No Good Men?

So how do I get married?

Question of the week:

I’m a 37yr old female, my only daughter is almost 18yrs. I’m not married and I would like to meet someone serious enough for marriage.

Most men find independent women intimidating or some want to be taken care of as if they are children rather than taking the position of a provider. I’m very old school and find the whole dating thing difficult especially when most men are only interested in having sex with no intentions to marry.

I left the father of my daughter after realizing that he has no intention of getting employment and he will always depend on me to support him financially. We were together for 17yrs and he has never been employed during all this time.

My question is how to get the right man and how are such men still available?

Grace K.

Dear Grace,

If you have listened either to my (RDL’s) podcast or to our television show on TCT, you may have heard us say that we don’t see our job as massaging our listeners and viewers with warm butter. The same is true for our responses to those who write to us.

It sounds like you endured nearly twenty years of an unfulfilling relationship. The effects of that don’t end when the relationship ends.  We are guessing that this was never a marriage which makes it all a little more understandable though no more pleasant.  While your emotions and reaction are to be expected, we suggest that before you look for the right man, or become capable of recognizing him, you need to work on getting yourself psychologically, spiritually and emotionally healthy. In other words, we are suggesting that becoming the right woman is the indispensable first step in finding the right man.

May we ask you to reread your second paragraph above? You may have good reasons to dislike and distrust some men, but if most men are  as you describe them, then you are not yet ready to meet a good one. In your worldview, they barely exist.

This is especially important because you have a daughter who is herself not far off from meeting a mate and has been watching you for years and continues to watch you. What a gift you will be giving her in terms of her future relationships if she can see you work on yourself until you have a less jaundiced view of men and marriage.

It is very important to know yourself before you can welcome someone else into your life. Without knowing any more about you than what you wrote to us, we can almost guarantee that you weren’t blameless in your partner’s behavior. While he is responsible for failing the marriage, before you can move on you have to accept that you participated in the failure as well. We can’t tell you what you did wrong or failed to do right, but here are a few possibilities: Did you fall into the trap of treating him like a child? Were you respectful and honoring towards him both privately and in front of your daughter? Were you okay with supporting him when you got married? What was the plan back then? What kept you in the relationship for 17 years and did you seek guidance and advice during that time? Please understand that if your daughter has learned over the years to despise her father and other men, then she too would greatly benefit from guidance.

We understand the desire to be in a wonderful marriage where you can receive the nurturing and affection that you have lacked for so long. The real world, however, doesn’t work like that. You first need to abandon the negative patterns and thoughts that have absorbed you for so long and only then can you open yourself to receiving new ways of thinking and acting that will allow you to build  the relationship you so strongly desire.

You articulate your question in terms of “How do I get the right man?” This sounds a lot like someone saying “How do I get a Maserati?” or “How do I get a mansion?” There are important  differences between mansions and Maseratis on the one hand and men on the other.  While mansions and motor cars are passive objects and can thus be ‘gotten’, men are not objects and have a say in whether they are ‘gotten’. Furthermore, most men actually prefer to do the getting than to be ‘gotten’.

So it might be worth exploring how comfortable you are with rephrasing your question from “How do I get the right man” to “How do I attract the right man?”

We advise you to find a faith family where you see models of the type of marriage you want to have. Slowly and carefully pay attention to the way the men and women interact. Once you have taken the time to make sure you trust the community, see if the leadership can guide you to counseling. Be a giver in the community and work to develop friendships with those who can be models for you.

Wishing you exciting and transformational times that will lead to a blessed marriage with the right man.

Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin

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Rebuked by a Pediatrician

I am a pediatrician in Seattle. I started listening to your podcast today on the rules of dating. You made mention that male and female are immutable. I wondered if you had ever met someone who is transgender. I wondered what you thought of people who are attracted to other people of the same sex.

I wondered if you knew how your conception of them does not match the reality of who they are, or how using your platform to reinforce the idea that there are only male and female are some of the reasons why I see transgender and homosexual youth who are suicidal in the ER. Why would anyone choose to be transgender in our society with people like you who make their life as a young child hell? I do not believe this is a choice and I believe that because you are a good person you would see this if you did more learning on the subject.

Thank you for reading.

~ Dr. M

Dear Dr. M.,

We appreciate your willingness to have a conversation rather than just to indict. (We do overlook you insulting us as “people like you” who make other folks’ lives “hell”. What is people like us? Jews? Rabbis? People who disagree with you? Just wondering.) However, we shall reply in good faith, as we believe that you are a good person and working hard to do your best for the young people in your care.

We do know that there are very rare instances when babies are born with confusing external gender indications that can be seen physically and revealed through genetic testing. There are discussions of this going back 2,000 years in our tradition. Let us stipulate that we are not talking about the infinitesimally small number of cases such as these.

We are talking about the relatively recent stupendous increase in teenagers declaring that they are transgender. We are concerned about increasing anxiety and depression in children and teenagers. Our concern about suicidal youth is precisely one of the reasons that we believe that caring people should strive to make sure that our children are not confused, misguided and misled by the adults around them.

