Dating Pitfalls

There are pitfalls inherent to dating. The main pitfall, in my opinion, is as I said already, seeing the outside without ever knowing the inside. There are other pitfalls. One of them is conscious or subconscious desire for everything to work because one wants to be married so badly. When that happens, oftentimes the person decides not to see or not to acknowledge what is right in front of their eyes. A woman may see a man being stingy to a waiter in a club and decide not to question what that says about his character. A man may see a woman being reluctant to ever talk about giving, in regard to herself, without questioning what does this mean when she talks about how much others gave her, without ever mentioning having giving anything or desire to give anything in return. She may hear him speaking ill of his parents without ever questioning what does that say about the role models. Does he see it as being normal? She may not question what that says about his positivity or negativity in regards to the world. He may hear her speaking badly of the people with whom she works. He may hear her talking overtly about how she needs to almost literally step on other people’s shoulders to get ahead, without questioning what that would say about their marriage.

Another pitfall is treating the person who one meets as though that person somehow came into existence within the last five minutes, totally disregarding their family, their background, their education and their belief system. Two people could talk about wanting to live a simple life. One person may come… and I’ll give you an example of somebody who I know personally, from the American Jewish Syrian Community, which is very wealthy. When he told his wife he wants to live simply, that meant he didn’t want a live-in from the very beginning. When she said she wanted to live simply, coming from Northern California, what that meant was, maybe in the woods, maybe in a cabin, maybe electric and maybe not. They were both completely sincere but neither one of them asked enough questions. What do you mean? Who are you? Where are you coming from? People often have different expectations as to what men and women do in marriage. These expectations are often formed by what they saw in their own parental homes. This has to be discussed. His idea of an egalitarian marriage

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