Group therapy in a blog.
Equal Time: Enter the Anti-Gump
Usually, we present the female perspective here on JDaters Anonymous. But I read this article by Matt Lipeles in the Jewish Journal and thought I’d share it with you, in the interest of equal time and for the purpose of discussion.
In the article, titled “The Love Impaired,” Matt writes:
But it really got me to thinking, what is love anyway?
I bet you thought I was going to answer that question, didn’t you? Well, I can’t. That’s the point. I don’t know. I’m 37 and single. I’m a relationship moron. I’m romantically impaired. I don’t know what I’m doing  at all.
(Matt, don’t worry. None of us know what we’re doing. Partially because everyone’s different. And partially because of John Hughes movies and Sex and the City.)
He continues:
But, before we go looking for solutions to this problem, maybe it would be worthwhile to take a look at past generations. Why was it so easy for them anyway? Maybe it was because they had matchmakers and arranged marriages. It used to be that your parents would arrange a match for you and, unless you found your intended completely repulsive, you married them. Boom. Just like that.
So Matt got me to thinking…would it be better/easier/more results-oriented for us to revert to a more antiquated system of relating, dating and mating? Then we could spend our time worrying about things other than dating and emerge from whatever bubbles of insecurity that we’ve been hiding in throughout our dating years…romance could be created within the context of a relationship between two people who are empirically likely to be compatible. Or would you change nothing, and maintain the agita, the slings and arrows, the misunderstood emails, misconstrued IMs and misinterpreted gestures of the dating process?
Your ideas to be discussed here, please…
I don’t know – I think it’s possible to learn to love someone (see “Do You Love Me,” from Fiddler), but it’s not what I want for myself. I want to fall in love and then get married, not get married and hope I’ll then gradually fall in love.
I like the idea of the arranged marriage. It would save alot of time and hurt feelings. If the matches could be done annaylitically with people who care about the matchees. Somthing like this could be great.
I’ve given up on dating and guys. I just can’t handle all the missery, backstabbing, stress they cause me.
I’m mixed on this one as well. I can definitely see the advantages of the “arranged marriage” type philosophy. I don’t really think modern dating has necessarily created more true love. However, when it does work within “modern dating” it is based entirely on the choice of both people, and to me that seems stronger than a succesfull marriage that was arranged. Who knows?
Better: No. Nowadays people can live just fine in a perpetual state of singledom.
Easier:Yes. You give all your energy into making the relationship you *have* work. It’s easier than finding the relationship you *want*.
More Results Oriented: Only if the final result is marriage. I think the purpose of a marriage is about the connection between two people, and not about their families.
As for the confusion of Jdate, I’m thinking that it works to my benefit. Women on there are naturally suspicious, so they question _everything_. As a guy with nothing to hide and no particular agenda, I’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s the same principle as why I don’t mind getting searched at the airport.
how incredibly odd…I just today, completely randomly and out of the blue thought: “someone, take care of this for me, willya? Just pick someone.”
Not a thought I’ve ever had before.
And then I remembered that I believe in the wisdom of the universe, and surrendering to it
See, the problem with that for me is that how the hell do you make yourself become attracted to someone you’re not attracted to? Because I’ve tried it tons and tons of times and every nerve in my body was screaming, “Run away! Run awaaaaaaaay!” and suffice it to say, it never worked. I can’t just have someone pick me out someone for life to boink when I don’t even want to touch them, and it seems like arranged marriages are just like, “Make yourself like them already.”