Shidduch Series #3: But We're Just Friends (Ep. 117)

hi this is dominolovsky welcome to the very last key show and whether you're listening until anytime or wherever you listen or watch your podcast we're happy to have you along for part three in our series on dating and marriage um i have to give a warning label at the beginning um we're going to be discussing things that are not appropriate for younger children i know i have a strong following in the elementary school crowd uh i urge uh you to uh turn this one off and watch another one an old one uh we're going to be dealing with issues that are perhaps a little more sensitive and uh i can just urge you please um this is uh this is not meant for uh for a younger age group uh but it's such an important issue that i feel it needs to be dealt with and if we've established one thing it's that i try to deal with issues that need to be dealt with do i run the risk of uh of um dealing with subjects that are sensitive yes yes i do but it's something that has to be done and uh this is a topic that is so essential especially when we're going to be talking about marriage we're going to talk about it more in the context of marriage later on but i want to talk more right now about the subject of dating we're talking about relationship and we're talking about a relationship between a man and woman that's we spoke about last week there's a difference between men and women and we're talking about the relationship between men and women the torah recognizes two levels of relationship between men and women and these are the only two relationships that it recognizes one is called marriage and the other one is called znus which means immorality there's nothing in between um i know there is a concept that i can be friends the member of the opposite gender the torah philosophy is that is impossible impossible so i want to read your chuva from moshe feinstein it's a pretty famous one it's an example and this is the shyla the young man wrote to him a young man he's not ready to get married and his heart is moving him to have a friendship kishrei reyes to have a friendly connection with a young girl ashagam kane began she's also not ready for shidduchim and she's also not interested in getting married but um the cave in the ham is harim since they're not going to be alone together in a room which is an issue of yehud so uh there shouldn't be any answer in just having a friendship with a girl i'm shavada yodaya shalom i'm not interested in being so from i know to be such a no i don't want to be a closet i just want yeah there ain't no road to the shema he writes throughout my show i don't want to hear any muscle out of you i don't want you to hear me you know it until you put me in my place yeah i just want to know la maisa is it mutual the m kane take it shari no gail and myself take it and i have to answer right away because it's a local mice wow mystery motion says listen i don't want any muscle just don't tell me anything about uh you know just la maisa mutter uh for a boy and a girl to have a relationship that's not marriage not for marriage it's a very long tuba i say very long it's uh three a little more than three about three columns and he goes through it and he says clearly it's awesome and he brings an obviously ruby nelson that is just absolutely fascinating and he says that a person might think that it's okay to hug or kiss or touch or talk and there's no hate so brings the plastic yeah not allowed to so sister maisha you see that talking is inside of the gether of uh of intimacy so this is what i want to talk about i want to talk about the idea of having friendships with people who are members of the opposite gender right now uh i'm not getting into uh social interactions you know and uh those sort of things i'm not talking about that i'm talking about forming a relationship and this is so important i just this week got an email from somebody asked me please don't give too much details but she's holding and she took him and she's working in a place and there's a young man working the place and i have a you know we talk and he's so easy to talk to and uh should i just let things take their course and see what happens see what happens so uh uh that's what we're measuring talking about you're just a friend just a friend now close to 30 years ago i've spoken to seminary they asked me to speak on this topic i was younger than yeah perhaps i didn't i don't say things as carefully as i do today which gives you an idea how incredibly outrageous it is i'm sure that cheer is online someplace people could find it it's called platonic relationships uh which is what i was asked to speak about i spoke about this in the seminary and at the time i was teaching in a boy's issue i come in the next morning and they say to me hey i heard you gave a shirt in the seminary about photographs yesterday i said how do you know it says i already have a copy of the tape by the end of the week almost every yeshiva and seminary that was english speaking in item had a copy of the tape it went all over the place and uh obviously i did not prepare for it i walked in the door i asked one question to the magica who was in charge i said do i have to behave myself she said no just be yourself and i spoke very straight that was almost 30 years ago i am not exaggerating if i tell you i have met or spoken to or received letters from hundreds of people who told me that they ended these relationships because of that in fact i remember one time i saw these three girls and uh one says you know i heard your tape and i ended this relationship i had with this boy the second girl says i i also heard the tape and i also ended the relationship i had with a boy and the third girl opens her purse and takes out the cassette and she says my mother makes me take this with me wherever i go i said well what do you think she says i never listened to it i said really she says i'm afraid that if i do i will end up having to change my life and i don't want to because there is an attitude that um we can have relationships listen the pendulum is swinging the other way yeah but mike pence when he became vice president four years ago said i don't go out to dinner with a woman unless my wife is there and he was ripped up and down then the me too movement started about women who said men have been taking advantage of us and suddenly people who don't have relationships with women unsupervised suddenly they're looked at completely differently except for my parents he's part of the trump administration so he's got to be uh nazi but uh you know but there's this one particular actor who you know was taking a picture