduchim for older singles are made through family and friends, not shadchanim,” avers Devorah. “Most shadchanim don’t want to deal with older singles.”

Miriam recalls shadchanim “who badgered you, and those who never bothered to meet you but would then call with ridiculous suggestions and give you an earful if you said no.”

However, they agree that there are dedicated shadchanim who can work wonders.

“There are a lot of shadchanim who don’t do things properly,” admits Chevy Weiss, a popular shadchan who lived in Jerusalem for many years and is currently based in Baltimore. “Some shadchanim think that singles should agree to go out just because a match has been suggested. She’s tall, he’s tall — it’s perfect. And then if the single says no to the suggestion, she can earn an unfair reputation as being picky.”

But, she says, it’s a two-way street. A lot of singles also have unrealistic expectations.

“There’s a high burnout rate for shadchanim, especially those who are not doing it for parnassah. They think, “You want me to give up my time with my family, and after all my efforts, you refuse simply because he is a redhead?!”

Mrs. Weiss believes that a lot of her success as a shadchan stems from her being open with those she sets up. “They know I will be very honest with them, and because of that they trust me.”

In her perspective, the biggest problem in shidduchim today is that people have a lack of emunah. “They say, in effect, I have my long list that I won’t compromise on, because I know better than Hashem what’s good for me.”

Contrary to popular perception, she declares that she has lists of lots of good boys. However, sometimes girls are unrealistic about what they’re looking for. “You can have an unmarried woman of forty who is still looking for what she wanted in seminary twenty years ago.”

Rabbi Skaist cautions that we as a society tend to get carried away in our zeal to point fingers.

“Everyone has an opinion [about the cause of the shidduch crisis] but does anybody really know?”

According to Rav Mattisyahu Salomon, shlita, Hashem has sent this as a unique nisayon for our generation, and we are all responsible to bear the burden of this decree.

Starting Their Families

The experience of being an older single doesn’t end at the chuppah. Starting a family years later than most women in their communities can bring with it its own set of challenges.

“The disenfranchisement doesn’t go away,” says Miriam. “Your friends’ kids are finishing high school while you’re looking into preschool.”

Devorah puts it in stronger terms. “The older single is punished many times. In the beginning of my marriage, I felt it even more. I had much more life experience than young wives, but girls my age had seven or eight kids.”

Rivkah brings up the practical angle: “At thirty-one, I didn’t feel any challenges. Now, however, with young children at age forty, I feel the physical tiredness!”

On the other hand, Miriam feels that she has certain advantages in being an older mother. “I have a different appreciation for my children. I took off eight months when my son was born. I was able to do this because I already had a good job and an established reputation. Certainly a twenty-one-year-old doesn’t have that luxury. I’ve also had a lot of years to see other people’s chinuch methods, to learn what works.”

If They Knew Then …

Had they known at age twenty that marriage would take longer, would they have done anything differently?

Rivkah reflects, “I would have saved more money. I would have loved to have been able to go to my parents when I got engaged and say, ‘Here’s some money.’”

She adds that she sees a problem today, of a lot of girls out of seminary just “marking time.” They assume they’re going to get married any moment, so they don’t do what they need to develop themselves.

Chaya* echoes this sentiment. Looking back on her single years, she is grateful in retrospect that she had that time to grow. “I was teaching and had all the extra time necessary for my students that my married counterparts did not have. I feel that I was able to influence my students in a unique way due to my single status. It may not have been what I would have chosen straight out of seminary, but in hindsight, I am happy it worked out that way. Now, when I’m a stay-at-home mother, I feel fulfilled knowing that I had those years of influencing the klal, and I use those same skills I gained then to influence my children.”

“It would have been really hard for me if I knew in the beginning how long it would take,” Ariella responds immediately. But she adds, “I would not have done anything differently. You just have to keep in mind that any positive thing you do while single will ultimately help you have a better marriage.”

“We always said, had we known when we would get married, we would’ve relaxed a bit,” says Miriam, “but I think had I known exactly how long it would be, I would have panicked.” She pauses and contemplates, “A woman has a need to give, and if she isn’t yet married, she needs to find another outlet for that.”

She relates a dvar Torah that she heard from one of her high school teachers, about the two names given to the first woman: Ishah and Chavah. Chavah means the mother of all living things, and reflects the woman’s role as wife and mother. But Ishah is parallel to Ish, and is unrelated to her role in a family. Ishah refers to a woman’s duty to develop herself in her own unique tafkid. And, the name Ishah appears in the Torah first. Before developing the role of mother, she must develop herself first.

One thread runs through all these responses: Hashem creates every person’s experiences. If He places a girl in the situation of being single, it’s obvious He thinks there’s what to gain from it. We are all Hashem’s daughters, single or married. Utilizing this time to truly serve Hashem is an investment in the eternal future.

*names and identifying information have been changed

The Experts Speak Out: Dating Tips for the Older Single

From Chevy Weiss, shadchan:

• When checking out a prospective shidduch: DO ask about his or her middos, past and present. DON’T feel the need to investigate every detail of his past history (particularly with baalei teshuvah), and nix accordingly. “If someone is not a mentsch at twenty-five, there’s no reason to expect it will be rooted out at thirty-five. But if someone was a little wild when he was younger, he could have changed.
• “No matter the age, people need someone to mentor them through dating. The difference is, younger singles have their parents to serve that role.”
• On the first two dates, don’t talk hashkafah. These should be getting-to-know-you dates. By the third date, if you’re feeling more comfortable, attracted, and compatible, then you can start talking about more serious issues.
• After the first three dates, you should have to justify saying no, not saying yes. It generally takes 3–4 dates to feel that someone has potential.

From Maxine Freedman, life coach:

• Dating is a spiritual process — it takes inner work. Make a “gratitude list” of ten items each day. Work on your bitachon.
• Develop your middah of chesed; learn to be a giver. Ask yourself: What are you doing for other people? It’s preferable for singles to have a roommate than to live on their own. This way, they can learn to deal with different personalities.

(Originally Featured in XXX Issue XXX)