The dating process in most societies features a Hollywood-type scenario: Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and they get married.

In contrast, the process described here does not recommend casual meetings of young men and young women. Instead, the dating procedure is planned with a confidant. Sometimes a Rabbi is consulted as well.

This page will help you keep track of what is happening.

The confidant helps you separate your own feelings and needs from the facts. He helps you refrain from interjecting irrelevant or extraneous ideas. Your intensive discussions with your confidant will help you realize when a potential partner may not be appropriate. The confidant will help you evaluate and consider the desires that you have stipulated in advance. However, only you will make the real decision about whom to marry.

At an early stage, you decide what you want in a spouse, and then you ask your contacts to recommend prospective partners. In order to reduce the number of unnecessary dates, you check the references of each potential date before your first meeting.

You make the decision

You will be working intensively with your confidant during the Berurim and thereafter. However, in both of these stages, you have the final word and you will make the final decisions. You will determine which possible candidates are not appropriate, and you will select the candidate whom you will marry.

Your dates will be purposeful and almost businesslike (although they may be pleasant and enjoyable). Both you and your date are interested in determining a practical issue – whether to marry each other.

Our discussion ends with a decision following this dating process. We then meet our happy couple again some time later, in the section about marriage.