This just in: I received a call from a Shadchan. Apparently she heard about me from (someone who knows someone who knows...) 'someone' and has been trying to get hold of me. She also heard I'm looking for a 'learning' boy (p.s. for those of you who aren't familiar with me & my blog-I'm looking for a learner-earner), so she was only 50% off with the 'type'.
Anyhow, what can I say-I saw an odd phone number appear on my caller ID and my curiosity got the better of me. It was this Shadchan. After all the introductions about herself and how she knows me, she went on to tell me about the guy she had in mind for me. She started off by first explaining that she doesn't actually know him but heard about him and got hold of his resume. After the humming and hawing, we got down to the nitty gritty aka she read his resume (2 pages, really quickly, over the phone). After swallowing most of the sentences, err paragraphs, she concluded. She took a deep breathe and said "well, basically, he just stopped learning fulltime and is looking to start going to college to become a professional, and he wants a girl who can support him financially whilst he decides IF and WHEN he is getting in to WHATever school/program. Also, he's not sure if fulltime teaching will make the cut-especially on a teacher's salary....are you interested?"
I sat there, half rolling my eyes, half unable to believe she thought this was normal and mostly holding in my LOL laughter and then replied. "I can refer him to a local bank whilst he makes his decision of what he wants to be when he grows up."
When I think about it, the "learner-earner" role seems tough on the man. As a learner, he has got to be way serious about learning. And as as an "earner", he's tacitly responsible for most of the family support - maybe the wife works at first, but when she has kids, she's going to want to stay mostly home, right? Talk about pressure on the guy.
ReplyDeleteMaybe when he takes over as the full breadwinner (and has to help out with the kids at night), he'll be allowed to cut down on his learning? I guess that makes it doable for him.
It just seems that the earner/learner split is very hard to reconcile, especially as the need for liquidity becomes more acute as children grow up. There is a significant balance needed to be struck between maintaining shalom bayit and achieving effective work and learning, which has to be resolved within the relationship, often as things develop.
ReplyDeleteAnon613-London
Great response!
ReplyDeleteI agree, great response!
ReplyDeleteI used to be a much more avid reader of your blog (albeit without commenting), but it's been a while. How do you define a learner-earner? Someone who works full-time but also has sedarim? Or half day learning and half day working?