Tu B'AV: Choices we make and Marriage

Shidduchm are hard, like splitting of the Red Sea.  It is a difficult "parsha". Much suffering, pain and vexation! Many find their partner easily and some do not and some never.

Many things contribute to this difficulty. Sometiems it is a matter of bad luck, of unfortunate circumstances. Sometimes it is psychological blocks.  At time, there are too few choices.

There are times when it is because there are too many choices, none of them exactly "right". Having too many choices and thinking that one needs not "settle" can be a barrier. 

One can't have everything in people.  Every person and every shidduch prospect has positives and negatives. A tsadik thinks of marriage as an opportunity to give to someone else, to contribute, to build. A tsaddik looks for a person to whom to give. A lesser tsaddik looks for someone with whom to build and with whom to grow. Most people unfortunately  look at marriage as an occasion to take and to gain.

In our modern world, we have learned to expect to have everything and to give up nothing. Sometimes we want a dashing, handsome and charismatic captain who would walk down the plank and sweep us off our feet.... and he should be carrying a Gemara under his arm too. Certain qualities go together and others do not. A brave person can be rash and a frugal one can be overcautios. A studious, intellectual type may be naive and emotionally unaware; not that a proper partner cannot develop the  qualities that are weaker, but they are not present at the inception.

People who look to take and acquire will often be unable to see a prospective partner clearly and even if they do, what they want may interfere with them choosing what they need.

In the past, people expected less. Often they got less too. Were there more happy marraiges then? I don't know. Were there fewer? I don't think so.

Tommorow is Tu B'Av. Here is a humorous but seriously important reflection on this question from another culture.

Caveat! There is nothing untsniusdig in this clip but it is from a different culture.

Comments

[Cammie Novara]

"Much suffering, pain and vexation! Many find their partner easily and some do not and some never." You're totally right.

[Pierre]

For some scholarly context for how shidduchim "were" and are, Shaul Stampfer is brilliant of recent, as well as Freeze's "Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia". Takes a lot of stress off of young peoples hearts, minds and shoulders to know people married older and divorce rates were higher then (as were remarriage rates) - and higher THAN the collective revisionist "zachor" remembers - and people married and divorced for many of the same *choices* in the "untainted" past as now - and that shadchanim were often brought in once a couple was dating 'steady' to lend social status to the match, where shadchanim were for those who could afford them (which is an easy way to rack up the "hundreds" of shidduchim "rit" by the great matchmakers of old - when they would need only "sign off" on them publicly), and most importantly, happy marriages were often happy for the same reasons as now that people have difficulty articulating before they met as after because it as Torah, a match FROM GOD is still left in our hands. and not all matches first made then or now are from God.