With More Options Than Ever, Why Are We So Lonely?

My father and mother didn’t match on Tinder. Didn’t use AI algorithms to find each other. Didn’t spend years dating to see if they were “compatible.”

Born in Lebanon and raised on a socialist Kibbutz in Israel (then Palestine), my mother immigrated to Chicago after serving as a glider pilot in the Israeli army.

Barely speaking English, living in a YWCA, and working at a local library, she accepted a blind date from a young, midwestern Chicago boy.

Not knowing a word of Hebrew or French, my father fell in love immediately. Besides her obvious beauty, my mother was charming, kind, principled, and had a great sense of humor (that meant she laughed at his jokes).

After dating for eight weeks, my mother traveled to Brooklyn to visit her Uncle Abud, who had recently immigrated from Egypt. Missing her, my father made a phone call that changed his life and ended up creating mine:

“Hello?” answered an old man with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

“This is Gene Feldman — is Aliza there?” my father asked, with a croak in his voice.

“Yes, she is. But why are you calling her?” Uncle Abud inquired.

“Umm, to say hi and see how she is doing.” my father answered, wondering what he did wrong.

“Is that all? Do you not have any other intentions?”

“Uh, I like Aliza very much, yes.”

“Enough to marry her?” asked Uncle Abud sternly.

“Well, I wasn’t thinking about marriage yet, but yes,” replied my father.

“Good. Let me ask her.” Abud turns away from the phone and shouts, “Aliza — Gene says he wants to marry you. Does that sound good to you?”

“Yes,” my mother replied from somewhere in the background.

“Ok,” Uncle Abud said to my father, “it’s final. Now don’t waste my niece’s time and arrange the wedding!”

“Uhh…that sound’s good. But can I speak with her now?” hesitantly replied my father.

“No. Our custom is that the bride and groom don’t talk directly until marriage, but you can convey a message through me,” Uncle Abud offered sternly.

“Can you tell her I love her?” requested my father.

“Before marriage? No. But I will tell her you are looking forward to the wedding,” he replied before the line went dead.

My father hung up the phone in shock. This call hadn’t gone exactly as planned from the outset, but he needed to get started on wedding plans unless he wanted Uncle Abud to hunt him down.

And so he did. My parents married in Chicago and had four beautiful children and many grandchildren. They lived a simple, middle-class life, my father working to support us while my mother raised us at home. With her husband at her side, my mother passed in her early sixties — a lifetime of war, struggle, and trauma in her Middle Eastern upbringing eventually catching up with her.

Growing up in a home where the only thing my parents had in common was the air they both breathed taught me that we all have the possibility to fall in love with, commit to, and make marriage work with just about anybody. It all depends on us and our commitment to make it to the finish line, hand in hand, heart in heart, soul to soul.

If my Lebanese mother could find her soulmate halfway around the globe, you can find yours, too. Most likely a lot closer than you think!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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