LB – what happened was that the shadchan called me up and told me she had a shidduch for me. She told me that she thought he was matim for me for 2 reasons:
1. His age (he was about 10 years older than me)
2. Even though he thinks that he’s Chareidi, he obviously isn’t because he works.
So I said to her, “I’m not sure that working makes someone not Chareidi, but if your basis for the shidduch is that he is not Chareidi, that’s not a good basis because I am Chareidi.”
So she asked me, “Where are you living now?”
Since I had previously been living in at home in a not-Chareidi neighborhood, I thought that she was going to tell me that I’m not chareidi because of where I live. So I davka told her that I’m not living at home anymore, I am living in ______. Since ________ was a Chareidi neighborhood, I thought that would prove that I’m Chareidi, but instead her response was, “If you don’t live at home, that means you’re not Chareidi”.
This conversation happened many years ago in another lifetime and doesn’t really matter anymore. You are right that if someone is self-confident about the fact that they are Chareidi, these things will be less of a problem. The problem is that at the time, I wasn’t sure what category I fit in, not because I didn’t know who I was, but because I didn’t know what the categories meant.And that made things very hard for me. I don’t recommend moving to Israel if you don’t know what the categories mean and what category you are. I used to be very anti-label, but over the years, I have come to realize that they are necesssary in society today.