* Don’t volunteer to do something or make calls or start a program unless you are serious and prepared to put in the work. Think through what you are offering before you actually offer it. Empty offers are painful.
* Spend time and network with everyone you know. It’s simpler than ever with e-mail and text messaging. You can’t imagine how many potential shidduchim can be made by asking people if they know someone suitable. Bring it up at a simcha or after davening in shul. Call relatives you don’t usually see, find a friend in an out of town community, etc.
* Think twice and three times before asking a single person to baby-sit. Your request is that much more painful precisely because that single person doesn’t have children. Also – and this is important – don’t imagine that because someone is not married, he or she has no life with nothing to do.
I am not naive enough to think the tide will turn thanks to this letter, but perhaps some people will take my words to heart. And if just one single is spared further pain, and just one reader makes a call for a shidduch connection, my taking the time to write will have been worthwhile.
