Three years ago I listed the reasons people give for the “shidduch crisis:” Singles are too picky, there aren’t enough good boys, or there aren’t enough boys (period, aka: the pyramid problem).
I also hosted some NASI back and forth on the subject. Their original article on the 10% crisis, my follow-up response, and a third reply from the boys, all on the subject of our lonely doom.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a number of alternative explanations for the shidduch crisis. Some I agree with. Some I don’t.
I link to some of them here:
– Nobody wants to marry a career-woman, and since most women are career women, they can’t get married
– Men are slowly degenerating into slightly squishy couch-cushions whom women would rather sit on than date
– Jewish men don’t wear wedding bands, thus preventing Jewish women from striking up conversations with apparently single Jewish men because there are no apparently single Jewish men
– Jewish women don’t wear red, and red attracts men, so Jewish women don’t attract men
– There aren’t enough idealistic Jewish men for all our rational Jewish women
– Too many of us are friends with my old pal E, who is a segula for not getting married
– There are fewer men being born in the western world than ever before so there really are too many women around
– We don’t pay shadchanim just for dates so why should they bother to set us up?
– People place too much importance on hats, which casts shade over more important issues, like essential hashkafic compatibility
– Women won’t marry down, and most men are down these days (and the ones that aren’t don’t want successful women [see bullet-point #1]), so women won’t marry and it’s all their own picky fault
Work your way through those for a bit. Next week I’ll post some of the solutions I’ve posed over the past few years.
Bad for Shidduchim 
I wear red! Half of the stuff in my closet is red. And yet, so far, no takers.
I actually find in my case it is the opposite; men want me to have a career, which I don’t. A job isn’t enough; they want someone “ambitious” to supplement their income. Or remove their need to work altogether.
There is a point with the Jewish band thing. When I guy is checking me out, and I turn to bat my eyelashes back, then his wife and kids show up.
Shadchanim are supposed to focus on the potential shadchanus, rather than needing to be bribed in the first place. That’s what the good shadchanim I know do.
Hats – meh. I would wear a fedora faster than needing a groom to.
And I won’t marry down? You mean to a squishy couch cushion? How selfish of me.
How about, there’s no crisis, just a nisayon?
I find the implicit contempt of men a significant hurdle for women to overcome. Your grandmothers did not suffer from this hurdle; they truly admired their men. We can smell the contempt, although it is usually verbalized without subtlety.
And nothing is more seductive than an intelligent (and successful) woman. Nothing.
Maybe some of the men are, if not deserving of contempt, at least somewhat nebbishy. I only know one single late 30’s or older male, not divorced or widowed, who seems like a good catch. All the other late 30’s plus never married men have some fairly obvious flaws. And while the one good catch doesn’t trigger my “gaydar” and dates women, I’m not sure since he could easily get married and acts interested.
By contrast, I know several never married late 30’s women, and the general flaw is looks (too heavy, etc), there are several who are quite pretty, nice, and would clearly make wonderful wives, but can’t find a good catch (of course, they are fishing in a depleted pool).
basically you only have 2 categories. Category 1) ridiculous reasons like wedding bands, women in red and being friends with E. These are more entertaining then anything else. Category 2) women are too good and man are too bad, or too put it in the lingo of an elementary school student…girls rule boys drool. Maybe that’s true or maybe its the fact that these women are still thinking like elementary school students that’s keeping them from getting married.
It’s all about money, honey.
Women are very picky these days!! hahaha
Just the other day, my friend got rejected by a thirty something lonely woman at a park!!
I don’t know her reasons, but I’m sure they are worthless.
Another funny thing happened to me some years ago, a friend suggested I should date one woman his wife knew, when she told her about this, she said that she “wasn’t ready”.
I got married, had great pleasure in being with a woman and given a lot of pleasure, and to this date, she lives alone and would cry to her friends that “love doesn’t exist”.
Women should make their standards real, not lower them.
Squishy??!