How to Stay Sane While Dating: XIII

Han and I constantly agree on one thing: Whilst single, being single was the least difficult part. After all, in the cosmic scheme of painful circumstances, being single ranks sort of low.

What was difficult was people.

The community rises to the occasion for issues. Sick people get Bikur Cholim. Infertile couples get organizations to assist. Children flirting with the line have organizations too, which usually involve unconditional love.

Single people get "You're too picky."

In terms of the blame game, while there are those who can maneuver their feet into their mouths with acrobatic grace, it is not considered socially acceptable to hound ill individuals how their condition is "their fault." Some may thoughtlessly ask a childless couple, "How many children do you have?" 

Yet singles are special. For "their own good," they are castigated by all and sundry, stranger and friend, family and quasi-relative, as to what they are "doing wrong." 

I was upbraided by a relative that I was single because I didn't date online. I was told by a woman I had just met by a wedding that "Don't be hung up on looks," after I had simply told her my name.  I was told, repeatedly, to settle, settle, settle. Whatever that means.

Then, oh God, the shadchanim. These supposedly well-meaning but misguided folk believe that their self-proclaimed status gives them right to harass and terrorize. Polite "no thank you"s are meaningless in their sphere. Then their personal opinions about one's appearance. Yes, yes, I'm tall. Sadly, I can't shrink in the wash. And the makeup stays.

But what really gets my goat? 

The knowledge that if I had married at an appropriately youthful age, I would have been no different. I would have sat at my kitchen table with my husband, shaking my head forlornly at so-and-so's "pickiness."

Empathy is something we can all try to achieve, but it is still hard to understand the situation another is in. Yes, my heart twists for you, but um, not quite sure how it feels . . . 

Before Ma's illness and passing, my empathy was certainly of a different caliber. Now it has achieved a greater status, a comprehension, a meeting of minds. I now know what it means, the heaviness in the chest, the despair, as life as we know it vanishes, and a new reality begins. 

So I can say, one good thing that has come from my 10+ years of dating . . . I have achieved true empathy for all those that, when I was young and stupid, I blamed for their plight. 

It's an opportunity. See the pain of others.