NEFESH: The International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals

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In My Mind (and on the couch)
Mindy Blumenfeld, LCSW

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A Selection Of Articles, Musings, And Information Detailing The Struggles Of The Ordinary Person; A Celebration Of The Individual's Resilience To Overcome Challenges And Live Authentically.

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Open reader view My Daughter Doesn't Want to Date: a parent asks the therapist

Mindy Blumenfeld, LCSW

January 23rd, 2017

Question:

Our daughter finished seminary and she says she does not want to meet any prospective shidduchim yet. We have never had an easy time with her. She doesn't communicate to us and is often in a bad mood, although she does have friends and seems fine with them. We have two daughters directly underneath her and we don't have the luxury of waiting until she claims she will be ready, which we are afraid may be never. She doesn't seem to have direction (she is only working because we found the job for her) and we think marriage will settle her down. How do we convince her into meeting a boy?

Answer:

Oh man. As I am reading your question, my heart is sinking lower and lower, thinking, no. No. No. Please no.

Because this is not the daughter who doesn't want to get married because she loves her home and her family and her friends and just needs a little more time to grow up. Which is really okay and you gotta hold back for that too. But no, it's deeper than that.

You know what it feels like to me? That in order to reach you, to make you understand, I need to start climbing a mountain. But mountain climbers are faced with less oxygen as they climb. How can I speak to you and to so many other parents like you grappling with the same issue, so that we can both breathe easier, so that your daughter can breathe too.

Listen to the things you have told me. Your daughter has verbalized very clearly that she is not ready to get married. There is an impaired parent-child relationship in which she does not communicate with her parents. She is moody (possibly depressed). She lacks direction; for example, only obtaining a job because her parents found it for her.

Whew.

How exactly are you expecting marriage to settle her down?

What makes you think she will be happily married if she has told you she doesn't want to be married right now?

Obviously she doesn't communicate with you, because when she does, you totally do not hear her. You ignore what she says. You ask me, a perfect stranger, to find a way to convince her to meet a boy anyway. She knows herself best. Why aren't you asking her how to convince herself to meet a boy?

If she would be able to communicate with her, she may say something like, “I don't know why I feel unhappy. I am so moody. How can I get married feeling like this?”

If she would feel like someone was listening to her, she might answer, “I couldn't even get a job like other girls my age. If I feel inadequate at a job I work at 40 hours a week, how on earth will I be adequate for a lifetime job that is all day and all night? I'm petrified of that responsibility!”

Or, this is what she would want to say, “If I don't even know what I want in a job, if I lack the motivation to get my own job, how do I know what I want in my marriage? How will I know how to make it work?”

It would be best if the parents of such a girl/woman would come to me when their daughter is still a teenager. When their relationship can still be repaired ample time before shidduchim. But if that hasn't happened, then it would probably work best to bring the daughter herself into therapy. And begin the work, the repair of the issues in this girl's life that makes her refuse to meet a boy.

And then to bring in the parents to hear what she is saying and give her the space she needs to become the person she needs to be in order for her to be the wife she wants to be.

And depending on the types of ruptures in this girl's life, it may take time. Maybe a few sessions, maybe a few years.

Here are some issues that may cause a girl/woman to balk at entering the dating world, to scare her off from marriage. These are not listed in any particular order, because depending on the individual, each can impact with varying levels of severity. It's not what I as the therapist think is an issue; it's what the client experiences as the issue(s) derailing her ability to get married.

So here goes.

A ruptured parent-child relationship. Parents who lack shalom bayis. Emotional pain caused by any number of things: emotional neglect, social trauma, history of abuse (any kind). Lack of self esteem. Any sort of trauma, even if nobody intentionally caused it. A death in the family.

As I look over this list, I realize may people are breathing a sigh of relief because they are thinking, “Okay, I am off the hook because my daughter has never experienced trauma or neglect or abuse.”

But really, many of these things are very subtle. For example, a parent who does not have a close relationship with one child, who thinks that they have done everything right and still their daughter is acting obnoxious and is uncommunicative is failing to realize that something terrible has happened to the daughter that has cut her off from her mother.

And it is that cut-off that prevents her daughter from embracing the next stage of her life. Getting a job. Getting a husband.

So what to do with a daughter like this?

Listen to her. Respect what she says. Ask her what she needs to move on. Don't put a time limit on her refusal. Ask her what happens when the next daughter graduates and needs to begin shidduchim. A daughter that is truly not ready will step aside willingly for her sister. And if she does not want to step aside, then that will be her catalyst to ready herself for marriage in whatever way she needs to because her sister will not wait for her. This is not about you. What people will say if her sister skips her.

Send her to therapy. Not when she is engaged. Not when the boy is waiting for a yes. Way before that.

I will end off with this:

I used to be a kallah teacher. Many troubled kallahs found their way to me and many of them ended up divorced despite my best efforts at counseling (pre-therapist days!). Their engagement was not the right time to address the myriad issues they were faced with in order to maintain a successful marital relationship.

But as a therapist, it is a pleasure to watch the teenagers who first enter my practice with the issues with which you describe your daughter, uncommunicative. Lack of motivation. Moody. Disinterest in responsibility and mature stages of life. And then flower into daughters who embrace life and their twin roles of wife and motherhood.

I don't need to convince her.

You need to listen to her.

Did I convince you?

note: this was originally published by Binah Magazine