UWS

     The haven for religious Jewish singles is the UWS (upper west side, Manhattan) I lived there for a year in college, but not since. When I graduated college most of my friends moved to Brooklyn or Queens so that's what I did. By the time I really thought of moving to the UWS as an option I had been working for a few years and was able to support myself without the help of my parents. If  I would have moved to the UWS  I may have needed some supplemental contributions from my parents. I liked being able to pay my own way so I opted to stay in the outer boroughs.
     Eventually I could afford living on the UWS comfortably if I had roommates, but in the end I opted to use that type of rent to pay for an apartment sans roommates. Why pay so much money to live with roommates? Even good roommates move on and then you are stuck struggling to pay the rent until you desperately search for a roommate you may not even like just to pay the rent.
       Some will say that it is worth overpaying to live on the UWS because there are so many singles there that it is likelier to meet one's bashert there. This is probably true. People like to delude themselves and say that few on the UWS marry because there is so much choice. That is not really true. Though there are many confirmed singles there I know many who have met and married their spouses because they lived on the UWS.  Unfortunately the only way that I could afford to live  there comfortably is if I had several roommates. After having lived in my own apartment for years this does not appeal to me at all, especially since there is no guarantee that this type of arrangement would be short term.  Whenever I had roommates, even good ones, it did not feel like it was really my apartment. I cannot say I really want to go back to that.
          If I had the money to live as I do now on the UWS  I do not want to live like a grad student at this point . I want to enjoy my life, enjoy my space. I  do want to get married, but I also realize that my life right now is my life and I can't keep living life on hold. I have friends who will say one should only live in a basement apartment until one gets married because it will be an incentive to get married. Maybe, but maybe you will just end up  being middle aged and living single  in a basement. That would really suck.
      

Degrees of Alone

     Being single doesn't necessarily mean being alone. One can be very alone with the wrong person. One can fill one's life with people so much so that one can forget one is single.
     When I was in my twenties I was  alone as I was single . Now I am single but I don't feel as alone as I used to. The difference is that though I am single I have cultivated friends who care about me and I care about them. True friends . Friends do not substitute for a spouse, but they are important. They are important to have even once one is married.
        Being single has forced me to work on myself  in a way that I may not have had to had I married when I was younger. I am not saying that I would not have preferred to get married when I was younger it is just that I recognize that being single has afforded me personal growth time that I appreciate. Time is time no matter what one's marital status is. It is important to make it meaningful. Or at least try to. 

true love vs a baby

    Years ago a friend of mine asked me if I would marry someone just to have a baby even if I would not really love the guy. I told her unequivocally  no.  I of course have a different quandary to share. Is it more important to you to marry the right person or is more important to you to have a baby. Obviously the right choice is to choose both. But... if you had to choose , which one would it be?
     I really love children and I have always desired to be a mother.  I also think that the best way to have a child is to be married when one has a child. I could have or adopt a child on my own, but I do not think that this is ideal. I also don't think it is right to marry just anyone to have a baby. Perhaps this will mean that I may never have a child. I guess to me it is more important to marry the right person than to have a child.
     

a perfect world

so many singles say that everything would be perfect if they were married. others say everything would be perfect if they were rich. some parents of small children can't wait until their kids were just a little older because they would get more sleep. everyone wishes that  they were thinner. it will better when the weather is a little warmer/colder. students  can't wait until they graduate. those on the job force are looking forward to retirement. those who live in apartments would love to own houses and those who own houses think that life would be perfect if only they owned a second home in florida/israel..

yes life would be better if all of these wishes would be fulfilled. it is important to have goals and things  to look forward to .  life is occurring right now even if it isn't all we had wished it  would be. we are alive. even if we were living all of our dreams right now we would find more to hope for and more to kvetch about. the secret to happiness is enjoying the gifts of life we have now because if one  appreciates what one does have in life one will always be happy. (easier said than done!)

right back to the start

i grew up modern orthodox. for a while i had a stint as left wing yeshivish and eventually went back to being modern orthodox. i am a bit more right wing than the way i grew up, but modern orthodox i am.
i have some friends who grew up in secular jewish families who were frum for awhile,,but went back to being less observant  over time.
its not that i think that no one can maintain spiritual growth, its just that often because one grew up one way, this is the hashkafah one feels comfortable with. the other common denominator is that when one remains single it is easier to through in the towel. some friends who were frum for awhile may have stayed frum had they married. since they did not it became harder to keep the faith. its not an excuse, but it happens. it is easier to grow spiritually with a partner.
then again, everyone has to find their place religiously. sometimes it is not best for someone to be really shtark. sometimes one is better suited for a more  moderate  form of judaism. if one is more extreme it could cause one to feel too stifled.
then again, its best to feel clear about one's  own  hashkafah before marrying . this may happen when one marries a little later and can actually be a good thing. then one will be ready to grow in the best direction  alone or coupled.

