How Shidduchim Has Changed Within the Last Five Years

While it used to be about waiting by your phone for it to ring, hoping it would be someone with a suggestion for you, the ways shidduchim are brainstormed/redt nowadays has mushroomed quite a bit.

There are frum dating sites, databases with singles' profiles, singles' events, speed-dating, WhatsApp chats to share profiles and ideas, shidduch groups that meet in person to swap names and ideas, etc. etc. It's no longer about friends and family having ideas or even about meeting shadchanim.

Nowadays you can come across a resume of a guy you're interested in and ask someone to suggest it. I've been set up by single friends –– whether it was a guy they dated or someone they knew of through some other way. These methods give singles more control over getting a date. An improvement, right?

I'm not so sure about that.

Singles events and speed-dating have their own pitfalls (read about that here). And, my experience with someone random getting ahold of my profile has been entirely negative. Often the suggestions have just been off, and I can politely decline. It is annoying to have to look at each suggestion with the perspective of trying to figure out why the name came across my inbox and if there's anything there that makes sense. I do it though, especially if it comes with a "yes." I feel like this is my hishtadlus. (I'll still "say no," but I always have a good reason.)

However, this week someone added me to a database without my permission. With my picture. With my cell number and email address. My phone was blowing up all week with suggestions. Really irrelevant ones. I felt very invaded.

I had people bullying me when I declined their suggestions.

"What do you mean you won't go out with a guy 12 years older than you? You would be lucky if he agreed to date you. You're not good enough for him anyway."

"So if his profile doesn't say anything about him and you don't know if he's for you because of it, call his references and find out."

"You need to give me a reason why he's not for you. I need to know who to suggest. Do you want to get married?"

"You need to change your blurb to say x, y, z. Otherwise he's not for you." (The woman asked if I would go out with someone learning and in school and I told her I would consider it. She said I need to change the part about me wanting someone working or in school who is kovea eitim to just say I want "someone learning and in school.")

Like, OMG. Leave. Me. Alone.

I don't like this someone random setting me up thing. I have enough suggestions from people I've met, and those aren't always on the mark.

So, while we've created these situations to expand exposure, they're not always helpful. I think I'll go back to following up with the shadchanim I have met, or the friends and family that do know me. Some of them still make comments about the guy I'm looking for not existing or that people who aren't married are just too picky, but at the end of the day at least they're not like these people who I assume mean well but don't know basic human decency.

Since I've been belittled and humiliated multiple times in the last week, I'm going to give you a bracha that you should all have hatzlacha and bracha in your lives and yeshuos b'karov.  (At least something positive can come from this, right?)