I’ve written this article because it pains me to see so many people I know continue to make the same mistakes that I made over and over again in dating before I got married in January 2014.
I consider myself to be someone who successfully navigated the tough terrain of frum dating, and have a beautiful wife and an amazing marriage as a result. I am inspired to contribute to this blog for observant singles because I learned a few things along the path to the chuppah that I hope you will find beneficial and be able to apply in your own lives. Of course, what I have written in this article is strictly my own experience. Perhaps there are some things that you will identify with in your own dating life--and some things that you won’t.
The most frustrating and difficult aspect of my dating life before meeting my wife was that I was attracted to the wrong kinds of women. This does not mean that I was attracted to bad women--just those who were not good for me. I could be in a room filled with 100 people, and 99 of them would be right for me, but guess which one I would inevitably find myself drawn to and could not never imagine living without for the rest of my life?
For the most part, I was attracted to emotionally unstable people who were trying to find themselves, and despite their love for Judaism, found it very difficult to completely practice an observant lifestyle. Paradoxically, I was also attracted to those who were from broken families --and those who accepted each and every tenet of the “derech” with unflinching fervor and conviction.
I mentioned above that I stopped being frum for a number of years mostly due to the issues I was having with dating. This happened back in 2002; I first became observant in Israel in 1993, when I was 20 years old. Like many newly religious people, I was told right off the bat about the importance of getting married, of beginning a family, of perpetuating the Jewish religion. I was also told that out there somewhere, not so far away, my zivug (soulmate) was waiting for me. (She was in 8th grade at the time, living in Los Angeles.)
Everywhere around me, people were very excited and jumping around in this frantic search for their other half. I was one of them, and I think every week I met someone new who I was sure was the one. Nobody told me that perhaps I needed to mature a little bit more and get more settled within myself before I found the one.
Truthfully, I was unsettled for a myriad of reasons--and being unsettled is not the best foot to put forward if you are seriously trying to get married. It proved too distracting for me, and I am sure that women sensed it right away when they went on dates with me.
I was also terrified of getting married. I don’t think I would have outright told you this had we met someplace, or had I gone out on a date with you. I can’t imagine that working out so well for anyone--telling the person sitting opposite you that you are petrified of marriage.
I might not have communicated this with my words, but I most certainly did with my actions and my body language: Looking disheveled on dates, dating women with no plan of staying in the same city, and always being broke were my ways of communicating that I was very scared of getting married.
I didn’t grow up in a home where the marriage ideal was practiced to its best by my parents. I saw first-hand what could happen to people when they were in an unhappy marriage. Even though this is something that is being discussed more in frum circles, I still don’t think it gets the attention it deserves in the midst of this “Shidduch Crisis”.
I am inspired as a married man to write about these issues on a blog meant mostly for observant Jewish singles because I am guessing that anyone who is reading this blog has a desire to get married, and perhaps has had this desire for a number of years now. I am also supposing that you have experienced frustration, anger, heartbreak, confusion, intense and unnecessary drama and helplessness while dating and looking for the one. I know I did.
These feelings threw me off the derech once, and almost drove me to the point of insanity, until I returned to Judaism with a commitment to never leave again--no matter what--whether I ever got married or not.
I took five years for me to meet my wife from the time I came back to Judaism in March 2008. I most likely would have lost my mind over all of the craziness and insanity I saw, and even participated in, had it not been for a minor miracle. Over these five years, I had wasted a lot of time, money, and energy on relationships with women from all walks of Judaism--from “really excited but can’t commit,” to full-blown Chassidisheh types. But there was one common denominator in all of these relationships: me.
I realized that I first needed to become the person I wanted to marry before I would get married. This did not happen overnight, and I went through some pretty crazy relationship stuff, but I came out of each one with a new insight-- and a little closer to making myself into the person I wanted to marry.
After about one year of intensive work on myself, I realized that I needed three things in a woman for me to seriously consider marrying her: 1. I needed to be able to have fun with her, 2. She needed to have the same religious hashkafa (outlook/observance level) as me, and 3. She needed to have at least worked through some of her own issues.
This meant that I needed to first be someone who can have a fun time on a date without feeling pressured right away to know if they were the one for me or not. This also meant that I needed to figure out my own hashkafa, and that I needed to have worked through enough of my own issues to understand my own patterns-- and to stop doing the things that didn’t work in order to focus on the things that did.
Megan and I were married on January 5, 2014 and our daughter Esther Shira was born January 30, 2015. She was named after Megan’s grandmother and my mother, (Zichronan L’Bracha). That baby girl is the most precious bracha I have ever received. And there is no way she would be here right now if I hadn’t taken it upon myself when I was dating to really, truly “become the person I wanted to marry.”
Mitch Karpp Bio: Megan and I are living in Los Angeles, CA now, where we both grew up. She is a social worker and I am a teacher. I have taught on three continents, four countries, and three states. I have taught children as young as three and adults as old as 80. I began teaching in Israel in 1999 and have continued doing so wherever life has taken me. I am now interested in helping observant Jews who have yet to get married, to experience success in this endeavor. Articles that I have written about dating and relationships have been featured on Aish.com. I will be 42 years old this summer.
