Don’t pretend you aren’t noticing the girl sitting next to you in the computer lab browsing through Kleinfeld’s website. Or the pregnant girl who sits right in front of you in Developmental Psychology snacking on pretzels all class. Married and engaged girls are everywhere on the Beren campus, and one of the hottest topics amongst the single ones is “The Shidduch Crisis.”
Whether you just got back from Michlalah and are sporting 40 denier tights or rock out to Lady Gaga at 1Oak on Thursday nights, we are all affected by the tremendous amount of pressure that plagues Orthodox 20-something girls everywhere: dating.
I, for one, have found the pressure here at Stern to be unbearable. It started during my year back from Israel when I noticed all the senior girls sporting wigs. Then, all my seminary friends starting getting engaged. It really hit me when I would come back to the dorms after class on a Thursday night to see girls younger than me going out on dates. Everyone around me seemed to be married, engaged, or dating – everyone except me.
My friends encouraged me to seek out shadchanim in the Five Towns, my mother told me to make sure I went to a new family every shabbos so that my name would be out there, and teachers told me to join YU Connects. I felt as if everyone felt sorry for me and I would be destined to live alone forever, in the Heights, with fifty cats.
By Pesach of my junior year I was completely worn out physically and emotionally. I was sick of agreeing to go out with subpar guys just because I had been told countless times that I was “too picky” and of blowing all my money on “date clothes.” I had only been dating for a year and I was on the brink of a mental breakdown. I made a drastic and unheard of decision: I decided I would stop dating. My friends thought I had completely lost my mind. My mother thought I was going through a phase.
I stopped focusing on my impending doom of eternal singledom and began to study for finals. I applied for summer jobs and volunteer opportunities. I began to reconnect with old friends and take up new hobbies. It was once I began focusing on myself that this whole concept the shidduch crisis seemed to vanish from my mind. And then it hit me: maybe there isn’t a shidduch crisis at all.
Yes, it is hard to meet people, especially your basheret. We all hear about that amazing, smart, and pretty girl who never found her YP Masmid, all the singles living on the UWS, and the divorced YU couples. But does this constitute a crisis, or just the ups and downs of life?
I think maybe we are the problem. We are too quick to unnecessarily dramatize things, to let our anxiety take control of us, and to draw ridiculous conclusions. Just because dating is frustrating does not mean that we are at the brink of the next apocalypse.
Women of Stern: stop obsessing about dating and marriage, and start focusing on yourself. Pick up a new hobby, join a club, sit with someone new in the caf. Do things that will help you develop your interests, social skills, and that will help you become the best person that you can be, instead of sitting on your unbearably uncomfortable bed in 29th street listening to chuppah music, and eating nutella by the spoonful.
Trust me, it will all work out.