and he wouldn't touch the girls on either side and everyone says wow such sadiq such a wonderful fellow [Laughter] now let's understand what we're talking about i'm a guy or a girl i have a relationship with a member of the opposite gender we're just friends marriage is off the table we don't plan on getting married but i develop because as the officer every nelson says talking is intimate there's uh a gumbaring service where it talks about uh this woman who we suspect of having had relations and the and the way it's described is you saw them talking and they weren't talking but dibor is a relationship yeah amira right i saw about morris because broke who created the world with 10 amirus to be to say something mr that you can that you can uh say even if nobody's particularly listening but dibor is a relationship between two people i'm speaking and you're being macabre otherwise it's not a d-board and d-board and that's why it's understand that rashi says d-boy is a lotion kosher whereas amira is a loss in rakha why it's soft because i don't care if you're listening or not i always say the easiest people to deal with are people who don't care what you think i love it when i have to deal with those kind of people in my life because i it doesn't matter what i say and that's where you have these people come over and ask your opinion what do you think about this and i just right away say what do you think and they're more than happy to tell me what they think there is a concept in judaism called the tinus dibor instead of fasting by not uh eating anything you fast by not speaking right rather than worrying so much about what goes into your mouth you're more concerned about what comes out of your mouth school the time is deeper so a guy had made a tightness deeper and he couldn't talk and a guy come over and said listen i gotta talk to you i have a big problem and the guy talked for 35 minutes straight and the guy didn't say a word because he he couldn't and at the end um [Music] in the end the guy thanked him it was one of the best conversations i ever had [Laughter] those people are really easy to deal with yeah i was working someplace once and a guy began a campaign against me to destroy me so he could get me fired and take my job which happened he was successful [Laughter] that was yeah hashem obviously but you know the guy told somebody lasky doesn't even know all the tricks i played on him but i saw through it immediately and i told him right at the side you think i don't know what you're doing you're trying to discredit me and get me fired and take my job he says i don't know why you're saying this so he asked to meet with me sure three hours we met three hours and the theme of his conversation was communication we need to work on our communication now you probably have picked up already from watching this podcast and i have a somewhat little twisted sense of humor i did not say a word for three hours he lectured me for three hours straight about the importance of communication and he had notes he says this is what i think this is what you think he had all written out i didn't have to say a word as he lectured me on the importance of communication but debor is a relationship there's this two people there's a give and take so if i'm going to establish a relationship with somebody through speech that has the power of a physical relationship that's what remission says the office the rebbe nelson is teaching us now think for a second right you're a young lady you're studying shidduchim and there's a young man that you have a relationship with for two years and you open up your heart and you talk to him and you discuss things with him and he really gets you and he's very supportive and now you go out with some guy this guy is two years behind you have a relationship with this other guy for two years yeah this this this relationship is two years behind how could some guy who you meet in a hotel lounge over a diet sprite how do they possibly have the chance of competing with some guys you had a relationship with for two years it's uh it's a problem there's another problem and that is people are dishonest sometimes they're dishonest intentionally sometimes they don't realize they're dishonest right so a guy will tell me i have a relationship with a girl but it's not it's not she's not interested in getting married she's not with me there's nothing to talk about over there so i said let's say this girl wants to marry you and she knows you don't want to marry her so do you think it might be in her best interest to keep this relationship going in the hope that you might change your mind and if so how would you ever know well she'll tell me ah [Music] oh the old honesty card unfortunately you know people heard i gave this class to girls and uh and uh they said well what's the boys version i said i couldn't make a whole a whole share out of it the boy's version is one minute i i say to a group of boys you know you'll do anything to get what you want right and they all say sure [Laughter] so let me tell you about the scuzziest guy i ever met in my life okay now uh to full disclosure you know he said that he was doing chuva and that he was changing so i you know i'm not god i don't mean to judge anybody i share with you the story as he said it to me he was um in a uh [Music] uh he was in a out-of-town community that had a basiaco smaller than brooklyn uh larger than wilkes-barre pennsylvania okay so just to give you an idea i think there were maybe 60 girls in the basiaco high school i think i don't remember exactly something like this and he said to me that he was having a relationship with half of the girls in the school at the same time and i said high school how do you do it he says it's not hard you just have to get them over that initial hump where they think it's wrong to talk to boys once you can do that then the rest is easy it's a girl who says i don't want to talk to you so yeah that's a problem so you can't get over that how do you do that the level of creativity boggles the mind i had a girl in seminary who says who said to me here's the story this story is rich there were these uh two girls on a bus and they were discussing a maharao that they had learned in class seminary and there was a yeshiva boy sitting behind them and he leaned over and said they're snapchatting tomorrow now if he would have said to them you seem like very interesting and attractive young ladies i would like to maybe develop a relationship perhaps we could go out for coffee they would have said get away from me you creep [Laughter] but he used a trick that no seminar girl could resist so they start arguing with