Dating Today

 I have said from the very beginning that real married life is nothing like dating life. You don’t go out to dinners at expensive restaurants or cute cafés once or twice a week, no long walks in the park or maybe a carriage ride in Central Park, no going miniature golfing, no going to axe-throwing locations (it’s a thing now). Now you have work, errands, and responsibilities. Not that the romance is over, but now real life starts and you have to fit the romance into real life – which can be hard.

 I first learned in college how to waste space when trying to fill up the page with words so you can reach the goal of a ten-page term paper. Then I had one professor in graduate school who made it very difficult to fill up the page with nonsense. The instructions for her term paper were very specific: “Only one and a half inch margins on each side of the paper, use 12-point font in Times New Roman...” The instructions were so specific that I was finally able to understand why this professor had such a tough reputation: She actually wanted us to research and work! My friends and I felt sunk. Now we couldn’t stretch the paper with nonsense and 12.5 font, etc.

Now that I am spending more time than normal at home, how can I leave the apartment when my four-year-old has hours of Zoom classes throughout the day – sometimes with only 15-minute breaks between classes/reading groups? While I let her go and have fun in the afternoons, our mornings are ruled by the clock and Zoom. I zone out as my daughter is tuning in (I hope). The other day, my memory remembered something that it had forgotten, and I thought it would be a great topic for an article.

After I read the email that I am publishing here, I had my doubts that it was a real scenario. It just sounded too convoluted. But then I remembered all that has been told to me by singles and what I had experienced while single, and then thought that this may be true. I’ll let you decide.

 I received the following email from a woman who feels very passionately about what she writes of. Through the years, I have written and spoken about my time as a single frum woman. This woman is still in the parshah and has been in it for a very long time, from the sound of her letter. We communicated through email and I asked her permission to publish this letter. She agreed, on the condition that I not attach her name to any part of the letter. I agreed. I can honestly feel this woman’s pain. I, too, still have friends in the shidduch parshah who are now of a mature age and probably feel the same as this woman.

I know for a fact that I was not the only mother who did a happy dance when I entered the house after returning from carpool on the first day of school. Many others did their own version of a touchdown dance. Slowly but surely, the world is returning to a version of what it once was. I hate the term “new normal.” But that’s what it is. Traffic is back to what it was six months ago. People are slowly returning to work, eating out to some degree, shopping – and dating. Just as it has been six months since my daughter has stepped into a school, so, too, it has been that many months since people have gone out to date, not dated; I literally mean have gone outside to date. I know for a fact that during COVID people dressed for a date similarly to the mullet hair style – proper on top and pajamas, jeans, and slippers on the bottom (while the mullet is business in the front, party in the back). Many felt safe dating from the coziness of their homes. I’m not only referring to people with social anxiety disorders, but to those who weren’t comfortable dating in general. They got used to clicking on Zoom and dating.