One of my friends knows to expect a certain text from me every so often:
What am I doing wrong?
Nothing, you’re doing everything you can be doing.
There must be something I’m forgetting. Something.
No, you do hishtadlus, you go out, you work on yourself, you have people you talk to.
There must be another piece of the puzzle I’m leaving out. It doesn’t make sense.
It’s not happening now because it’s not your time yet. It’s nothing you’re doing or not doing.
And so on. You get the idea.
One of my cousins pointed out to me that she has yet to find a common denominator between all the “older” singles she knows. Not family, not education level, not socioeconomic status, not seminary, not body size, not personality, not geographic location, nothing. Another friend pointed out that if you’d make a list of every reason you think someone would struggle in shidduchim, you’ll find plenty of examples of people who had these reasons and got married quickly anyway. It’s almost as if it’s entirely individual and it’s all up to Hashem…
A few years ago, I took a self-development course for singles and the teacher asked us to visualize what we would have to do to be married within six months. (I’m older and wiser now, and I now know that for me, dramatically choosing a deadline doesn’t work and makes me feel desperate, and I’m not necessarily recommending it). So I thought of a guy I had said no to a couple years before after one date, and that someone had recently brought up again, and I decided to try again. I told myself that the reasons I had said no were not insurmountable and if I really wanted to get married I could choose to look past them. So we had two more dates and then he said no to me for the same reason I had said no two years earlier. And I wasn’t married within six months.
It’s possible that some people really know how to help other people get married, and they do see success with their methods. But even if there is some magical formula, nothing ever works for everyone. It just doesn’t. You could be doing everything right, and it doesn’t work for you. It’s like this in every single area of life (i.e. 95% effective, 98% placement…). Some people are just going to land on the other side of statistics because they have a unique journey. In all areas of life. So for anyone trying to diagnose the underlying cause for singlehood, please know that cause unknown is also an option.
