The search has dragged on for years, the rejections do not stop, and despair is setting in. Where do I find the strength to go on?different views

She advises taking responsibility for your own mood: go somewhere, go out for coffee with friends, exercise, even allow yourself a chocolate; do not let the balloon deflate. Act joyfully even when you do not feel joy: in her experience even acted joy and laughter genuinely help. And volunteer: giving makes a person happier and is itself preparation for a marriage in which one must think of more than oneself. She writes that dejection is not humility but hidden selfishness, a conversation in which everything is about me and my feelings; true bittul is stepping outside oneself, and with it comes joy. Joy, she says, breaks down barriers and attracts good, while dejection and constant apologising for oneself repel both people and mazel. One can serve Hashem only in joy, and it must not be postponed until after the wedding.

“You have to take responsibility for making and keeping yourself happy.”

Do not let difficulties and disappointments throw you: there are no grounds for despondency; on the contrary, one must add joy in fulfilling this mitzvah, since one's true match is determined from Above. Hashem does not demand the impossible of His creatures: since He commanded it, it can be done, and what is needed is persistence and conscientiousness. Strengthening one's bitachon is itself a segulah for a shidduch: bringing two people together is as hard as splitting the sea, and as the sea was split by the power of faith, so a shidduch comes through strengthened bitachon. He recalls that Rabbi Zusha learned even from a thief: if it did not work the first time, try a second and a third. He cites the well-known teaching of Reb Zusha of Anipoli that one can learn the service of Hashem from every person, even one who behaves badly, and in particular from a thief who, having failed the first time, tries a second and a third time until he succeeds. All the more so with zivugim, of which the Sages themselves said that it is a hard matter: one must try again and again. And the fact that much effort is required should not frighten anyone; in the end worthy matches are found. He answers that this must be done in joy, and that this is an explicit law in the Shulchan Aruch. The great ones of Israel kept despondency and black melancholy as far from themselves as possible, as explained in Tanya. Experience shows it too: despondency not only fixes nothing but produces the opposite, all the more so in a country where joy is received by the heart and its opposite is not. And above all, he says, there is no basis whatever for despondency, for it is written that a wife of understanding is from Hashem. He writes that there is no need to fall into sadness and despondency: our teachers sought to distance themselves from these traits as far as they could. Sadness does not mend the situation but adds a second trouble to it, all the more so here, since a feeling of joy makes the heart more receptive. He sees no reason for despondency at all, because a wife of understanding is from Hashem; and to merit this one must search again and again, as one searches for a lost object, energetically and through people, with hope in the Creator, Who since the day of Creation has been occupied with matching couples. To someone who wrote in a dejected state, he answered that there is no reason to stir up sadness and despondency in oneself: the leaders of our people kept far from these traits, as explained in the twenty-sixth chapter of Tanya. These feelings fix nothing and, on the contrary, make matters worse, and this applies especially to the search for a shidduch: it is calm joy, not the moods opposed to it, that makes other people's hearts more receptive. Separately he called the inaction that naturally flows from despair a clear fault: it is written that Hashem will bless you in all that you do, so one must try every path, through shadchanim and through friends, both here and in Eretz Yisrael, and not forget that there were proposals after all and that something came of them. To the same person he suggested quite practical steps: to live for a while in another place and search more widely, and he also reminded him that a shidduch from the Sephardi community is as worthy as one from the Ashkenazi.

“One needs to be persistent and conscientious to bring it to fruition.”

She tells of Rivka, who was twenty-seven: after years of dating, dates that led nowhere, collapsed hopes, prayers that seemed to bounce off the ceiling, she was worn out, had stopped seeing her friends, had let herself go and hardly left the house; after all, she had done everything right, and nothing. Clearing out a drawer, she found a letter she had written at nineteen to her future self, congratulating herself on her engagement. Eight years later there was no engagement. So she wrote a second letter, to Hashem, honestly, about feeling invisible and forgotten, and hid it at the back of the drawer.

“I did everything right — I davened, gave tzedakah, and did my hishtadlus. And still, nothing.”

It is easy to slide into self-pity, and that is the work of the yetzer hara. They warn that the sadder a person is, the less likely they are to be redt shidduchim, because people are drawn to those who are bright. If you are down, try to take your eyes off yourself and go do chesed: nothing helps you see what you have to be grateful for like being on the giving side. And who knows, perhaps that is exactly what will lead you to your match.

“The sadder a person is, the less likely they will be redt shidduchim.”