married bloggers

a lot of people blog when they are single and cease blogging when they marry. its just the way it is. perhaps they had more time when they were single so they were able to blog then. married people who blog seem to  be those who started blogging when they were already married. i think that if i were married i would still blog because i have been blogging for four years . but who knows. only time will  tell. hopefully.

prayers for a "crisis"

i have always loved the "blame the victim mentality" . you know, when someone is suffering and then someone justifies it by saying it must be their fault anyway. a shul burns down because well they just didn't daven with  enough kavanah there. a person doesn't have kids, well, they must not want any. a person is single, well they must not want to get married. granted, some or all of them may or may not be true, but consider another option. perhaps hashem would like to hear the prayers of those he loves. the avos and emahos did not all have easy going lives where everything they wanted just came to them. i always remember hearing that hashem made things not so simple for them because the prayers of tzadikkim are dear to him.
im not suggesting that everyone who is single is a tzadik, but perhaps its because hashem really wants to hear our prayers not just that he wants us to suffer or because we did everything wrong and poof we are single. there are too many singles out there for me to believe that . i believe that our prayers are dear to him.
we do have to make our effort to find a spouse, but i don't think that everything is in our hands . just because a person wants something so much and tries so hard to get it does it mean that that person will get that thing. this is where praying to a higher power ( hashem )  comes in.

engagement

when a friend gets engaged it is always bittersweet. im happy that they are able to move to the next step, but im sad because im never sure whether we will still be friends once they get married.
no matter which way it ends up, whether we remain friends or not i am still glad my friend is engaged.
of course i am envious of my friend if she is engaged, but this is good envy. it motivates me to take action and try to make it happen for myself  (though it hasn't come up with  any desired results...)
buts seriously , some people aren't envious of   their friend's engagements , weddings and children because they don't think they will ever have one. not hard not to be envious if your self esteem is that low.
other times it is easy not to feel envious because one knows how much ones friends went through to get to where they are.
yes, i am genuinely  happy for my friends when they get engaged its just that sometimes im sad for myself that i haven't gotten there myself and i guess gets worse every year that goes by because after all some people never get married . then again its good to know that some of my friends have gotten engaged and married so they don't have to continue going through all the singleness.

insecurities

when i was in my twenties i recall being a regular shabbos guest at a particular family's house. the wife was in her early thirties and the couple had five children. i had a friend who used to sometimes join me when i went for a shabbos meal at this family's home. my friend was in her early thirties and never married. once i when i was visiting this family without my friend and  the wife told me that she felt uncomfortable having my friend over because they were the same age and  that my friend was single and childless. it was an honest reaction but at the time i was taken aback. my friend should have been the one feeling uncomfortable but she was not. i think a lot of times the haves feel more uncomfortable about having than the have nots feel about not having.
several years later when i was in my late twenties, early thirties i remember visiting a former childhood friend who had been married for ten years and had five or six kids. when i went to visit her i remember feeling ignored. i didn't say anything because i just figured she was very busy with her kids and that sometimes its hard to concentrate on a guest with so many little kids  around. i also figured that i wouldn't be  visiting again any time soon because she seemed too busy to have guests. when she drove me to the monsey  bus stop  motzei shabbos on her own she apologized for not spending enough time with me during my visit. years later i visited this same friend in monsey and though she had some small children at the time her other children were older. i think that by then she adjusted to juggling her kids and having guests. this of course is quite a difficult task.
i realize that my being single can make people uncomfortable. even as a younger single it made my married friends feel uncomfortable which i thought was quite odd. in my twenties i always had the attitude that my bashert must be right around the corner and i wasn't worried about possibly always being the odd woman out.  i think that many people who are married with children unconsciously do this to singles. i think its because they feel bad for us and they don't quite understand it. unfortunately sometimes it makes them feel so bad that they don't want us around. which makes the situation worse . who wants to be excluded on the basis of one's lack of marital status?
i have a friend whose husband had cancer . he went out of his way to make sure people felt comfortable around him when really it should have been the other way around. people should have made sure to make him feel comfortable . after all  , he was the one with cancer.
i had a friend who would hesitate to tell their childless friends about her children because she thought that it would make them feel bad. personally i think they were just thinking of themselves. it made them feel uncomfortable that their friends did not have kids. well, no one wants to be the one that everyone is afraid to talk about  husbands or kids with. it makes a person feel even more left out . yes it does feel bad that others are fortunate and have families. it feels even worse to be the one everyone walks on egg shells around. there is always something someone else has that another would like to have. its far better to concentrate on what we all have in common than on what others lack.

