Frum N' Flipping

When to tell him? When to share the scandalous news? Will it scare him off, make him run away? But I'm going to have to share it with him, at some point. 'Him' being whoever I one day am destined to marry. Marriage is about trust, and has no room for secrets. The question is- when? The answers I got on Twitter ranged from: A. After 4 dates - "I would get a Kosher phone, just I need the Internet for Facebook, and for the anonymous account I have on Twitter, and for this blog I write. But aside for that I barely use the internet." To: B. After five years of marriage , or three kids. (Whichever comes first?) - "By the way dear, you should check out my site, I've been sharing there a lot of juicy details about our marriage. But don't worry, it's anonymous. Oh is that the baby crying?" Why am I even worried? Any guy who's right for me will be cool with the idea of me writing a blog. Right? Not quite. The real issue isn...

I've disappeared for a while. Here's my excuse. "Do me a favor, and don't ever show that to any guy you want to marry, OK?" "Isn't it a bit late for you to be telling me this now? I already showed it to him." Not to mention to a few hundred blog readers. But she doesn't know about that. "Oh, you were obviously trying to scare him off, last night." "I was?" "Yes. That story shows the worst side of you, the cynical side. It doesn't give a flattering picture of its author. Any decent boy who reads it will run a mile." "You could have told me that when you read it." "Well it is well written. But, sweetheart, I know you, you're not like that." "I was trying to copy Dorothy Parker's style." "But did Dorothy Parker ever get married?" I don't remember the answer. I guess it's a no. "Men don't want to marry Dorothy Parkers. Or Jane Aust...

Or more to the point, is my blog Tznius? Got some not-so-positive feedback recently. Here's my response. Being a Bais Yaacov girl means many things. Most of them are good. I made a conscious decision to study in the places I did, to belong to the society I do. I don't regret it. But along with the schooling came a pattern. The pattern of Chareidi society at large, perhaps. What not to say, where not to go. When I was in high school it was non Jewish music, movies, boys. These subjects were taboo. Good girls didn't even think of them, at least not aloud. Even now, in the discussions of "kids going off the derech" flourishing in the Frum press, so many theories are produced, for what drives teenage boys and girls to hang out together. What they never mention is hormones. Awakening needs, wants, temptations. Teenage boys want to be with girls, teenage girls want to be with boys. Sometimes it's as simple as that. Some kids do it. Do the forbidden, the banned. ...

I just wanted to write. That's all. Write whatever's in my head, in my heart. Write without censorship, without holding back the things I most want to say. Frum newspapers all have the same procedure. To start with, their authors know what not to write, what not to say. They are well trained. So was I, once. The editor has her own eagle eyes. She usually catches any untoward lines that slip through. Finally the "Mevaker", the official censor, gives his stamp of approval. There is not much I have to say nowadays, that would make it through the screening. So instead this blog came into being. A diary, you could call it that. Except none of the diaries I've tried to keep ever lasted beyond a week. I do want to write, but I want it read too. And I'm loving it. But together with my blog I entered a world. A virtual world. A universe builds up around me. I'm drawn in. It captures my thoughts, my time. Not everything thought should be spoken, Solomon said. And...