A New Point of View

It's nice admitting when you're wrong. Seriously it is. It shows a certain amount of growth and imbue's us with a stronger sense of modesty. I meant to write this blog over a month ago but I've just been busy, unmotivated and focusing on "real" writing for school. You may or may not remember my previous blogs discussing my views on shidduch dating. To briefly sum them up: I wasn't for them. I felt it took the romance out of dating. It seemed to orchestrated, too industrial, too governed. I had this opinion because a) I'm a hopeful fool and b) Every date I ever had never spawned a second. Finally it happened. Around two months ago my Rebbe calls me up and says he has a girl that's "for you. Trust me, she's for you". Of course I was incredibly skeptical. If I'd learned anything from history it's that my dates don't go well. But I did trust my Rav- he does know me quite well, and more importantly knows what type of women I'm into (plus he rarely calls me with a shiduch possibility). I figured, what the hell? I spoke to the girl on the phone a bunch of times and it went really really well (too well perhaps). We set a time and place to meet (and for the record, I had no idea what she looked like- talk about a pair of beysim huh?). She showed up. We met. Everything was still a go. We ended walking around the city for 4 hours. It was a great night. I'll take out all the substance and overall description that I could fuse into this and just say that we ended up going out 4 times and then it ended (I won't go into the reasonings for that-not the doing of this post). Don't worry, I'm fine. But the real point is that I realized something incredibly important: the whole "How We Met Story" isn't nearly as important as Hollywood makes it out to be. Sure it's always enlifting when we hear a story about 2 people going horse-back riding down the beach, and when their horses pass the girl is thrown from hers and the guy catches her and they live happily ever after. But of course that's crap. Or at least unlikely crap. (Theres also unlikely non-crap, like "The Notebook", as well as likely non-crap like "When Harry Met Sally"- minus the end where Billy Crystal is running through Manhattan on New Years Eve).
The truth that I realized is that a great beginning is incredibly minor to a real relationship. It's everything that comes after that really matters. How you get along, do you have similar goals, can you rely on each other, do you wake up in the morning happy to be with them, can you function together and help each other grow. These are the things that really matter.
I get the whole idea of the "Hunt", and how it's exciting to win a girl over. But that can still be done with a set-up, there's just a lil less surprise at the onset. Dates 2,3,4,5, etc... can still have high doses of romance and intrigue.
There's really no shame in being set-up, especially when it's done by someone you trust. Around the same time I was set by my Rav, I actually set up 2 of friends who had never met. It felt like a crazy but compelling and fitting match, and as it turns out it was (so far blee eyen hora). They weren't opposed to being set-up, in fact they were all for it (I was sitting next to the girl at a wedding and she asked if I knew anyone for her. I took out the phone, went through the names and it was right there- I called him up 10 minutes later, and you get the idea).
Yom Kippur came around- I had a truly invigorating davening. And at the end of it I was at peace with myself. The week before I was a bit of a mess, but then everything seemed to click. It was as if I was a lone tree caught in the middle of a tornado, but the calm settled in, and I was still standing. So now I have peace of mind, I can't say that I'm truly happy in life, but things are good, and for that I'm thankful. And I'm even open to the idea of being set up again.....so long as I see a picture :)