I was having a nice little tête-à-tête with The Guy of the Tekufa's rebbe. I'd been dating this fellow for awhile and there were various things holding me back from moving forward with him. In a stab at gaining some clarity, I agreed, at his urging, to go speak with his rebbe. At one point during this meeting, I said something to the effect of, "If all this is bothering me, and specifically x, y, z, why should we continue?" He looked at me and said, "Because you're 22?"
First of all, when did 22 become "old," but more importantly, what does my age have anything to with signing up for a bad marriage? Do we "devalue" with age? I know that for me, the profile of a guy within the ±3 year range of my own age "gets more points," but then isn't age subjective? I guess perhaps the older you are, the less unmarried people there are in your age range, so it's more difficult for you to get a date or whatever. As if that's what this is all about. (Might I remind everyone that it only takes one.) Maybe he meant that as we get older we have less options and get more desperate, but is that a reason why I would marry the wrong guy? Honestly, if I just wanted to get married, I could have done that long ago. My goal is to stay married and have loving, trusting, healthy, communicative relationship with my spouse.
Fast forward a few years from the aforementioned incident, and I find myself in a situation in which I had a bit of a misunderstanding with a young man. If I'm remembering correctly, he had "said yes" but said given that we were not in the same city, we were going to wait until we were to go out. I thought I had until then (it was a specific time) to decide whether I wanted to date him or not. After all, neither of us were waiting for the other, but if we both happened to be available at the time we were in the same city, we would meet. Either way, he understood it a bit differently and felt like I had made him wait all that time for an answer (even though he was dating other people in the meantime). Thus, when we were in the same city and I expressed interest in dating him, he was a bit sour about the whole thing. He told me that he ended up asking his rosh yeshiva if he had to go out with me, as he already had given a yes, but he felt like I had made him wait, and such he was no longer interested. (Pink flag right there by the way –– sign of his ego.) As he relays the story, the rosh told him to find out if I really wanted to date him, or I just felt like I had to because of my advanced age. (I was 25.)
Again, I cannot logically understand why age has anything to do with either scenario. All I can come back to is the desperation theory. The older you get the more you want to date/marry whomever? For me, the older I get, the less I am willing to just date/marry whomever. I find that I am more selective, not less. With dating I would blame it on the fact that I'm now seasoned at this and can pick up on little details (which experience has taught me) that point to someone not being for me. In terms of marriage, the older I am, the less I want to compromise on things that matter for a healthy relationship, because if I've waited this long, would I really throw it away now for a marriage I would be unhappy in?
Really, age is just a number. Think about this, how old would you be if no one knew how old you were?
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