I was on the phone with my mom yesterday. We speak virtually daily. Not because we have something vital to share every day but mostly out of habit. Anyway, in the course of our conversation, she said "so, the market has been pretty bad lately". I responded "hmm" as I was only half listening (usually, I am multi-tasking while we are on the phone, typing an email, reviewing a file etc. This is not because I am being rude but since we speak daily, we rarely have anything new and interesting to talk about.) She continues "maybe he was upset". I asked "Maybe who was upset?" and she said "Red Sox Guy. He's a financial guy, right?" I said "yes, he's a financial guy, but why should I care if he is upset? He flaked on me. I'm over it". (Red Sox Guy is a guy I went on a few dates with who lost interest seemingly out of nowhere. ) Anyway, to avoid writing paragraphs of dialog, I will simply tell you that my mom thought perhaps Red Sox Guy was so upset about the status of the stock market that he couldn't handle dating me anymore. I told her that was completely ridiculous and asked why the hell we were still discussing the guy since I no longer cared why he lost interest and neither should she.

A few years ago, I had a first date with a guy I met on Jdate. He was Jewish (obviously) and he came from the same home town as me, although we did not go to the same schools. We met at the W hotel in midtown for a drink on a Saturday evening. He spent most of the date talking on his cell phone. He said it was a work call which I found odd since it was a Saturday night. Basically, he was totally rude and I thought about walking out but, quite frankly, I was drinking a very tasty glass of wine and wanted to finish it. He obviously wasn't into me but any decent guy (or at least any guy that I would want to be with) would be gracious to a girl regardless of his future intentions towards her. I had dinner with my family the next day and decided to share the events of the night before with my mom and sister. Although my sister agreed that the guy was a dick, after hearing the story, my mom asked "so, do you think you'll hear from him again?". I said "WHAT? Why would I want to hear from again? Were you even listening to me? He talked on his phone the entire time!" My mom just didn't get it. Actually, I don't think she was listening to me. All she heard was "Jewish guy from Rockland county" and imagined Passover Seders with Jewish in-laws. The rest of the story fell on deaf ears.

One last example: I went on several dates with another Jewish guy from Rockland county. I had been feeling pretty sick and had a chronic sore throat for about six months prior. I finally saw a doctor and was told that I had a lump on my tonsils that needed to be biopsied. There was a 1 in 10 chance that I had cancer. I didn't tell "K" (the Jewish guy from Rockland county) the details and only that I needed to get my tonsils out. Obviously, I would not be available to hang out for a couple of weeks. "K" disappeared and, while I was not torn up about it, my mother was. Every so often she still asks "do you ever see that "K's" profile on Match? Didn't that "K" live in this neighborhood?" That "K" did not like me enough to wait for me to recover from surgery and find out that "hooray, I don't have cancer"! Who the hell cares where he lives? As she will admit without reservation, my mom cares simply because the guy was Jewish and his parents lived only about a mile from her. (The screwed up part is that we aren't even religious. Our "Seders" consist of barely containing our laughter through The Four Questions and giggling while my sister's kids tape "I just farted" notes on my mom's back. We are a crew of silly folks and if we did have a Seder with "real" Jews, we (and them too) would be mortified and really, really hungry since a real Seder is friggin long.)

