Dating Today

Dear Goldy,
The issue I’m writing about isn’t unique, so I’m hoping you or your readers will be able to help and advise or give me some chizuk. It’s not complicated. It’s a story as old as time (I know you like Disney).

I have very strong feelings about helping singles and have been vocal (and literate) about that as well. Throughout the last year, I took it upon myself to do more than just write about singles, the hardships of dating, responding to emails, helping a single (and marrieds no matter the age) laugh, providing chizuk… I took it upon myself to make it personal.

Dear Goldy,

Years ago, a girl wrote about how devastated she was that the guy she dated and liked broke up with her and later on ended up getting engaged to her cousin.

I was daydreaming the other day and a song popped into my head, thankfully it was not a song from Cocomelon. It was the words to one of Abie Rotenberg’s wonderful songs, an oldie but a goodie: The Shadchan. I remember listening to it when I was nine or ten, not fully knowing what it meant. My parents owned an ’87 Buick, not a ’67 Chevy. But I pictured a younger version of my father driving down long mountain roads (I only knew from going up to the country back then) and then approaching the George Washington Bridge toll booths. I imagined my father going to my maternal grandparents’ apartment, taking my mother out on a date. Only when I was older did I fully understand the song and how it came full circle. Baruch Hashem, I’ve been lucky to live this long to see how everything is cyclical.

Again, I must break into my usual order of articles because of something that has caught my attention in the last week. It’s a good thing I don’t write a chapter of a novel each week, because then many of you would be annoyed that I broke into our regularly scheduled chapter “for this?” Yes, “for this” — because I think it’s important.

Dear Goldy,

I went out with Eli twice. I started not feeling well the night before our third date. Nothing major, but my head and throat were bothering me, and I was very tired. I called Eli in the morning and told him I may have to cancel the date because I wasn’t feeling well. He told me he’d call me later to see if I was feeling better, and I could decide then; he didn’t want me to cancel in the morning when I might feel better later in the day. Fine.