In the years of keeping this online journal I have been able to avoid almost entirely any mention of my personal life or those of my friends. I've never used names and when describing specific events have been able to obscure any personally identifiable information of my friends. This posting should be viewed no differently although I'll be sharing my thoughts on a sensitive and personal subject. Any time a specific person/friend thinks I may be talking about them or sharing their specific, personal story I'd ask him or her to remember this line - "no, dude, that wasn't about you, I was writing about someone else I know that you don't know so don't worry."

Another thing to keep in mind when reading this posting is that throughout my life the majority of my friends have been girls, women, females. This is true even today in Israel. Since arriving here nearly four months ago I have made more female than male friends. The reasons behind this trend in my life are best described in another, yet-unwritten posting. As a result of this phenomenon, I've gotten the opportunity to learn a lot about women and, more often than not, the relationships they get involved in while we are friends. So I usually know more about specific relationships from the girl's side than from the guy's.

Now I can get to the point of this entry, what I call "Jacob's Gender Generality" - every girl in Israel has a boyfriend or husband. More specifically, every girl in Israel which I would like to date has a boyfriend or husband.

Furthermore, I'd like to introduce the "Disrespect Principle" - the majority of relationships in Israel that I am aware of, between people under the age of thirty, are relationships which I can not condone, respect, admire, approve of or even understand. More specifically, they are often-times based on dubious foundations, do not seem loving or healthy and can not be understood by any measure of common sense.

From a very long-term relationship where they get into extremely bitter fights on a weekly basis to a very short-term relationship with a guy who is on the other side of the world and has no intention of ever visiting his girl in Israel who is staying loyal to him (hard to believe this guy is staying loyal to her), I think I've heard it all. (just remember what I said above - these examples do not represent any specific relationship I am familiar with. When you think I'm talking about you I'm really talking about someone else. In fact, all of these are probably just made up and exaggerated examples just to make my point)

Of course every specific case can probably happen anywhere in the world and there are always reasons for girls and guys to stay in relationships that people on the outside can't understand. We're all familiar with the myriad of common excuses for the existence and continuation of horrible relationships. But what I'm trying to get to is that in Israel things are one step beyond all that stuff that we've all seen and heard and even been involved in.

It seems that here women are pressured much more to be in relationships by family and friends. There is some sort of embarrassment associated with being alone - either by the girl herself or, if she's ok with being a secure, independent girl, others feel sorry for her. A single girl can't go more than 24 hours without someone trying to set her up with a "nice boy I just met at the supermarket" or "my cousin's roommate" or something else along those lines.

In NY things are exactly opposite. There are plenty of casual relationships and plenty of girls seeing multiple guys at one time without a single one of them being too serious. It takes a hell of a lot for a girl to accept being in a formal, exclusive relationship. In Israel you're in one of those by the second date!

Another aspect is the common Jewish motherly pressure to get married young and make many Jewish babies. It's sad that something as beautiful and special as love is so affected by something as clinical as demography and the Jewish people's need to have more Jewish babies. Even in Israel, Jews represent less than 80% of the population and in 20 years may no longer be the majority. Outside of Israel the problem is worse, with intermarriage and assimilation running rampant.

As you may imagine, this is all very frustrating to me because I feel as if I'm a day late for everything. I got to Israel too late. Now I'm trying to break into a dance where everyone already has a partner. I can't inquire about a girl's situation without being told she has a boyfriend (and furthermore being told that the relationship is pretty fucked up but that they're staying together regardless).

Sometimes a girl will break off from her horrible relationship in favor of a new boyfriend - if one is available. In this way it is possible to get a girlfriend but only if she's willing to better-deal her current boyfriend. This is interesting because you can find girls that leave their boyfriends but are nevertheless not single because they immediately jump into another relationship. So girls in Israel are never actually single!

All of this presents a problem to me because, as you're aware, I am a gentleman and would never want to think that I broke up a relationship - even a bad one. I also don't want to feel that the only way to get a girlfriend is to be the "other guy" in an existing relationship. I'd like to find a nice, single girl, start dating exclusively right away, get married within a few months and do my part to help demography by having many Jewish babies in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

My next posting will be about how this is effected by and how this affects the overall demeanor of guys and girls in Israel. It's a very interesting cyclical, chicken-and-egg sort of thing that I hope to dissect for my loyal readers. It will lead nicely into the explanation of my new, drastic and silly prediction regarding my own future - I do not think I will end up with or even seriously date a native Israeli girl. I see myself likely settling down, when I'm ready to do so, with another somewhat-recent immigrant (perhaps from New Zealand?).

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This post has become one of the most popular on my blog, with many people reaching it from search engines and other sites. I really seem to have struck a chord with my cynical writing of over a year ago. To read the follow-up post, click here. I'd also appreciate any comments you'd like to leave by clicking below.