"Each time, I really think this is it and I’m sure I’m going to make this one work, but at the last minute, I can’t go ahead with it"

Shani Leiman with Zivia Reischer

"This is the fourth time!” The woman on the phone was distraught. “The fourth time this is happening! My son is about to get engaged, and he’s going to walk away. Again!”

She took a deep breath, and then continued in a lower voice, “There’s something wrong here. I didn’t want to admit it for a long time, but there is definitely a problem.”

Shimmy was already 34, she told me. “I’ve bought four kallah bracelets and returned three of them. I can’t believe I’m going to have to return this one too.”

The last time this happened, she shared, was particularly upsetting. “My husband and I were on vacation — just a short getaway, which we desperately needed. We’d been caring for our elderly parents, they had been in and out of the hospital, and life had been very, very stressful for a long time. It took herculean efforts to arrange coverage so they would be cared for while we went away, but we did it.

“Then Shimmy called and told us he was ready to make it official. We cut our vacation short and flew back home.” There were layers of pain in her voice. “Don’t think I hadn’t asked him a hundred times if he was absolutely sure this time. He insisted that this was it. But by the time our plane landed, it was over. He couldn’t go through with it. He said it ‘didn’t feel right.’ ”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was so angry at him. How could he do this to us? To her? To himself? That was three years ago. And now it’s happening again!”