We do not think that the sexualization of society has benefited our children. Children do best in stable environments with age-appropriate exposure and we think that children are paying the price for adult fixation on sexuality that has only grown since the 1960s. Today, we might be incredulous to read of a nine-year-old in the 1800s who didn’t realize her mother was pregnant, only to be sent out of the house one afternoon and to be greeted by a newborn on her return. However, clearly the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. An eight-year-old should be concerned with reading, writing and arithmetic, games and puzzles, friendships and family, not with deciding to whom she is sexually attracted. She should be able to enjoy construction toys and climbing trees without having those around her suggest she is really a boy. Similarly, didn’t we just spend decades stressing that boys can enjoy sewing or ballet without being told they are being “girly” or weird? Forcing sexuality and sexual identity into the forefront of children’s consciousness in order to make adults happy or to promote an agenda is unhealthy and borders on the depraved.

You raise homosexuality as well as transgenderism and while we (and we assume you too) don’t automatically lump them together, our response will flow from the same place. It concerns us greatly that the deletion of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder and then the later addition of homophobia as a psychiatric disorder in more recent editions of the DSM were both political decisions rather than medical ones. (Whether it should have been seen as a psychiatric disorder in the first place is a separate and interesting question. The point is that medicine is being dictated to by political agendas rather than by scientific discovery.) It concerns us even more that parents whose children have shown no previous signs whatsoever of gender confusion, are discovering their children parroting lines straight from Internet chats to them. Why are teachers, social workers and psychologists cheering on confusion that involves providing complex surgery and drugs to adolescents who do not have the maturity to make life-altering decisions? We do not tell the parents of anorexic girls that they must provide liposuction for their daughters if they don’t want their daughters to commit suicide. Yet parents are being threatened with their children’s suicide if they don’t use the demanded pronoun. Does this really suggest a road to building healthy family and individual lives or does it hint at a mad hysteria that has taken hold of American culture and that in a few years will be viewed as a bizarre artifact of the early 21st century? Do you really think that future generations will view positively that the California Teachers Association began in January 2021 to push a rule that will allow children of age 12 to leave school premises for transgender hormone treatment without parental permission? We find it hard to believe that as a pediatrician, you support this madness.

For a bit more learning on this subject, may we recommend Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Come to think of it, we feel sure that as an open-minded scientist, you have already read this book as well as the numerous articles on the topic, despite the strong-handed attempts to suppress information like this. Perhaps you have come to share our concern that peer and adult-generated pressure is leading teens to actions that have a great probability of increasing suicide and unhappiness in the coming years. It is one thing to want to be popular and “with it” by wearing the same clothing as your friends. It is quite another thing to undergo surgery and take body-altering drugs to fit in or be happy. Parents of boys, in particular, find that their less psychologically stable sons are most prone to announcing they are actually girls. These identities are often relatively short-lived when these boys get help from professionals who put the boys’ welfare ahead of their own agendas. Sometimes they discover, for example, that the boys’ impetus to change comes from having been falsely taught that all white males are irredeemably evil and racist.

We are concerned about girls getting hurt playing sports with male teammates and rivals who have a body mass and strength that the biological female body does not match. And what about girls’ mental state at knowing that no matter how hard they work and train, they can never win?

The question we would ask you is whether we are doing a great deal of psychological damage to our children in many areas, including sexuality, starting at a very young age. Perhaps fewer children would be in the emergency room if the adults in their lives acted like adults rather than trend-setters.

Thank you for your letter,

Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin

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20% Discount – Biblical Blueprint Set

We strive to transmit dozens of powerful and effective principles for improving your life in our audio CDs, DVDs, courses and books. Our goal is to provide access to ancient Jewish wisdom to enrich your faith, family and fortune. This week our Biblical Blueprints Set is 20% off. These five CDs cover topics including how our speech affects our business lives and social relationships; whether the Ten Commandments have a deeper meaning than most of us realize; why we need to decide whether to relate to time in the way of Israel or of Greece; how to rid our souls of psychological baggage; and what steps we can take to break out of our troubles. Available as a 5-CD Set or as Instant Downloads.

Frozen in Fear

Most people may know that the Passover holyday recalls Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. But did you know though that amazingly, one incident came close to jeopardizing the whole enterprise?

Just before Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh, God threatens Moses for neglecting to circumcise his son. Had Moses’ wife, Tziporah, not intervened, God would have terminated Moses’ career. (Exodus 4:24-26) What is going on?

We get a clue from the language used in and around this event:

…the Lord met him (Moses)
(Exodus 4:24)

… (Aaron) go into the desert to meet Moses…
(Exodus 4:27)

While there are a number of Hebrew words throughout the Bible that translate in English as, “meet,” the specific root word used here is P-G-SH. One of the tools for understanding Scripture is to note when a Hebrew word is rarely used. In those cases, we should look for similarities in the unusual appearances. P-G-SH appears only four times in the Five Books of Moses. We see it twice in our instance in Exodus and twice while Jacob is on his way to meet his brother Esau.

