Resumes by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn

Resumes

by Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.

Iwas chatting with my daughter-in-law in Ramat Beit Shemesh as I always do on Friday mornings here; I have a bit of a conversation with all seven of those dear to my heart over there. She was telling me about how she was enjoying playing shadchan to her friend’s father some time after her friend’s mother had passed away.

She had a woman in mind – both, mind you, are in their seventies – for this man to meet. He was, and is, presumably, a very nice guy, and he and his late wife had had a wonderful marriage as far as my daughter-in-law knew. He was a respected professional, still working, as was the person my daughter-in-law wanted to introduce to him.

Well, I love happy-marriage stories because that is not what I generally encounter in my day-to-day life, so I was listening with pleasure. She went on to say that the two of them dated for a bit and apparently enjoyed each other when, all of a sudden, the woman wanted to end the relationship. I was disappointed in the story but was startled at the next chapter.

Along came another prospect for this man, and my sweet daughter-in-law, wanting to be helpful, made a suggestion once again. But something had changed for the man for he now requested a resume with a picture on it.

My daughter-in-law did not approve, but, being me, I could see both sides of the argument. I’m guessing that he was probably flooded with suggestions and needed some way to…. To what? To save time? Where was he going? To create a convenient decision tree? But how would those pictures really be of help? At any rate, I was a bit undecided. Or so I thought.

Then, long after we got off the phone, our conversation passed through my mind – and I felt cringy. That was unexpected.

Interesting.

On a rational, analytical level, I didn’t seem to have an opinion, but as I put myself in someone else’s shoes and imagined what it would be like, it just felt cringy. My first reaction was, “Uch!”

Now, you have to understand: Therapists are people, too. Not only that, we should bring our feelings into our awareness because that’s extremely helpful when trying to support and guide people in a healing direction. In my opinion, everyone benefits when they are aware of their own feelings – as opposed to their thoughts – in any given case.

The feelings come from somewhere; they have an origin that is meaningful, so they shouldn’t be brushed off. They could, of course, later on be challenged in any internal dialogue a person has with themselves. But a dialogue is exactly that: It presents both, or many, sides of an issue.

So, again, putting myself in the shoes of someone who was in later years and wanting to date, what, exactly was wrong with the picture on the resume?

The first thing that came to my mind was my stomach.

See, Covid knocked me out of the park. I was down for almost two weeks, unable to eat at all, feeling like I was going to die. I wasn’t hospitalized, thank G-d, and didn’t have trouble breathing. But my energy was totally gone, and eating was the biggest chore of my life. I remember that on one of the in-between days, I proudly told my daughter that I had managed to take a good half hour to force down a muffin.

“Ima,” she pointed out, “one muffin in the course of a day is not eating.”

So, when the viral particles had a run for their money, and the healing enveloped me, I ate. And ate. And ate. What fun! But not only was it fun: There was a hidden agenda going on inside me, and when I faced it, it was too late. I realized that if I ate, it meant I was alive, not dead. These things don’t have to make sense, you know. They make emotional sense in some rightbrained way.

So I spent the month of September 2021 eating my heart out and, of course, gained some weight. And then kept enjoying all this for the next eight months, adding more pounds. Looking in the mirror, my stomach started to seem awfully large, although most people didn’t notice it. But that’s how we women can be. So it was only natural that the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking of this poor woman having to produce a picture was the highly unpleasant notion of someone of the male persuasion analyzing my looks.

OK, I realize my picture is on the top of this page. But no one is scrutinizing it, judging it, mulling over if it is “good enough.” That’s the difference that makes a difference.

I then asked myself, “What if I had never gained the extra weight?”

And you know what? Still, “ugh.” The thought of being gawked at was just appalling.

From a frum perspective, this really makes sense. We are taught to be tzinius in not only our dress but also in our behavior, our values, and our attitudes. Dina was scolded for going out to check out the neighborhood. In my work with younger marrieds, there is a transition from singlehood to marriage that can be difficult for both men and women because suddenly, all, or most, bets are off when it comes to everything they’d been taught about tzinius.

Kal v’chomer, we’re talking about people who aren’t even married yet, and somehow, they have to juggle the idea of tzinius with the idea that someone is scrutinizing their physicality. How can that muster anything but a “yuck”?

And then we take it a step further to people who have raised families, are most likely grandparents, and have a career which is possibly a passion of the mind. And that all boils down to a picture of what they look like? What about what’s inside of them? Does that appear in the content of the resume? How? How can it possibly?

Makes no sense.

Recently, one of my live webinars in Zoom-land was on the topic of whether a couple can just fall in love. In preparing for this talk, I was reading a book that mentioned the research of Arthur Aron, the love researcher who was at one time here at Stony Brook. He was talking about a piece of research with college students that he contrived: People would ask very deep questions about the other person, taking turns, followed by looking into each other’s eyes for four minutes. Somehow, they would fall in love. In his original experiment, four of these pairs actually got married.

So as I was presenting this material, the thought came to me: Yeah, and then? I wonder what the follow up would be on how happy these people were over time. Sure, romance is a “thing,” a happy, fun thing. So is a good dessert and forbidden drugs. But what is it that marriages, solid, happy, fulfilled marriages – as this man himself had apparently had – are made of?

I decided that the best place for romance is after the marriage. Build up the kindness, respect, admiration, and generosity in the marriage and love will surely follow. Then, if you want to go bungie jumping together or whitewater rafting to add some excitement, go for it.

But let’s put all the elements into the right order. Take pictures of your sweetheart after you know they’re the one.