Before the engagement I am gripped by fear and anxiety: what if this is a mistake? Is that normal, or a sign that this is the wrong person?different views

Nobody is ever a hundred percent ready. She tells of her own brief panic at the badeken: what if I am making the biggest mistake of my life, do I know him well enough? She understood that this was the yetzer hara at work, did not follow that thought, and has been happily married for sixteen years. There is no complete certainty about another person, whatever the Cinderella story suggests: a person does his hishtadlus, davens, and in most cases it turns out well.

“Remember: no one is ever 100% ready!”

In many cases this is an ordinary feeling, unconnected to the particular person and caused by the responsibility that marriage itself carries. One can test this by talking to friends and relatives who recently married and went through the same stage. All the more so when you yourself write that you respect this person and want to see him; then it is more likely a matter of general fear of marriage. He separates fear of the step itself from one's attitude to the person. Such fears, he writes, are very common and relate not to a specific person but to the responsibility and duties that founding a family brings; to see this he advises talking to friends who recently married, since among those for whom the stage is behind them the nature of the fear usually becomes clear. In the case discussed, he adds, there is all the more reason to think so, since the writer regards the young man with great respect and wants to see him. Separately he addresses the opposite case: a shidduch that itself arouses fear is, of course, not begun; but that feeling too may be temporary, so one should ask friends who know you personally whether to continue meeting, and watch whether further meetings lessen the fear or make it disappear altogether. To a man who had been offered a suitable match and wrote that he was afraid, he named two reasons. The first was his own: until now he had borne no responsibility, had been treated as a child and not allowed to think for himself, and now that he had to make an important decision and enter independent life he felt uneasy; still, very frightened was putting it too strongly. The second was general: anxiety here is not rare at all, since marriage affects the whole of one's remaining life, it is a binyan adei ad, an everlasting edifice, and approaching it with trepidation is natural. At the same time, if the shidduch is suitable, one may enter it with full confidence. In another letter he recalls the rule of ma'aseh rav, look at what actually happens: in many similar cases people entered a shidduch, soon married, and life settled so well that they themselves wondered at their earlier wavering; a person's life is not mathematics, where every detail can be set out in black and white. To yet another person, whose doubts had piled up right before the wedding, he answered differently: he called them entirely groundless and connected them with the date having been set many months earlier, a long wait that is hard for a person to bear; the way out he proposed was twofold, to stand firm and at the same time to move the wedding to an earlier date. He answers that doubts in such matters are a common phenomenon and, more than that, an understandable one: this is a decisive step in life, and in the created world nothing is perfect, so there is always room for doubt. What surprises him is not the doubt but how hard it has hit the person's state of mind: one should not exaggerate and drive oneself to such a state. One must think it over with full seriousness, but the decision is made in calm and clarity, not in the opposite state. Doubts are most easily resolved in a frank conversation with friends who are asked directly to help clarify the question; and if the person is very agitated, such conversations are better postponed to a calmer time. And since the general attitude to the young man has not yet settled, he advises stopping both the meetings and the correspondence for a few weeks; three to four weeks is usually enough, and the exact length depends on one's character and on how quickly one makes decisions.

“this is just a common feeling with no connection to the individual whom one is meeting.”

It happens that there is anxiety while there is nothing to hold against the person or the relationship; then it is internal, and it must be dealt with before, not after. Talking to someone in advance helps you understand what is in the way and approach the engagement with a lighter heart. One cannot count on everything magically dissolving under the chuppah. He holds to the opposite rule: there should be no intense anxiety at the thought of the proposal. One should feel calm and confident in the decision, not swamped by emotion and uncertainty. If the feeling is the reverse, he advises not to get engaged but to go to someone for clarity.

“Don't expect things to clear up magically once you walk down the aisle”

She adds an important proviso: everything said here assumes that what troubles the person is the very prospect of engagement and marriage, but that does not mean one may ignore signs that something is wrong with the relationship. When young people are pressured into agreeing to a marriage while they still have serious doubts, some of those marriages, sadly, end in divorce. Other reasons may lie behind the delay as well: the hope that an older unmarried brother or sister will find a match first; a previous relationship not let go of; and sometimes a genuine fear of commitment, which must not be underestimated, since it needs professional help.

“when young people are pressured into agreeing to a marriage when they still have serious doubts, some of those marriages end in divorce”

The expectation that beside one's true bashert a blissful calm will descend and anxiety and doubts will vanish they call pure fantasy. In reality even those who are quite sure they have found their person go through very intense anxiety: some cannot sleep, some have constant stomach pains and nausea, and nails get bitten down precisely in this period. This, in their words, is a normal reaction to the monumental nature of the decision; sometimes a person really is frightened.

“This is a total fantasy.”

He describes a familiar turn: the girl is the first to say she is ready, and the young man feels the whole weight of the decision has landed on him, and he steps back. And suddenly he begins to think that he does not really want her after all, because she is this and that, and groundless doubts grow in his head. Under the microscope crumbs look huge and threatening. His advice at such a moment is to seek counsel and not rely on oneself: in most cases a shidduch is rejected over trivial nonsense.

“Under the microscope, little crumbs loom large and threatening.”