…when Esau my brother meets you…
(Genesis 32:18)

…what did you intend by that whole camp that I met…
(Genesis 33:8)

Thus the word P-G-SH (meet) appears in only two stories in the Torah, both of which involve a man (Jacob/Moses) on a mission, traveling with his entire family, leaving his father-in-law (Lavan/Yitro). In the midst of the journey, each man encounters a Divine being who presents a mortal threat. (In Jacob’s case, he meets the angel with whom he wrestles, Genesis 32:25-33)

Ancient Jewish wisdom tells us that Jacob did not leave Lavan’s house as promptly as he should have, to some degree from fear at confronting the terrifying Esau. Similarly, Moses, on his way to confront a frightening Pharaoh, made an unnecessary stop at a hotel. (Exodus 4:24) Even though God had promised His protection, both men delayed approaching their destiny partially out of fear of a scary personality. In each case, they end up in a life-threatening situation. The lesson to us is clear: Despite our fears, avoiding our life purpose and destiny is more dangerous than meeting it head on.

You or I may not be on the level of Jacob or Moses. God may speak to us more subtly and our missions may be on a smaller scale. Yet each and every one of us has a purpose in life, the reason for which God put us on this earth. Invariably, we face formidable challenges on our road to accomplishment. Intimidating people often stand in our way, telling us we are foolish for following our path or even threatening us if we continue to move forward. The instances with Jacob and Moses remind us that when we have a mission to do, we should unhesitatingly race past all obstacles to do it. Like all else in Scripture, the details of the stories and the specific words used serve as blueprints for enhancing our lives, encouraging us to courageously meet our own destinies.

We strive to transmit these and dozens of other powerful and effective principles for improving your life in our audio CDs, DVDs, courses and books. Our goal is to provide access to ancient Jewish wisdom to enrich your faith, family and fortune. This week our Biblical Blueprints Set is 20% off. These five CDs cover topics including how our speech affects our business lives and social relationships; whether the Ten Commandments have a deeper meaning than most of us realize; why we need to decide whether to relate to time in the way of Israel or of Greece; how to rid our souls of psychological baggage; and what steps we can take to break out of our troubles. Available as a 5-CD Set or as Instant Downloads.

Too Many Voices

If your email inbox looks anything like mine, you are being bombarded by fund-raising screeds around the clock. They shriek (by use of capital letters) that if I don’t donate to candidate X, the sky will fall and America will perish. If I don’t support organization Y, freedom will fail. My helping them, whether an individual or an organization, will transform them into the garland of garlic that will repel Dracula.

To be sure, I do think that civilization in America is in grave danger. The patient is desperately ill. I appreciate every individual and group who is fighting back. But there needs to be a central force around which we can all coalesce; thousands of separate pieces do not make a strong shield. So, while I subscribe to Epoch Times and pay for a subscription to Bari Weiss’ Common Sense and send money to #Walkaway and donate to some political campaigns, much more is needed.

I no longer donate to the Republican Party. Years ago, author Timothy Daughtry told me of addressing Republican senators, urging them to acquire savvy and backbone and be proactive. (Abigail Shrier’s latest piece beats the same drum.) He explained to the elected officials that the Democrat Party provides talking points, so whatever the issue, politicians who are interviewed will use the same words, driving their perspective into the consciousness of Americans. Republicans were more independent with each politician speaking his or her own mind. That was admirable in theory, but it made the party and its positions weaker. He told me with sadness that some top party officials asked him what a talking point was, while most of the participants at his session showed no interest in what he was saying. Republicans en masse haven’t advanced from that level of disconnect with the electorate or reality. Marketing savvy, even on winning issues, too often seems non-existent.

Years ago, they sent me a solicitation letter on behalf of the Party, signed by John McCain. I wrote back explaining that if the powers-that-be thought he was a draw, they were trying to lose the election (which they frequently did). I might technically be a Republican on my voting registration, but they had stopped representing me. Their behavior since hasn’t changed my mind. By ignoring me and tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) like me, they paved the way for outlier Donald J. Trump. With all his flaws, he was more in touch with real people than they were.

I do occasionally donate to individual candidates, but I don’t have the time to wade through all the requests I get. Their self-promotion sounds alike and I don’t have the resources to go deeper into all of them and ascertain if they truly are what they claim to be or to make the type of donation that would make a tangible difference. I speak and write and try to buttress those standing for civilization on a larger stage than mine, but one voice, one strongly articulated clear message is needed.

The minute a real leader emerges, he or she will be attacked, lied about and maligned. Whatever President Trump’s true shortcomings, many, if not most, of people’s hysterical objections to him were based on falsehood. The next leader may monitor his or her words more wisely, but the bombardment of frantic attacks will nonetheless rain down upon his or her head.

For now, good people certainly are doing good work. Even so, instead of presenting a strong team front, they come across as disparate entities and their messages, sadly, largely end up in my trash folder. I don’t know how to solve this problem—do you?

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