Dating Maze #234 - Marriage Avoidance Syndrome

Rosie and Sherry are so insightful and diplomatic and generous with their knowledge and advice. With the tiny amount of information most people reveal in the original questions, R&S must cover all imagined situations and they do it well. -------------------- I am a firm believer that most of us know ourselves very well. In this letter from Claire, she states that she doubts she will ever be ready for marriage. In her mid- 20's and never having the feeling to be forever close to any young man she knew, I believe her statement that she doesn't want to be married. She surely has been in the company of other young men and women since she was 16. It's possible that those feelings of being with a man are not there. ------------------------------------------------------- When we casually date, we can keep dating a person as long as we are comfortable, we can control the amount of closeness, and we can quit seeing that person anytime we want. When you marry, you are together 24/7 with your husband and intimacy is required. There are many women who don't have those feelings of closeness toward men.

the high rate of divorce, and I don't blame people for feeling this way at all. The key is not to the fear paralyze you, but to teach you what to look for in a shidduch.

I'm sorry if I misundestood you. I know not all with Aspergers can or should be married. I agree that we are too hung up on money, looks and yichus-we expect perfection. I'm sorry it is difficult for you.

Miriam, since in shidduch situation, men are in greater demand than women, your Aspeger's rules you out, and Anonymous' husband does not. I hope I didn't offend you. Overweight, diseased, older, smoking men get routinely matched with younger healthy goodlooking women. It's a market thing, sorry. I am 30 y o in excellent shape, and got recently introduced to 50 (fifty) y o with beer belly. I was the only one shocked.

Not true! Your husband is not like me or he would not be married. You misunderstand me. I said everyone is different. Some people with Aspergers and past abuse can get married and some can't. I'm glad your husband was honest with you about his condition. He did the right thing. I'm glad to see that there are some honest people around. It is good that your parents were able to support your brother to marry until he finished university, but not all parents are able to do this. Marriage is definatley good and a very important mitzvah for those who are able to do this. My doctor says I might possibly be able to marry if I marry someone who also has Asperger's, but nobody seems to know anyone with Asperger's. I did see someone for a while who had Asperger's but he was much less suitable for marriage than I am. I had to stop shiddukhim because all the rejections were affecting my health. I just find everyone is hung up on Yikhus & money & they want someone who is in perfect health. I live in a country with a small Jewish population which only adds to the problem.

Great article and right on the money. Surviors of abuse can get therapy and work through their issues. I'm not saying that it is easy to, but doable. I also disagree with Miriam completely. My husband is just like her (Aspergers) and we have been married two years and have a six-month-old son. He was very up front about it before we got engaged. To the grandmother, yes, 18 is very young to get married but some are mature at 18 or 19. People should not let careers stand in the way of getting married or put off marraige in pusuit of a career. My brother got married between his second and third years of law school with my parents' and his wife's help.

I thought this was one of the authors' best-articulated articles to date (no pun intended). Also, I completely disagree with comments from the two previous posts. Any panic felt by girls is of their own making; they can choose to act differently, with self esteem and confidence, and when they do their bashert will probably appear. To the first person, I would say that until you put some humanity into your comments, you will continue to be critical and bitter. Jewish family life is not a convoluted corporate legal brief. Get a life!

My children married young - and happily. We simply refused to fall victim to the "shtick" surrounding the current shidduch scene and concentrated on being ourselves, not trying to meet false expectations, and those are the types of shidduchim we found for our children - NORMAL, nice people with normal, nice parents. You don't need to "play the game" - you need to daven.

