Modern Rashi on: Clarity Needed in Shidduchim

A frum psychotherapist says stupid things which COL could not help themselves from posting

Rabbi Shmuel Druin, a professionally useless person (read: therapist), wrote an article on COL with the thesis that spending more time with the person you are dating does not provide clarity on whether you should marry them. I mean, you probably should not take advice from someone whose job is to talk in circles and validate the same feelings you walked in with. If anything, this article reaffirms the modern rule of thumb: university is where intelligence goes to die.

By Rabbi Shmuel Druin, LCSW

(Let’s Continue Sitting Weekly)

I will skip the bloviation paragraphs for your sanity and mine. It is the standard therapist fog machine, purposeful insecurity, feelings confetti, questions for the sake of questions, and vague platitudes regurgitated in sufficient quantity to hide the fact that he has nothing practical to offer. Classic therapist model.

The big question is always, “Are we ‘compatible’?” This is the hardest yet easiest question to answer. Simply, if you hold the same values, have views that each other can respect, enjoy spending time together, and are attracted both spiritually and physically (yes, I said physically,)

At least he included that part....

then you are compatible. Once you start looking deeper, there can be no end.

I’m glad that this Rabbi Shmuel Druin has the authority to determine this with blanket statements as such. Really says a lot about how seriously we should take everything else he says. This kind of shallow, head-in-the-sand ideology is exactly why so many people in the frum world end up in mismatched marriages.

However, the bottom line is that spending more time with each other does not provide clarity.

Of course he pushes this messaging; it perfectly suits the worldview presented in his article, where major life decisions should rely on faith vibes rather than actual data. Telling people that the less they know, the better the marriage will turn out is convenient advice for anyone invested in keeping the bar for discernment as low as humanly possible.

We tend to get stuck in the details and the technicalities which create doubt. Even if you have every point of compatibility, it is never fool-proof.

His big concern is that spending time exposes you to information. To him, that is a problem. To the rest of the functioning universe, that is called reality. If your entire relationship can only survive in the dark, maybe the problem is not the light. Right, because details like “who is this person,” “how do they handle conflict,” and “do they shut down when stressed” are clearly overthinking. Apparently the best way to preserve emotional confidence is to stay ignorant. This is not dating advice; this is a how-to guide for ignorant people to buy used cars with a cracked engine.

The bottom line is that Rabbi Shmuel Druin should not be taken seriously and anyone who follows his “steps to clarity” is setting themselves up for lots of problems. You have been warned: following this advice is both stupid and retarded. It has the same logic as Obamacare: if you have to commit before you are allowed to know the details, you are signing up for a piss-poor idea. Any worldview that treats information as a threat is not Torah, not psychology, and not guidance, but ignorance.