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A confidant is one person in whom you confide (hence the word confidant) your feelings and concepts about your plans, your goals, your dates, and later, your potential partner. You will give your confidant a great deal of information, so be very careful about making the right selection.

Choose a Rabbi, friend, relative, or another trusted person with whom you feel comfortable and in whom you can confide. That confidant must have the following characteristics:

• An ability to temporarily set aside your close personal relationship and to evaluate your situation in an objective manner
• An ability to remain your friend on other occasions
• An ability to be able to look you in the face despite having confidential information
• An ability to consider the situation or circumstance in an objective manner
• An ability to “forget” everything when your marriage actually goes through even though he or she knows “too much”
• An ability to maintain the privacy of your confidential or privileged information

Thus, the challenge of selecting a confidant should not be taken lightly. However, nobody said that your preparations for dating and marriage are supposed to be easy.

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To be a confidant you have to have certain qualities. You have to be able to listen to things without being judgmental. That means without internalizing ideas about people and without forming opinions about people despite the fact that you hear a lot of things and you know perhaps more than you should for your own good. That information should not make you change your feelings about people. It also means that you also have to know how to keep your mouth shut. A confidant who talks to others about the information that he receives is going to cause far more damage than the good that he may do.

Thus, being a confidant is not for everybody. It's not enough to be a good listener. It's not enough to give good advice. You have to have the right personality and you have to be able to distance yourself from the facts that you hear.