My mother is not obsessed with me marrying someone Jewish. She is merely obsessed with me getting married. Period. When I went away with a guy I was dating last year (not Jewish), my sister told me after the fact that my mom said to my sister in a joking (but very serious way) "you pay for the engagement party invitations and I'll pay for the rest". WAY premature, clearly, since months later the title of this blog is "single girl and her overbearing Jewish mother". The operative word being "single". My mother already has 5 adorable grandchildren but none of them are babies anymore and every time we walk past the baby section of a department store, my mom will pick up cute little outfits and tell me how much she would like to hold another infant. I tell her to get a baby sitting job. If I am dating someone at the time, she gets way ahead of herself and starts telling me the things she plans to buy me for my baby shower. If I am not dating anyone, she starts hounding me about being too picky. I have some very attractive single friends and in the case of one in particular, my mom asked "is she as picky as you?" I responded "if you mean, does she want to be with someone who is nice to her and makes her laugh and to whom she is attracted then, yes, she is as picky as me". My mother doesn't seem to realize that it is not that easy to connect with someone and she thinks that as long as he treats me well and puts me on a pedestal, it should be enough. I do want someone to treat me well and to sometimes put me on a pedestal. I think all women want to be with someone who makes her feel special, beautiful, smart, sexy etc. My mother weighs the importance of the guy's feelings for me as way higher than the importance of my feelings for him and, while I do not want to love someone in vain, I do want to find someone who loves me passionately and visa-versa. My mother married my father and, although they were married for 16 years, the marriage ended in disaster. But she was passionately in love with him when she walked down that aisle and said "I do". Her second marriage was more about companionship, being financially secure and being put on a pedestal. That marriage didn't last either. It seems that my mom is 0:2 and not the best source for advice on the ways of love but I can't get her to shut up no matter what I do.

Perhaps you think it is my fault because I talk to her about my dating life. Walk a city block in my shoes and you would understand. We talk every day. She asks me every day if I am going out after work. If I lie and say "no" all of the time, she will be worried that I am in a deep depression and turning into a hermit. If I tell her that I am indeed going out but don't tell her where or always say "I am going out with Shanna", or Shari, or some other girlfriend, she will be on my back about getting "back out there" and will offer (for the 100th time) to pay for me to join Eharmony, something I have no desire to do since I have never heard a positive statement about it from a real person and apparently the compatibility test takes about 70 hours to complete. So, I have to be somewhat honest with her for both of our sakes. I do have my tricks. For instance, I will tell her all about dates that were bad. This will appease her fears that I am not going on any dates. I try not to tell her about good dates until I have been seeing the guy for a certain amount of time, although when I really like someone, it is harder for me to contain my enthusiasm. I hate telling my mother when a relationship doesn't work out. Sometimes I care more about her reaction to the relationship not working out than I care about the relationship not working out in the first place. I hate feeling like a failure in my mother's eyes and since she puts marriage and kids way above everything else (successful career, good friends, active social life), I do wonder sometimes if she thinks I am a failure. She always tells me how proud she is of me and how wonderful she thinks I am, but her constant nagging on the dating end suggests otherwise. I also hate wondering if she thinks it is always my fault that things don't work out. Admittedly, in my past, it was often my fault. When I was in my early 20s, I was too picky and rarely gave guys a chance. In my mid-late 20s, I simply was not ready and freaked every time it appeared a relationship might go somewhere. I guess I am paying for it now. I am no longer unreasonably picky and am now prepared to overcome any fears that go along with committing myself to someone, and I truly believe that my lack of success in the past several years has been due to bad luck or dating the wrong guy but no (or little) fault of my own. I don't know if my mom believes me and, yes, I do care what she thinks.

I have to face the fact that my mother will not change. She is 66 years old, has always been this way and will always be this way. My reaction to her behavior is the only thing I can control. So, it seems the only choices I have are to 1) deal with my overbearing Jewish mother by taking her comments with a grain of salt and joking with my friends about her to release some of my mom-induced stress or 2) significantly reduce contact with her. The latter is just not an option. I love my mother with all of my heart and soul and, aside from the pressure she puts on me to get married and have children, we have a great relationship. Besides her highly annoying behavior described above, my mother isn't all that bad. She loves me and just wants me to be happy. She just has her own ideas about what would make me happy and sometimes totally disregards or undermines mine. Other times she is totally supportive and listens to me without saying a word. She is also quite funny and full of surprises. When my biopsy came back that I did not have cancer (for which I am still totally thankful), she told me how much she loved me and wanted me to enjoy my life. Then she said "go treat yourself to an expensive designer handbag and GO GET LAID"!

She didn't even say the guy had to be Jewish.