Op-Ed: Why I Might Never Get Married 

by Anonymous

There was once a person who would pray intensely to win the lottery. After years of his prayers going unanswered, he finally heard a frustrated voice from heaven: ”Could you at least go buy a ticket!”

I’m a Crown Heights single male pushing 40, and I aspire to be a Frum, Chasidishe person. I recently had a conversation with a non-observant colleague about our mutual dating lives. After describing how dating works in our community, he had an eye-opening observation: “You live on the planet with no women“.

I asked him to explain what he meant.

“On my planet “, he explained, “there are women. There are women on the street. There are women in the grocery store. There are women on the bus. There are women at the workplace. I can choose to approach one of these women and try to guess their interest in pursuing a relationship.

However, on your planet, there are no women. There are no women on the street. There are no women in the grocery store. There are no women’s on the bus. There are no women at the workplace.

Of course, technically there are. However, they may as well not exist because you’re not supposed to approach them.

But then there are these “scouts“ you call matchmakers who travel between these planets and suggest matches between their inhabitants to consider the possibility of marriage, and you are at the mercy of their time and their interest in helping you. That sounds like a very ineffective and inefficient system.”

I explained to him that we don’t want men and women mixing so we do indeed try to keep them on separate “planets” in our community. But I didn’t have a good response to his point that there does come an age where these planets shouldn’t be as far apart from each other if marriage is the objective. In his words, “Why would a community which values marriage and family so much make it so hard to get married?”

Truthfully, I don’t know what that age is, and I don’t know the appropriate way to go about it, but he got definitely got me thinking. 

Right now I’m relying on Hashem alone, because that’s all I have. I just hope that I’m not sabotaging any of His blessings by living on a planet with no women, while relying on those “scouts“.