A Son as His Mother's Trophy

"For my mother, my achievements were never just my achievements. My gold medal in school, my prestigious engineering degree, my good salary in Dallas—all of it was, for her, a tool to brag to her friends and raise her own status in the community. And now that I'm in shidduchim, it has turned into a real nightmare.

My mother isn't looking for a wife for me—she's looking for an "elite trophy" for herself. She rejects wonderful, intelligent, religious girls out of hand simply because their fathers don't hold senior positions or their families live in an "insufficiently prestigious" neighborhood. She tells me, "Yitzchak, you are the gold of our community. We can't lower the bar and take a girl from a simple family. What will Aunt Rachel say? What will the neighbors think?" My own opinion and my feelings don't interest her in the slightest. To her I'm an expensive race car that can't be parked in a cheap garage. The most terrible part is that because of her egoism and snobbery I've already lost a girl with whom I felt truly happy."