him and he says no there's a guru aye and says mama shot like that so i'll go back and forth and he says i'll find it for you what's your number so okay those who have the advantage of being outside looking in see exactly what's happening but bashas misa this girl thinks to herself i don't have shot in the maharao he's going to prove to me that i'm wrong and i know i have the right shot because i heard it from rabbi hartman you know so uh fine she gives him a number he calls up and he says to read the girl and she has to cash on it and they go back and forth and he realized it was not akasha on herb shot and she was really gay fine he called the next day found another morale and they started talking about i said yeah fine cause the third time and uh he's just talking to her and she's waiting for the morale and it's not coming so uh finally she says uh why why are you calling because i'm sorry i was just you know talking to whatever caused the fourth time and it says like this i spoke to the masjid issue and i told him that i met this girl who i talked to in learning and i get a tremendous secret from it and it gives me uh tremendous uh you know uh you know uh it makes me more relaxed and i feel calm i'm able to learn better and he says to me that in that case you should definitely keep talking to her so i was just going you know if you're you know if you don't have an objection that's when she came to meet with me she told me the story and i said dum dum dum go back to your original value girls don't talk to boys boys don't talk to girls unless you're getting married this is an intimate relationship that's forming over here he tricked you into it give me the number of the mashiach i want to call him up and speak to him to see what he told some yeshiva boy that he should call some seminary girl he met on a bus so they can have conversations [Music] but so this guy says to me he was in this town and he was going out with half the basiaco girls in the high school at the same time he says i just have to get them over that initial hump where they don't talk to boys and he had a number of tricks to get them to start talking and once they did it's very emotionally fulfilling to have conversations with somebody it's fun for a girl to talk to a boy and it's fun for a boy to talk to a girl they enjoy it and the reason says the other is the ribbing awesome is because it's an intimate action like hugging and kissing so we're just talking we're just talking at one point i don't know if it's still true i i don't keep up with my statistics i'm sorry to say but one of the major reasons given for divorce was facebook why because a husband or a wife on facebook would find an old friend of the opposite gender maybe an old flame and they would start communicating and before you know it they have a relationship and so there's a discussion in the psychological community of committing infidelity on the phone through conversations we didn't do anything but i've become more emotionally attached to this person through the conversations for the act of talking that's just a reality we're just friends we're just friends i mean that's the shiloh that they asked with my we're just friends and he comes out three different ways that it's awesome this is a big problem because we live in a society where these things are encouraged and you have married people who work in offices and there are people of the opposite gender they may spend more of their day talking with these people than they do their own spouses and you know the problems that are causes tremendous problems why because the act of talking has the ability of forming that intimate bond and so when a person thinks you know well i'm you know they're just friends it doesn't work that way so this guy says to me he goes uh you have to get him over that hump where they don't want to talk once they start talking they want to talk to somebody who feels like they understand them i told this story over in and one of the issues i was teaching and the guy started laughing says of course everyone knows that yeah if you're just willing to listen to a girl you don't talk you know then you can move the relationship to any level that you want because you know women want to have that intimate relationship guys don't need that as much guys don't talk as much and we talked about this last week you know but uh but women love to be able to have somebody to talk to who's listening to them paying attention to them caring about them interested in what they're going through and when you form that emotional button so this is what the guy said to me he says you start talking and then eventually you arrange to meet up someplace and you start talking in person and this is what he did he goes and then you sit back and let nature take its course [Laughter] after the conversation i washed my hands i felt soiled from the experience yeah when you form an intimate relationship the reality is that most people most people and i'm generalizing here because there's two types of people those who generalize and those who don't but most people want the relationship to move on to another level so if i feel intimate with somebody then i want to have physical contact with that person it's just natural i want to hold your hand [Music] a bigger lie has never been said [Laughter] no guy wants to hold a girl's hand it's just ridiculous obviously the nature of men and women are that we're created to be able to have a total physical bond because i'll compare it to drinking salt water it just makes you thirstier it's just the reality when i when a person uh goes into a relationship and i start forming this relationship so i'm generalizing there are boys and girls who want to have a meaningful marriage and the way to have a meaningful marriage is adam and began aiden one man and one woman but if i've got three girls that i have a real close connection to girls say i know these guys that i have a really close connection to i said how do you think your husband's gonna feel when you know they call you and you just sit down and schmooze with them for 40 minutes so well now when i get married i'll break it off i said when you get married you'll break it off i thought these people are friends i thought these people are so uh connected to you but you're just using them and once you're done with them you'll just dispose of them you might find that it's a little harder than you imagine people who are in our lives and like i say there were people who broke off these relationships and then they met up again on social media and reestablished the relationship maison these things happen all the time anyone who thinks they