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I recently heard two conflicting explanations for the recent surge in broken engagements & divorces in the frum community. One speaker with a more traditional “Yeshivish” bent claimed that divorce is 98% the result of bad middos, we live in a disposable society & as soon as life becomes uncomfortable we bolt rather than working on improving ourselves. If not for bad middos, the divorce rate would be close to zero. The second more “Professional” speaker claimed that our shidduch system is, unfortunately, producing a significant number of poorly matched up people. Be it because of the shidduch crisis or the lack of dating prep, many singles are ill-prepared for dating & knowing who would be an appropriate life partner. This is creating unhappy marriage situations which in some cases results in divorce. People are expecting more from a marriage than earlier generations & this makes it more important to match people up properly.
Who is correct? Is it mainly bad middos or bad matchups that are fueling this unhappiness?
Wouldn’t someone with imperfect middos act differently if matched up with someone they are more compatible with?
I can think of several people with less than stellar middos yet they have a very functioning marriage. I know of divorced people with seemingly fine middos yet didn’t get along.
Bad Match or Bad Middos or both?IMHO, its both. Many times you have a shaddchan who is matching up two pieces of paper without knowing the individuals.We also have situations where the parents want one type of shidduch and their son or daughter want another. And yes the disposable society mentality doesnt help.I dont remember myself or my friends (we were all married between 1984 and 1990) needing “dating prep” or shidduch forums or ask the shaddchan forums. We were allowed to set up the dates ourselves without needing the shaddchan do it for us.
Why won’t people call out some of the real people responsible: parents interfering in their children’s married lives.
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@rebbiedebbie
My late mother Z”L always said that the key to being a good mother in law was to keep your mouth shut and your refrigerator open.
My father said that for father’s in law substitute wallet for refrigerator.
-Some people who would seem to have good middos with strangers act differently.
– a bad shadchan’s middos can pressure someone too much.
I don’t know if the middos in general have deteriorated in the past few generations I look around and most people are in our community are nice sometimes the nicest people are the ones who get easily stepped over by a controlling spouse so too nice is not necessarily the best characteristic. I know some people have gotten divorced. there is one middoh ghat he is talking about in particular which is the inability to go through challenges in marriage maybe the shame of divorced brought a bigger punishment that got people to try harder in the past. Is there really less shalom bayis now days or are there more divorces equal level of shalom..? No one will truly have the statistic
The dating world has become too complicated with friends all the difference among our ways of living , that didn’t exist in the Shetel so probably matching people has I’m fact become more of an issue..
Probably many different explanations to the issue all validAlso people have overly high expectations of marriage as OP suggested.
People think its going to be amazing all the time, they are not prepared for challenges and real life. My husband and I realize that we are going to argue and disagree, there are things we dislike about each other and issues after many years being married to the same person you are going to have disagreements. But you work through it and thats what you have to do.
Generally, being divorced is a worse scenario so its not worth it. I think the only situation I would do it is there was physical abuse and thats it.I think it’s also the shadchanim.
When I first dated seriously the shadchan literally told the boy after a 5th date that if I’m not ready to get engaged yet maybe he should move on. After we had known each other for 1.5 weeks!The more I talk to girls the more people I’ve found were pressured and manipulated by shadchanim to close the deal way before they were ready.
There really does need a couple of week to date, get to know each other, be open and honest and ask both people if they really want to get into a relationship with this person and their whole package and all their “issues”. (We all have them).
There’s so much shushing up, lying, hiding – it’s insane
Actually it’s neither.
The real cause of divorce is cholent. Everything comes down to cholent. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it doesn’t taste good, it’s overcooked, it’s raw, it’s burnt, it smells too strong, it doesn’t smell strong enough, he ate too much, she ate too little, he ate all the beans, she ate all the meat, they didn’t eat enough, there wasn’t enough left, there was too much left, the crockpot wasn’t cleaned, the crockpot was cleaned too much, he’s a crockpot, she’s a crockpot, etc. etc. etc.
Get rid of cholent, and you’ll instantly see happier marriages.
These discussions get vibrant, heated, or comical. I personally read these only for the humor, because the rest of it is completely useless.
In reality, there are many possible causes for the breakups of engagements and marriages. The value of discussing these is to know what not to do. But these forums are never diagnostic for any specific case. And it is often that well meaning people claim to know a lot about a couple while they truly know almost nothing.
I can easily list a few dozen variables that have not appeared in any comments before this. Unless we divert the focus to identifying the “what not to do”, the time spent in typing will have been a total waste.
Marriage expectations have evolved as the culture has changed. The support for the battles to dissolve marriages has also grown rapidly. The toughness that people have in approaching their own marriage crises in which there are demands for change and resistance to them has also escalated. Yes, there are mismatches. We also have myths about “learning boys” that are hard to change. We enter marriage poorly prepared, and sometimes with very distorted views of what it should be. Parents interfere. Forums of social interaction contribute handsomely to support ending marriages. Divorce is less stigmatized. And the list goes on and on. This is just a small sample.
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