He tells of Raizy, who after a hard Simchas Torah decided there was no hope left: a few days later she came across the story of a girl in exactly her situation, and at the bottom of the letter was a dedication to a person with her full Hebrew name and her mother's name; even the mother matched. She took it as addressed to her personally, decided not to give up, and soon met her zivug. He adds on his own account: those who did not succeed even in better times feel that now there is certainly no chance, but perhaps it is precisely now, when everything looks impossible, that salvation will come. He applies to the single person the principle that Hashem suffers along with him: the person is pained at not having found his zivug, and He is pained too. Knowing this, a person can lessen His pain by accepting that He gives exactly the circumstances needed for his mission in this world. And Rabbi Ashear specifically notes that this is not all or nothing: even a little less worry and a little more calm in honour of Hashem is already a great avodah. He begins not with an appeal but with an example of how a person climbs out from the bottom. Sammy had searched for a shidduch for years and remained alone; on an especially hard day he remembered a class from a chizuk line he had heard several years before; he did not remember the content, only that it had helped then. He went back to that line and asked, before choosing: show me that You are with me, and out of more than fifteen hundred options he chose exactly the same class; that gave him the greatest chizuk of all. He also cites the letter of a twenty-seven-year-old woman written on the eve of Yom Kippur: all her brothers, sisters and friends were married with children, and she was alone; she went on date after date, hope came and went, she had dated the whole spectrum, dating had become a business for her, and she asked for encouragement. Exactly a year and a day later she wrote that she was engaged. All that time she had kept in her phone a list of the names of everyone she had dated, and under the list she had written that Hashem was holding her hand, felt her pain and was waiting for the right time, and she reread it every time she added a new name. Number fifty-two became her chassan.

“I'm not going to give up. I'm going to continue trying to find a shidduch.”

A young man, inviting him to his wedding, reminded him of a conversation long before: he had once been so broken that he had decided to stop trying; he happened to walk out of shul beside him and told him so. The rosh yeshiva answered briefly: it is forbidden to give up, because that would mean losing faith in Hashem, and that is not permitted. Those words helped him continue, and a week later he had his wedding.

“You told me that it's forbidden to give up; that it would mean I'm losing faith in Hashem”

She describes this state as typical: those who have searched for a long time develop a heavy feeling that what they want will never happen. Some then give up on new acquaintances, and some begin rejecting candidates as a defence, rejecting first so as not to be rejected. Recognising this mechanism in oneself matters because it is itself the obstacle.

“They will reject the other person before they are rejected.”

A caution: someone who has been deceived often enough by the promises of his own uncorrected imagination develops, in self-defence, a cynical suspicion of any promise of happiness. He loses the innocence without which real romance is impossible: his whole emotional make-up and the very power of his imagination are dulled, he ceases to notice and understand what love is, and in the extreme may lose all desire. He speaks of a different state as well, when a person is so drained that he cannot move himself at all. Such a person he does not advise to rise by his own effort: he is spiritually as if dead and needs reviving, and revival comes through mercy, as in the words of the blessing about reviving the dead with great mercy. All a person can do in such a state is direct all his deeds and prayers toward awakening that mercy for himself and for the whole people, and hold on with simple faith.

“the very concept of romance has lost its meaning”

He teaches this in the name of the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh on the splitting of the sea: when the Egyptians were closing in, the attribute of strict justice demanded its due, and Hashem told Moshe that the Jews' bitachon would create a merit that would outweigh the judgement, and so it was. Hence the conclusion: when a person removes worry from his head and accepts that Hashem is in charge and is doing what is best for him, this counts as a chesed done for Him, and it brings a chut shel chesed, a grace that turns away a harsh decree. To someone struggling with shidduchim he says plainly: the best thing he can do is remove the worry by recognising that he is exactly where Hashem wants him. Every such thought of emunah is precious.

“The best thing he can do is remove the worry by recognizing that he is exactly where Hashem wants him”

In a letter to a ben Torah he says that all the sadness and bitterness of this time is a passing phase, the normal state of a person while he searches for his lost object. The tension, the uncertainty and the self-doubt he calls nisyonos, but he holds that one may not fall into despondency. The support he offers is hashgachah pratis: the match has already been announced and is already living in the world. In the morning, when you say she'asah li kol tzorki, strengthen your faith that everything you need has already been prepared, and to the question of where to find it, answer with the words hameichin mitzadei gaver.

“she is here now, alive!”