“golfish: You have a really awesome life! I like Jeruzalem too! I’d like to note that some of the challenge for older singles is living a meaningful life even when your life looks very boring. For example in Israel it’s very uncommon for a girl to leave her parents’ house before she is married (maybe because everything is so close, living separately seems like a strange step) You can imagine how it can be more difficult for a girl who lives at home to live her life in the present and not think constantly about getting married.”
There definitely are parts of my life that are awesome, baruch Hashem. I do have many painful challenges as well, but they are completely unrelated to being single.
Yes, I can imagine, because I lived at home for a year and a half after shana bet. And that was all people were interested in. Me, my education, my interests, my career- nah, that was all superfluous. The main thing was – nu, when are you getting married? People started setting up tehillim groups for me when I was 21…
Being that I did not want to get married then, I learned to block all that out and regard them with amusement and some pity – what a pity they thought that all there was to life for a girl was marriage. And I deliberately and consciously made sure to do things that would infuse my life with meaning. Life is not all about marriage, and there are so many things singles can do because they have the time and aren’t tied down to a husband’s schedule and the responsibilities of married life. I gotta say I embrace my singlehood – there is no way I could have had the career I have now, and love, had I gotten married right away, along with many other opportunities I would have missed out on.
(Oh, and I left the chareidi community (for other reasons) – I have to say that helped a lot.)