Dating Today

In my last column, I published two letters involving the same people/persons. These emails are from two friends, a married one and one single. “Shayna,” the married friend, is worried that her single friend, “Chanie,” has given up on dating and marriage because she is the primary caretaker for her father. Shayna has gone so far as to contact Chanie’s siblings who live in Israel, accusing them of willingly letting Chanie give up her life and chance of marriage to care for their father. I’ll remind readers that Chanie was married in her 20s, but it ended in divorce. Chanie firmly believes Hashem’s plan is for her to remain single so she can fulfill the mitzvah of kibud av, and she is more than happy to give up dating (and socializing). Chanie wants Shayna to stop pushing her to date when she wants to concentrate on her father. Shayna wants me to tell Chanie what my thoughts are re: her not socializing, dating, and resigning from her job to take another that allows her to work remotely.

As soon as I read this email, I knew I would be using it in the column. I contacted the emailer right away. This email is me and I am this email. The same thing happened to me, sort of.

These two emails arrived hours apart from one another. I put the pieces together and contacted the emailers. It turns out that it’s the same people writing about the same issue. This is a first time something like this has happened to me. I had a long email communication with “Chani” and her friend “Shayna.” There is no right answer here. It’s part of the struggle we all live with, living our own lives and still fulfilling the mitzvah of kibud av.

It can be hard when someone new comes into your life, because if you hope to have a future with him or her, you will have to make some major adjustments in your life, as will the other person make changes for you. You need to decide if changing your routine and the way you “like things” is worth this new relationship and the future it may afford you.

Dear Goldy:

 I’ve been dating my boyfriend for a long time. The only problem I have is with his sister. She is such a negative, evil person. Yes, I wrote evil. She never has a nice word to say about anything or anyone – not about a simchah someone made, what someone wore any day of the week, good news she would hear about someone, etc. She constantly speaks badly of people. She doesn’t just talk about people; she’s vicious when she speaks about them. And, of course, she is two-faced, because out in public she is smiling and nice to everyone. I can’t stand it. I can’t be around someone like that.

I like to publish articles where I see a theme trending. As we all know, trends fade and then come back into style again. I see this theme pop up especially during the summer, or at least the past five summers.