Our children struggled financially without our financial support but a lack of "things" doesn't equate with a lack of a fulfilled life. All my children are in service-related positions (teachers, social workers, kiruv, medical field) and none were prevented by their early marriages from finding fulfilling careers. (Secret: I am their babysitter, which not only saves them money, it brings me joy and allows them to go about their day without a heavy heart, knowing that their children are being cared for by someone who truly loves them). I cannot give from my pocketbook, but I can give from my heart and from my time. Which, in the end, do you think they will remember, impact them, and they will benefit from the most? And by the way, my children are all very different from one another - all Orthodox Jews, but ranging from chareidi-yeshivish to Modern Orthodox. I can't honestly say one is 'better' than the other - they are all wonderful people whose daily avodah is to make a kiddush HaShem, and they are b'h largely successful!

To Sherry and Rosie, you go girrrls!!!

Unfortunatley not everyone is able to get married. Some people who have suffered abuse as children (wheteher physical, sexual, emotinal, psychological etc...) are often unable to get married. Sure they should have counselling, but such trauma does not go away over night and can take many years to deal with. Abuse is not something people can just get over and get on with their lives. Sometimes it takes many years for a person to work on their issues. Some people who suffered childhood abuse are able to marry, but not all of them are. Everyone is different and handles trauma differently. There are also people suffering from deppression and Asperger's Syndrome (High Functioning Autism) who are extremely difficult to live with and can not stand to be touched. They are also loners who are better living on their own. They require very little human contact and are happier to spend the evening at home studying or doing work on the computer rather than going out with friends.Obviously many of them are not suited to marriage. I think it is a shonda that many people with Schizophrenia are sent on shidduchim and married off to unsuspecting people who don't find out about the illness until after the khuppah. There is so much pressure to marry, that many people who shouldn't marry are going on shidduchim. People feel they must marry or they are not frum and are so anxious to marry they don't disclose mental health problems etc for fear of rejection. A few weeks into the marraige the truth is discovered and they divorce. This deception is a shonda and is not how Jews should behave. I have Asperger's Syndrome & my doctor (a very frum Jew) has advised me not to marry. Marriage is not for me. Many people worry that I'm lonley but I am not. Just because I am not married and not looking to get married does not make me any less frum then someone who is married with 20 children.
Marriage is not for everyone. For people who are able to marry it is a very important mitzvah. I just don't like seeing people pushed into something that they are clearly not fit for because of an illness or past trauma. Not everyone is marriable. It seems the frum community has some hang up about single people.

As the modern orthodox grandmother of several frum granddaughters I am concerned with the mindset of the teachers and parents and often the entire community that says marriage is more important than education and bearing children and raising a Jewish family is the most important what you should be centered on accomplishing. I see girls leaving seminary only one year out of high school and getting panic striken because they must start looking for a shidduch. Was the frum community always this way? I don't see the girls being allowed to mature in any way. Not everyone is ready to be a wife, mother, and often the bread winner when they are 18 or 19 years old. And what about the girls who have the will and determination and brains to become doctors or lawyers or accountants? Doesn't anyone encourage them to reach these goals? I feel worried and frustrated because I sometimes believe the girls think they must get married immediately after high school or seminary because what else is there to do! I do want my granddaughters ( the frum and the non-frum!) to be happily married - I am and my children are. I just don't want them to be pushed into it by circumstances before they fully understand the commitment and life they are embracing.

Marriage today is a contract with the state that has few operative terms and virtually no termination clauses. Women and, in particular men, face uncertainties regarding their childen, their fortunes and their reputations that are in the hands of strangers-people whose priorities are careerist and political. Back in the day marriage involved a community and its course was set by family, friends and Rabbis sympathetic to the couple and its children, and more predictable too.
Modern day marriage is in reality family law. Family law is system that has few defenders and many chronicalers of its disastrous self-serving and arbitrary rule. It's results are equivalent to a pogrom on the middle class.

Either we bring religion and community back into family law or bring marriage out of family law. The empirical data I've seen indicates that the latter, through various contractual agreements, is the favored path. Thus marriage advice, if there is an interest in children and propagation of the race, needs to include explaining options other than the dreaded family law that will allow people reasonable predictability and control of their lives in good times and bad.