Last week I read the best story ever in Family First. It is the most thorough account I have ever read of what it is like to be in shidduchim for a long time and hear a million voices doubting you and making you doubt yourself.
I was told it wasn’t smart to trust my gut and that maybe I didn’t know what I really needed. I was assured that as a wife, I could mold a guy into the husband I wanted, so I should overlook the “non-essentials” that were bothering me. I was instructed to give the guy one more chance because perhaps he wasn’t fully himself and I didn’t really get the opportunity to know him. I was informed that the reasons I provided for saying no were invalid, and that if I really wanted to get married, I should see it through to the end (which usually meant dating until the guy said no). I was advised to tone down my personality, to not share all I’d accomplished because guys found me intimidating.
And so much more. So, so much more.
I learned to doubt my intuition, blame myself when something didn’t work out, and swallow veiled insults dressed as constructive feedback. I turned myself into a pretzel trying to do what was “right.”
Thank you, anonymous author (I was told the name given is a pseudonym) for writing this all down and sharing it with the world. You know, one of the strategies we tell people who are being emotionally abused is to write down exactly what they are experiencing so that later, when their abuser makes them doubt their reality, they have a written account of what took place. I feel like, in some way, this article was like finding that written account of what I experience in shidduchim (and I’m much younger than the author was when she got married). I’m not the only one who has heard these messages over and over, that make me doubt myself, that make me feel like the most unreasonable, high maintenance, picky and demanding dater ever? You mean these voices aren’t only yelling at me, but maybe you, too? And they’re not based in reality? And I don’t have to listen?
I reassessed the way I viewed my hishtadlus. I recognized that doing the “right” thing wouldn’t guarantee I’d get married. There are far too many men and women who do everything society dictates as “right,” and yet remain unmarried…If I wasn’t finding my bashert, it didn’t mean I needed to automatically blame it on a lack of hishtadlus…I finally realized there is no one who can definitively tell you what your hishtadlus needs to be; this is where you must listen to your own voice, recognize your own needs, and develop a deep dependency on Hashem, trusting that if you do what is truly right in your eyes, Hashem will bring your salvation.
I think I am going to go and reread this story, and I hope you get chizuk from it, too!