the state of being married

it is no secret that tishrei can be a bit depressing for me as a single woman. my birthday  passes and then poof, the jewish new year as well as my personal  new year begin. good grief. and of course im usually off to visit easily married off relatives who are constantly giving birth. im very happy for them and i don't wish my lot upon them, but sometimes its a bit difficult to keep the perma smile plastered on my face.
some people think its a shame that there is such a pressure to be married as a frum jew and that people look at you as less than if you are single . some think that it should be okay to be single and frum and people should not feel that they should aspire to be married.  i think that singles are often looked down upon due to our status. especially women. what makes things worse is when one is over the magic age (use your imagination)  and then less people want to marry you. what makes it even worse is that not only are you stigmatized for being single one becomes stigmatized for not being divorced as well.
i personally would like  to get married. just because its not as easy for some to get married than it is for others doesn't mean that one should settle and say one will just remain single. i wish that judaism didn't treat singles like the orphan , the ger or the widow, but they do. the only way this will change is when those who have endured my lot marry but don't  have amnesia afterward. so often people forget to treat singles with respect even after having been single so long themselves. i guess they are just trying to fit in. its too bad though. the only people who can really understand what its like to be single and frum are those who have spent time being a frum single. if those of us who get to be married after a long journey of singleness remember what it was like to be single when you deal with those who are single the world would be a better place. frum judaism will always think its best to be married , but at least one wouldn't be shunned for being in a state one never wanted to be in for so many years in the first place.

true romance

we live in a culture that worships youth. the media mostly portrays young people as being the only age group that experiences true love. while i do believe that a young person is just as capable of love as an older person, i believe that true love is the love that has withstood the test of time. if you still love someone after parenting, various types of loss , wrinkles, possible illnesses , success as well as failure, you have really found true love. this is why i love the leonard cohen video of dance me to the end of love that i have just posted. elderly couples dancing together in front of their wedding photos is true romance. they love each other with every fiber of their beings . after fifty -sixty years of marriage they know exactly why they cherish each other.

deja vu

i went to a singles event last night and all i kept thinking was "haven't i been here before?"

not only had i been at many singles events in that location, many of the same singles have been at those same events i was recollecting. kind of like the twilight zone.

this is not the alternate universe i wish to exist in, but exist there i do.

i ran in to many i hadn't seen in awhile . i had hoped they had perhaps gotten married. then again perhaps they had . and then got divorced. one never knows. its like even if you actually escape these events for awhile, lucky you might get to be sucked back into this awful scene due to divorce.

i hope i will be lucky enough to find a lasting relationship soon so i don't get to forever keep reliving the same singles event replete with all of the same singles.

all the single people

according to the new york post this morning manhattan's percentage of single people is higher than any other city's in the united states. the average age of a first marriage for a woman in the u.s. is 25.6 and the average for a man is 27.7. the average age for a first marriage of a man or a woman in manhattan is between 30 and 34. the percentage of manhattanites who live alone is a little over fifty percent. the percentage of the manhattan population that has never married is fifty percent. no wonder im single! i work in manhattan.
i have ranted endlessly for years about how awful it is that all the frum singles come to new york , especially manhattan to find their basherts because nyc is a singles society. now it is in print. i didn't have to read the truth to know what it is. but it sure feels good to be validated. we are all affected by our surroundings whether we admit it or not. if you want to see the answer to the "single's crisis" look no further than the skyscraper next door.

would you rather?

would you rather have cancer than aids? would you rather be single than divorced with 3 special needs children? would you rather get married at forty and be childless and happily married for fifty years or marry at twenty, have four kids but be widowed at fifty? would you rather have psoriasis and no wrinkles or clear skin and wrinkles? would you rather have noisy neighbors and live in a safe neighborhood or would you rather live on a farm in new mexico? would your rather be single than married to tiger woods?
i really don't know the answers to any of these questions, nor do i want to. these are the types of incoherent things people like to ask singles when they kvetch about being single. when i kvetch i don't want a would you rather diatribe, id like someone to suggest someone appropriate for me to go out with or just just listen and not say anything. i would rather not be asked would i rather.

divorced is better???

often people will try to fix me up with a guy who is divorced and they will try to plug it by saying "hey at least he could make a commitment!" well, im still not convinced that its better to go out with a divorced guy than a never married guy.
alot of times the divorced guy has a truckload of baggage because he has kids. ive heard so many divorce stories that my head is spinning. i don't really know who to believe when i hear them. there is his side, her side and the truth. and of course you have to be hashem to know the truth.
my favorite divorce story is the one where the ex-wife was crazy. while this might be true, it also might not be. maybe he made her act nuts. who knows. i also love how the guys think that withholding a get is okay because a rabbi told them to. whatever. alot of the rabbis are anti-woman anyway. what do they care? meanwhile loverboy who is withholding the get is having a grand old time dating . but the rabbis said it was okay. good grief.
granted , single , never married men have their share of problems as well. they still think a scarlett johannson look alike is going to marry them even though they look like jack black. or they are fifty plus and think someone under thirty five will want to marry them.