Playing the Blame Game Shidduch Style

Someone commented to me that my blog has changed character from when I began blogging to now. She pointed out that I had lots of posts on shidduchim when I first started out and that I've put up none in a very long time. She would be correct, and perhaps the time has finally come to do another shidduch posting, even if not the one some of you might be expecting.

Making a shidduch today is fraught with tension. Just mentioning the word shidduch to a parent with children about to enter the parsha can bring on palpitations and gastric distress. Somehow things have gone awry in shidduch making and everyone but everyone is now playing the Shidduch Blame Game. You know the one--it's where you get points by finding the correct person to blame because soneone's 1) date didn't work out, 2) date didn't come to fruition, 3) can't get a date. Who is blamed for the problems in shidduch dating/shidduch making? Singles blame everyone but themselves. Parents blame everyone but themselves. Shadchanim blame everyone else but themselves. Schools blame everyone else but themselves. Rabbanim blame everyone but themselves. Members of the community blame everyone but themselves. Your friends blame everyone but themselves. Guess what? EVERYONE is to blame. That's right, no one escapes blameless in the Blame Game.

But a word of explanation is needed. Why do we even have the Shidduch Blame Game? Because we have another game that we play first. It's the Match Game carried to extremes. In its original version the Match Game had two players and a lot of people cheering them on from the sidelines. The Game has evolved to a multi-multi-player game. What's worse, the Game has become an amalgam, a mishmash of rules taken from lots of other games. We've added in producing a resume for players, from the Let's Find a Job Game. We've borrowed bluffing and outright lying from Poker. We've borrowed the strangest questions ever asked with no known connection to anything that matters from Trivial Pursuit. We've taken rules from everywhere and plunked them down willy nilly into a game that no one really seems to want to play, and everyone does anyway. It's surely not a fun game, for all the fun has been drained from it. And given the higher rate of shalom bayis problems and of divorce today, it's not a game where the winners are always winners either. And because we play the Match Game we also play the Shidduch Blame Game.

I, personally, am simplifying the game, if only a tiny bit. I'm removing myself as a player, at least as a shadchan. There was some family business to take care of this year, so I was not as actively involved in shadchanus as in all the past years. And I noticed something strange--I wasn't missing the "joy" of shadchanus very much. Perhaps the final straw came a few weeks ago, when I read a piece in which shadchanim were designated as "mitzvah junkies." Yes indeed, a title to be looked forward to with happiness. I'm not the only one who is leaving the game playing to others. Two friends who have been active in shidduchim for decades are also saying "I quit." When you don't recognize the game board any more, when you don't know or like the rules, when the prize to be won is not worth the effort needed to be expended, it's time to quit.

I expedited my first match when I was young and single. That couple just had the zchus to marry off a grandchild. The other 21 matches I made are all still married and doing well. I'm leaving the mad game while I'm still a winner.

Why do people become shadchanim, at least volunteer shadchanim? Lots of reasons, but mine is fairly simple. I believed that if I was busy and helped out other people to get married, someone else would also help out so that my children could get married. No one can know everyone out there and sharing the information and the job seemed sensible to me. I need to concentrate now on my own children, on my beloved niece's behalf, because things didn't go quite the way I thought they would; "someone" changed the rules mid-stream. And frankly I'm tired--tired of the endless machinations, tired of the endless maneuverings that lead nowhere, tired of the marathon phone calls with no results. I'm tired of the artificial protocol, and I'm tired of the endless finger pointing. I'll still have to play the game, at least somewhat, on behalf of my children, but the Shadchan playing piece is retiring from the fray.

To paraphrase Richard Nixon, "You won't have this shadchan to kick around any more."