"We will do our part for the shidduch crisis!" Han announces dramatically. "We spoke to our son! He is ready to start dating!" Han then plucks a babbling Anakin up from the floor, holding him aloft as Rafiki brandished Simba in the opening scene of The Lion King.
Yeah, we're both kinda snarky about this so-called solution to the so-called "shidduch crisis" (snort). Sure, let's have a bunch of immature boys date for the express purpose of putting some rando girl "out of her misery." That'll end well.
Hello? We aren't living in the shtetl anymore, when parents would arrange shidduchim with complete strangers and that would be that. No one is marrying blind, unless it involves a mail-order bride.
L'havdil, take Indian Matchmaking! Sima Aunty (matchmaker extraordinaire) just cannot get with the times. Granted, this season made a point to make her appear more human, even helpful, at times, but her disapproval at her clients' expectations can get tiresome. "Kids today! They don't listen to their elders!" Well . . . um . . . I'm not going to marry someone based on a random shadchan's "perfect on paper" suggestion . . .
If something isn't working, the go-to solution is usually "Well, back in my day . . ." Yes. That's how it worked then. Maybe. Generations aren't static.
OK, I married when I was a doddering decrepit, which I am not advocating. But looking back I see that I was not ready for marriage at 19. Definitely not.
Divorce is no longer the taboo it used to be. An older woman, who divorced after her children married, said she knew it was a mistake during the week of sheva brachos. "But I couldn't hurt my parents," she explained, and stayed miserably wed for decades.
There are too many stories I'm hearing of young couples who are either divorcing or choosing to stay married despite the difficulties. That's too much on young people.
I'm not saying that if they waited until they were older they wouldn't necessarily have ended up divorcing. Yet youngsters shouldn't be making one of their biggest life decisions based on "I just don't want to be the last person in my class to get married." Let them see more, experience more, and perhaps develop a little radar for red flags.
Again, a person can marry at 25+ and get divorced. But at least they weren't unexposed children when they made their choice.
Like Aleeza says (and I'm paraphrasing) "My job is not just to get you married. It's to get you stay married."
I got married this Sunday just gone, just two months short of my fortieth birthday, and I honestly think it was the right time for me. From this viewpoint, everything about our relationship, dating and marriage was bashert, even though it didn't necessarily feel that way at the time. Similarly, I wanted to get married years (decades) ago, but until I got my autism diagnosis in 2021, I just wasn't ready, although I didn't know that at the time. Once that happened, everything about the relationship happened about as quickly as it could, given the immigration bureaucracy that has to be gone through for a trans-Atlantic marriage.
ReplyDeleteMazel Tov! So happy for you. Exactly, when the wheels suddenly turn, then you can see the bashert-keit.
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