Why does searching for the perfect spouse keep me from ever choosing one?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that “searching for the right person is the most comfortable way to never have to choose one.” Every new name gives you hope, every date feels like movement, and even when you say no, you still feel like you’re trying.
“And that is the danger,” he explains. “As long as the perfect person may appear tomorrow, you never have to choose today.” The search for the perfect person keeps you perfectly alone. In other words, the real person in front of you is always competing with someone imaginary.
“Marriage begins when you stop comparing a real person to an imaginary one.” Choosing is terrifying, he admits, “but not choosing is longer pain.” Choosing requires surrender, “and surrender is not giving up. It’s how you finally receive.”
He closes with the words “Hamelech basadeh,” the King is in the field, “not in the palace you’re still imagining.”
Related concepts: Comparison cheats · Relationships
In A Soul at Peace: When Searching Keeps You from Choosing
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Searching feels like progress, yet as long as someone better might appear tomorrow, a person never has to choose today.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
Choosing is terrifying, Rabbi Landau says, but not choosing is a longer pain.
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that what drives endless searching is imagination: a polished picture in the mind that every real person is compared to and loses to, because it does not exist.
Deepest human truth
The King is in the field, not in the imagined palace. What is real and in front of you is where you finally receive.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Marriage, Love, and Sacred Partnership · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz