Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I don’t know if you remember me, but I attended your lecture on dating red flags. It was to a group of mothers from our school’s PTA. Our daughter was in 12th grade and the lecture was a real eye opener. When I came home I shared with our daughters what you had told us and it probably saved our family from what could have been a terrible mistake.
Our eldest daughter was redt to a great yeshiva bachur, said to be at the “top of his class,” and who came from a well-respected family in the community. Needless to say, my husband and I were thrilled. The custom in our community is that on the first date the couple goes out for coffee. When she came back it was quite late and we were waiting to hear good news. I know, very premature, but the information we had gotten was so good, and we were so sure he would be the one. To our surprise, and great disappointment, she said she didn’t think he was for her. There wasn’t anything specific, nothing he did or said stood out, it was just a feeling.
Not knowing what to say, we all went to bed bewildered and dejected. The next day, the shaddchan called with great news: the young man was well pleased with our daughter and wanted to see her again. So we pleaded with her to see him one more time, perhaps this time she would see things differently; after all, he was a “catch,” a shidduch every girl would be thrilled to have suggested for her. She grudgingly agreed.
Again we waited for her to come home, and when she did, the look on her face was easy to read. “He’s not for me,” she said in a tone that made it clear there it was not open for discussion.
With great regret, we informed the shaddchan that there would be no third date. She hemmed and hawed that we were giving up “the cream of the crop,” the best of the best, and that our daughter would never find someone of his caliber again.
The days and weeks passed until, one day, we heard that a girl from my daughters’ class had gotten engaged to this same bochur! My husband was beside himself and, I must tell you, even I felt a pain in my heart; it should have been our daughter who was getting engaged. The wedding was the talk of the town, and six weeks later the kallah was back home with her parents. The marriage was over, and, depending whose story you chose to believe, there were issues of violent behavior, mental issues and physical abuse whispered about the young man.
My husband and I were in shock when we heard the news, and it was then that I recalled something my daughter said after the second date. “He seems a bit loud and there’s this odd thing he keeps doing with his hand, thumping on the table with his fist every few minutes, it made me nervous,” she had told me. It had seemed a trivial reason to stop seeing someone, especially someone as great as this bochur was said to be.
I also remembered something you had told us – to listen to your gut and that if something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Baruch Hashem, that lesson saved my daughter from a fate we might have forced her into. As sorry and sad as we were for this other young woman who fell in, that’s how grateful we were for the red flags that protected our daughter.
You had mentioned the difficulty you and groups like Shalom Task Force were encountering in giving these talks in Bais Yaakovs and boys’ yeshivos. You want to make our young women and bachurim more aware of what to look out for when dating. I cringe when I think of how many young people will become victims and how many divorces could have been averted. I, for one, am ever grateful for having had the good fortune to attend your lecture and bring home the tools of safety that potentially saved my daughter from a lifetime of misery.
A Florida Mom
Dear Mom,
It’s letters like yours that help me get out of bed in the morning with a smile on my face and keep doing what I do. Sadly though, it is rare to hear feedback of any kind, positive or negative, when it comes to bringing dating safety and respectful behavior of the genders to young people in a yeshiva setting. Unfortunately, or fortunately in your case, we are forced to bring this education to the parents, who, we then hope, will impart it to their children. Prevention is the best cure against the rampant plague of marital abuse and epidemic volume of divorces in our communities. Since much of this behavior is learned at home, and over time seen by children as normal behavior, it is best to reach out to our youth while they are still in school and fix the problem at its root.
I hope your daughter finds her true zivug in the near future (if she hasn’t already done so) and that you will let us know when a mazal tov is in order.