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Do you ever find your sense of self-definition changing based on the person you are dating?
In the good old days when I was a carefree kid, I was whoever I was and nothing bothered me much.
I knew that I was Jewish, kept Halacha, and that was pretty much it.
I remember visiting an in-town community and a woman approached me.
"Are you Charedi?" she asked.
"No."
"Are you Chabad?"
"No."
"Then who are you?!"
I was slightly dumbfounded. I was who I was. How difficult was that to comprehend?
B'kitzur, I started dating. And suddenly I had to choose a narrow box to squeeze myself into...
"yeshivish, modern yeshivish, yekkish, Jewish, Modern Orthodox liberal, ultra-modern orthodox middle-of-the-road" you name it.
Then you have to decide if you like Gush or KBY guys.
You have to decide whether you keep kosher some of the time or only in your parents home,
whether you keep Shabbat once a month or twice, whether you believe in platonic relationships or not, whether you wear pants only, or you add a skirt in from time to time.
Suddenly, people expect to understand exactly where you stand on every issue and to categorize accordingly.
Well, what if my thoughts on one issue put me into category A, but my opinions on something else put me into category B? What then?
Then, my friend, you are "out of the box" just like the other 99.9% of humanity. So you will be set up with every single other person out there who is also slightly out of the box, even if the boxes he is out of are miles from the boxes you are out of.
William Zev came up with this spectrum and asked everyone to place themselves somewhere on it:
Don Draper->Cool ->Krum -> Kinda Frum -> Frum -> Very Frum -> Excessively Frum
Can you place yourself into one of the above sections? Of course not! Because everything is relative and people will end up redefining themselves as their lives and surroundings change.
On the more serious side though, dating pushes one to the edge of self discovery.
I am faced with a situation where I am constantly evaluating and assessing myself, my values, direction and lifestyle.
And since dating is such a personal thing, people tend to open up to influences of those who surround them, those who date them...
And often, people will redefine who they are because of someone they dated.
I am not sure if it's healthy or not.
