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Out at dinner with three friends, we sat over edamame and talked. It all felt very “Sex and the City,” and I wondered which of us was Samantha. (If it was me, we were all in trouble.)

Issues came up. And one of them left me more than a little baffled: the concept of soulmates. This midrash states that what God has been doing since the process of creating the world was making matches…which is great, but why do some people seem to wait endlessly for their matches? Is it that they themselves, or their soulmates, aren’t ready in some way to “receive” their counterparts? Or is it a question of merit?

Is there only one soulmate for each person, which makes it next to impossible to believe that the two life paths will overlap enough and at the right time in order to achieve the actual meeting that leads to a lifetime commitment? Or are there several potential soulmates for each person, which can lead to confusion if you commit to one soulmate and at some future time meet another one?

Is the word soulmate just code word for “person with whom you are sufficiently compatible and to whom you are ready to declare a commitment”? How does the 50 percent divorce rate inform one’s understanding of the concept of soulmate? Can you fall out of soulmateship?

The more questions I ask, the more questions I have…

What do you think?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the “Ask E-Cyrano” blog, authored by Evan Marc Katz. He’s posting about online dating: everything from profile contents to poor pictures. You know you have opinions, so be sure to visit and comment, and tell him you’re a FOE. That’s “Friend of Esther.” (Oh, wait. You’re right, that could get confusing. Maybe just say you heard about it from JDaters Anonymous.)

Welcome to the “first date” of Mars & Venus Go To Shul, the first Jewish dating blogcarnival that I’m aware of…next carnival should run the first week of February, so submit entries here.

Want to “chaperone” a “date” for M&VGTS? Email me and let me know…

You Don’t Look Like Your Profile (Online Dating)

P-Life, wearing his second blogging hat over at Orthodox Jewish Single Bloggers, talks about the defrumification of Frumster (full disclosure, he mentions my article from the Jewish Week) and proposes a “Frumster Lite” site for the “differently observant” (which was actually my term). Joe, a twentysomething SJM, is jumping back into the dating pool and has invited the world at large to join him as he creates a Jewish dating blogring. And Hilary at Superjux gives you a rundown of this week’s Jdate contenders. (Not that they’re really contenders. But you’ll see what I mean.)

Separate Seating (religious issues)

Nice Jewish Guy (who’s divorced and looking for love on Frumster) presents his take on the hotness of Tznius as he tries to figure out why he’s been leaning towards dating profiles of women who wear skirts and not pants; and then worries about whether his open-mindedness to both skirts and pants sends a confusing message to the women reading his profile. Draydel reflects on the experience of being single at Stern College and what it has to do with the shidduch (matchmaking) crisis.

What’s important in shidduchim (matchmaking)? How many kids you’d like to have? Whether you’ll cover your hair when you’re married? Or is it middos? Isn’t a person more than a sum of items on a list or resume? Sweet Rose deliberates. Annabel Lee wonders similarly—who is she, anyway? Is she her resume? That is a picture of a person she don’t know? (Verb agreement sacrificed here for a Chorus Line lyric.)

Mars and Venus (interactions with the opposite sex)

JDater Joe vents about a Kiddush-time interaction with a girl he had once been interested in., while Drew meanders through a discussion about what it’s like to live in the Heights among “so many young good-looking ladies.” JeruGuru goes through halakhic heartbreak, unwittingly opening himself to the criticism of others.

Apocrypha (miscellaneous)

In a long-lost post, Lyss talks about the Bad Jewish Girl in a post titled “Kosher Sex My Way.” And All My Ex-Boyfriends (which for me, would be an extremely short blog) writes about this friend she has who might want to be more. Or, he might be gay.

And, in a blatant case of editorial privilege, I’m including a link to my latest article in the Jewish Week’s Directions guide, which deals with the ever-so-topical “What to Expect When Your Friends Are Expecting.”

If you’ve enjoyed this premiere edition of M&VGTS, I encourage you to volunteer to host the next edition, the first week of February. Email me and let me know you’re interested. And don’t forget to submit your entries for the next edition: submissions due by January 30.

With good dating experiences and blog traffic for all…

This may seem self-indulgent, but I just realized that I am an amazing letter-writer. I say things I might never be bold enough to say in person (although I find myself growing bolder as I get older, which could be argued as both a positive and a negative), and I phrase things carefully, deliberately placing words in a way that would take others weeks. I do it in minutes. It comes naturally to me.

The epiphany of epistolary prowess itself aside, I have also come to realize that I’ve been wasting some wonderful letters on the wrong people. You could write or perform in the best play in the universe–a brilliant amalgam of pathos and inventive genres–and if there’s no one in the theater, it’s just the tree that fell in the forest and was never perceived to have made an actual sound.

So in a month marked by expressions of regret and half-intended resolutions not to repeat mistakes, I find myself crafting a challenge for the next twelve months: not to waste epistles on the unreceptive, or well-fashioned words on ears that resist their cadences. Letters will still be written, within the confines of my journals or eternally ensconced within drafts folders, because in most cases, the writing of such missives is an emotional purge for a wounded heart; sending them into the world yields unsatisfying responses, if any at all.

A resolution so declared will likely be transgressed within a few weeks. But if I manage to resist that long, perhaps that’s hope that I’ll be able to kick the habit, for good.