don't are being naive and then there are good boys and good girls who don't want anybody else in that relationship now people are manipulative we know this very often people want what they want and i've had this situation where girls would have a relationship with a guy or vice versa and they say listen i realize from a torah point of view that this is wrong and i can't have this relationship anymore and they say how can you do this to me you're my friend how can you leave me and they come to me and they say what do i do i don't want to hurt them so i said you know there's an expression i think it's from mothers against drunk driving i'm not sure exactly where it's from friends don't let friends drive drunk if you're my friend then you don't say to me i want you to go against your religious values because otherwise it will hurt me can you imagine anything meaner or more selfish than that i care about you so much that i want you to give up your religious values so that i can feel better i'm going to talk about love but you understand that's not love when a person says i love a hamburger what they mean is i love myself so i want to eat the hamburger if i love the hamburger i would preserve the hamburger and do everything i could to protect it as i love hamburgers what i mean is i love myself and so myself likes hamburgers so i'm going to eat it munchy munchie and in this case the other person is just a hamburger i enjoy talking to you and i will do whatever i can to keep this relationship going because it works well for me is it possible is it possible for a boy and a girl to meet form a relationship then get married absolutely and we're going to talk about that but you have to be clear and say and this is what i tell people who find themselves in these relationships that they did not expect to be in and i said if you never met this person and somebody read them to you as a shoulder and someone said here's a suggestion of a person to go out with would you go out with them the answer very often is either no or silence what does that mean that means i'm settling for this person who i don't think is the best person for me because i already have a relationship what do i have a relationship with this person for how did that happen it's uh it's a scary thing and ladies let me address this to you life is not fair i'm sorry life is not fair people who are rich um have a lot of advantages over people who are poor people who are handsome or beautiful have advantages over people who are beauty impaired people who are strong physically fit healthy have advantages over weak dumpy sick people i don't want to go too into that because it's pretty clear which uh which category i fit into people who are very very smart have advantages over people or not that's just how it is life's not fair and one of the things that are not fair is the way that we treat in the firm community boys and girls a boy can do every terrible thing and then he goes up to israel he learns for three years and all is forgiven a girl was once seen talking to a boy in a parking lot that said her life is over she's never getting married is it fair no it's not fair how many times i i i i don't know if it's 10 maybe it's 10 i don't remember but it's happened enough that that it raises concerns that a boy is going out with a girl and the girl doesn't really feel comfortable about it but he gets her involved in the relationship the way that boys can and um and uh and then he goes off there it's well he starts to learn he comes from and there was an understanding that they were going to get married and then at some point he calls her or texts her well what's up sir we're send to carrier pigeon and says i'm sorry i can't i can't [Music] continue with this relationship now she sacrificed everything to go to this relationship she didn't want to and he says why so i can't marry you you you talk to boys outside of he says only you i know i know but i want to find a nice girl who who never did any of those things because people are hypocrites is this reality i was once uh talking to a co-ed group and i was explaining what goes on inside of a man's head when he's dealing with a you know young man and a young woman and a guy says to me come on rabbi you had your fun give us a chance i said i got from a 12 i didn't have any fun i don't owe you anything and i've dealt with too many girls yeah who said to me and i'm talking about intelligent girls who said to me but but he said he loved me but he said he was going to marry you but he said yeah yeah i'm sure he did i'm not questioning that but you have to ask yourself a question yeah you have to ask yourself a question what happens if he's not being honest with me so there's a lot more to say on this subject like i say i've dealt with this subject for years and years and years and uh i can tell you that from personal observations it's just gotten worse it's just gotten worse i'm a student of human behavior i'm an observant jew and how many times have i seen a situation like a kosher pizza place where these three girls at a table and these three guys at the table and uh you know one of them comes over and makes a comment you know sends a little note everyone thinks it's very funny the colors that's the reality there's a reason it's called fooling around i was just fooling around yes you were you didn't realize the consequences of it so before we start talking about marriage i'm talking about not marriage there's only two relationships there's marriage and there's and that's it and if a person wants to have a successful marriage keep all those other people out and focus only on that which is your end goal what i really want it's called sacrificing short-term gratification for long-term meaning and that's it for this week if you will find out more about the show you can go to my website obviously.com you can make a comment you can send an email i just answered a whole bunch of emails i'm slowly making my way through i think i think i've actually knocked off a whole week of them the problem is they go back like about half a year but anyway um you can send an email you you can sponsor an episode and that's it for this week my name is debora lowsky and this is the ravriolovsky show it's the rabbi orlowski show tauren simpa ready to go the rabbi orlovsky show knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme no it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orlovsky.com torah anytime youtube and more it's rabbi orlowski show torah and simple ready to go it's the rabbi orlovsky show till next time till we meet again throughout my orolowski show it's the rabbi yolowski show it's the rabbi orlovsky