by Rebecca Honig Friedman

I got some interesting — okay, disturbing — feedback to this post over Shabbat.
Two men, both in their thirties, one married and one single, agreed: the problem with dating older women is that they’re bitter from being single for so long. And, the single man added, they sometimes reveal their bitterness right off the bat, which is a major turn-off.

Now I won’t venture to guess whether single women in their thirties and up (which is, I think, when it comes to the “shidduch crisis,” how the Jewish world defines older) are more bitter than anyone else, but I can understand why they would be. It’s no secret that men are in control of the Jewish dating game, most obviously because there are fewer of them — men have a larger pool of women to choose from, women who are serious about getting married have to settle for whichever man they can get, or so goes the conventional wisdom.
I think most men see it this way, too, but that obviously doesn’t make them any more sympathetic to perceived “bitterness” on the part of their dates.

Thoughts?

Posted on June 27th, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized |