Whenever I read an article of this type (i.e. singles who fail to work through their issues, which are holding them back from shidduchim), I always wonder, how many older singles WROTE these articles? Some probably-married author sits in his or her seat and decides what the “real problem” is. Nice.
I believe the problem is that we have made our own shidduch crisis, and by the time some of our children (who have not yet found the right one) realize that the presently accepted process is NOT working for them, their window of opportunity (age-wise) has narrowed considerably. NOW they have to completely re-think their ideology of what constitutes a good shidduch, and recognize that at age 30 + in the FRUM world, an appropriate shidduch might possibly be someone who was married and divorced or widowed, with or without children, maybe not “the look” they were always thinking they wanted, and possibly very different from what they always envisioned Prince Charming or Super-Model to be. We tend to get more realistic in what attracts us, as we get a little older.
When I was a young dater, I didn’t even want to HEAR of a guy who could not sing. I come from a family of chazzonim, and our shabbos table was always filled with harmonious zmiros. We sang together all the time at home and jokingly referred to ourselves as the Von Shlepp Family singers (for anyone who does not watch tv or movies, that is a pun on the Von Trapp Family who were made famous in the movie “The Sound of Music”). After many years of searching for my own personal “Shloime Dachs” (well in those years it was more like “The Rabbis’ Sons”), I ended up marrying a phenomenal guy who is tone deaf! Had I not adjusted my thinking when I realized he loved music but couldn’t carry a tune in a basket, I would have lost out on the greatest gifts of my life – my husband, children, and grandchildren, kinehora. I was only 26 when that realization hit me. It takes some people longer.
Not every single has that epiphany when they are in their late 20s, and even in their 30s. But it is a far cry to trying to help someone expand his/her way of thinking, to making them feel guilty for something that has MANY components and causes, and not just some “issues” that some, but not all, of them might have.