Could we stop saying that people who coerce others into shidduch dating are "just doing chessed"? There are those who like to assert their dominance by coercing others into going on shidduch dates.

As someone who has been coerced into shidduch dating against her will, I have been told many times that the shadchan was “just doing chessed” or “just cared about the other person.”

I once had this woman harass me for a week because she wanted to set me up on a shidduch date. She called me once a day for a week, and every time I would tell her: “No. Bye. I still have to recover from the first three shidduch dates I went on.” At one point she asked me of I’m a bad person, for only a bad person would say no to a date with someone who wants to meet her. I know that I’m not a bad person for refusing to date someone, but I still feel as though she insulted my intelligence. She wouldn’t stop calling me with “but he wants to meet you and so you have to meet him.” She is an old family friend, and so at one point I just said, “He sounds great but I don’t feel up to it. If I change my mind I’ll get back to you and so don’t call me about him again.”

She then sent me a text message saying that I am meeting him at her house Sunday at six pm. I then texted her that I never said that I wanted to meet him. She also texted my mother that I agreed to meet him. I called her back and she said, “But he wants to meet you. Are you a bad person? He’s showing up to my house Sunday at six pm whether you like it or not. And if you don’t show up, I’ll tell everyone what a mean person you are.”

I called my friend and asked her what to do about this woman who is harassing me, and she told me that I should just agree to a phone date with him. I called the woman back and she said that he will call me 8:30 pm on motzaei shabbos. She called me back an hour later to tell me that he doesn’t want to do a phone date and has to meet in person because he’s “very shy,” which did not make any sense at all; you’d think that someone who is “very shy” wouldn’t want to meet in person. She told me that I have to meet him Sunday at four pm because she already told him and his parents that I’m meeting him at her house on Sunday and if I don’t, she would tell everyone that I went out of my way to hurt him by not showing up. I had no way of getting in touch with him or his parents to say, “Hey I don’t mean to insult you and I actually don’t know anything about you, but I really don’t want to date anyone at this point in my life.”

The reason I didn’t want to date him was that I had been set up with very strange guys in the past, and so I was 99% sure this guy would be strange as well. I was really upset the whole morning because I knew he was going to be strange, and whenever I was set up on shidduch dates, I felt extremely self conscious knowing that this is what others think about me. I showed up at her house and this guy was twitching the whole time and his eyes didn’t match his facial expressions. He couldn’t hold a conversation and so I was just interviewing him the whole time.

I told my dad about the date when I got home, to which he said, “If you weren’t such a retard, you wouldn’t get set up with boys like this.” I went up to my bedroom and I cried for hours. The next day, I get a text from this woman saying that I have to go out with him again. All I texted back was: “I’m not going to see him again.” She then texted me: “Do you know how much money he spent?” By that she meant bus tickets from New York to New Jersey and back. She thinks I’m the stupidest person ever. Did she think she could coerce me into another date by saying that he spent money? I’m not a prostitute, and it was her idea that he go on a date with me.

I didn’t go to work the next day and was crying the whole week. My parents were insulting my appearance and calling me names for the next month. They said that it’s all my fault because no one who is normal would ever go for someone like me. When I told people the story, they said that this woman “just wanted to do chessed” and that she “just cared about the boy.” I’m sorry, but if I really cared about someone, the last thing I would do is coerce someone who is unwilling into dating them. If she really cared about him, she could have spent the amount of time she spent harassing me finding someone else who is willing to date him. She doesn’t care about either of us; people like her get a power trip out of coercing others into shidduch dating.

I’ve had so many people excuse such behavior by saying, “I know so stories of people who did that and the couple ended up getting married.” Who cares? It’s not okay to make people miss their flights just because you did that once and then the plane crashed. It’s not okay to force two people to procreate just because the woman might give birth to the next gadol hador.

This isn’t the first or last story about me being coerced into a shidduch date, but I don’t think that we should ever excuse such behavior. This woman just thought, “Hey let’s manipulate her because she’s stupid and I could get away with this.” I’m very hurt.