Finding the Right Partner: Essentials for Lasting Love

Yossi (based on a true story; all names and details have been completely changed) was a nineteen-year-old young man who had been meeting regularly with the daughter of an acquaintance of mine. The father asked me to “check him out,” to get a sense of the boy’s character and whether he was ready for marriage.

We sat down to talk. Yossi looked me straight in the eye and declared, “I feel a lot for her. We’re good together.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “May you have blessing and success. May I ask you a personal question?”

“Yes.”

“Yossi, being married is a lot more than being in love. You’ll have children you’ll need to raise and educate together. You’ll have bills to pay once you’re no longer living at your parents’ homes. And above all, you’ll live for many years in the same house with another person, different from you, and you’ll need to give her everything she needs, with goodwill and warmth. That’s why there must be real compatibility between you. Let’s see where you stand with all of that.”

Searching for a Life Partner

When we search for a spouse with whom to build our life, it’s worth making the greatest effort to choose wisely.

Ideally, the search begins only after we’ve examined our own traits and needs. From there, we can look for the right person — someone we can give what they need, and from whom we can receive what we truly need.

This isn’t selfish. Experience shows that couples with compatible traits, similar needs, shared goals, and mutual understanding have a much greater chance of building a successful marriage and a lasting love. Another major factor in a happy marriage is mutual fulfillment of needs between husband and wife.

When someone checks these things in advance, they are essentially preparing the ground for a successful marriage. It’s a completely legitimate and necessary goal.

Essentials vs. Non-Essentials

There are things we truly need in a spouse that are non-negotiable, and there are things that matter less, where compromise is possible and life can still be good and stable.

What are we unable to compromise on, and what can we? This should be done with the understanding that no one is perfect. We need to focus on what matters most, and compromise on what matters less — provided that the compromise won’t significantly harm us later on.

Making a Clear List

We should ask ourselves:

• What are the important qualities of a spouse?

• Are our expectations realistic?

• Do we see traits or patterns in this person that could sabotage the relationship or harm us in some way?

Experience shows that these are the basic qualities worth looking for in a future spouse (in order of importance):

The Core Qualities to Look For

1) A Compatible Level of Torah and Mitzvah Observance

To examine the desire and ability to live faithfully by Torah. Their level of fear of Heaven, avoiding prohibitions, inner and outer modesty, respect for rabbis and Torah guidance, not taking on extreme stringencies that are hard to sustain, and for men, setting serious fixed times for Torah learning.

For couples in a process of becoming more observant, it’s important that both are roughly at the same level of commitment and religious stability.

2) A Person of Values

Someone with an ethical, principled personality, committed to accepted values, and also to the values that matter to us personally.

3) The Potential to Be a Good Parent

Do they have the ability to give warmth, love, and guidance? Can they be a positive role model for children?

4) Health and Medical Situation

A healthy person, or someone whose medical condition we can genuinely live with, without constant fear or doubt. This needs careful inquiry, and sometimes requires consultation with neutral medical professionals, with the other side’s agreement, to understand the implications.

5) Pleasant Emotional Traits

A positive outlook, joy of life, patience, diligence, and similar qualities.

6) Willingness to Compromise

Someone prepared to resolve disagreements through compromise, mutual agreement, and goodwill.

7) Understanding

A good level of understanding between you, at least regarding the important areas, including clear, respectful, pleasant communication.

8) Friendship

Someone whose company you genuinely enjoy, and who you can imagine living with in close friendship. This is often more important than romantic emotion and attraction. Those are necessary, but you cannot build a lasting marriage on them alone.

9) More Similarity Than Gaps

A person whose lifestyle direction is meaningfully close to yours. Large gaps can create serious problems, as each person pulls toward what they want, or one side gives in resentfully or out of lack of choice.

Gaps might show up in areas such as:

• Different views on the roles of husband and wife

• Different religious or cultural positions

• Materialism versus contentment with simplicity

• Saving versus spending

• Deep thinking versus shallow thinking

• Appreciating quiet versus loving activity and noise

• A light, energetic personality versus a serious, heavy one

Differences in personality don’t have to be a problem if each spouse respects and values the other and learns to live peacefully with the difference. In practice, that isn’t always easy.

Shared interests are not essential for a good marriage, but if they exist, they reduce friction and help create unity. For example, if both spouses enjoy the same activities, it can be easier to spend time together.

10) Personal Attraction and Finding Favor

This is extremely important. After you find someone who broadly matches your needs, you still must ask: Is this someone I can live with in emotional and personal closeness?

Attraction is very important, and without it, the marriage generally will not succeed, except in rare cases. On the other hand, a marriage based on attraction alone, without meeting most spiritual, emotional, and practical needs, almost always fails. That’s why this point comes last on the list.

“Love That Depends on Something”?

It wasn’t easy for Yossi to hear all this. When I finished, he protested: “So that’s how I’m supposed to choose who to marry — with a shopping list in my hand? Where’s the love?”

“You’re right, Yossi. Marriage needs a lot of caring and giving to your wife. But precisely the realistic approach I described is what creates the right soil for love to grow.

This approach won’t create a ‘love that depends on something,’ where the danger is: ‘when the thing is gone, the love is gone’ (Pirkei Avot 5:16). Because from the start, you’re building the relationship on many real foundations and deep traits that exist in who you are, rather than on passing feelings.

In many cultures, romantic love is seen as something that just ‘happens’ to us — like the common phrase to fall in love. People once imagined a god of love, like an innocent baby whose arrows make you fall in love. Meaning: love is something external, beyond your control. When it’s there, great. When it leaves, there’s not much to do, so people separate.

The Jewish view is completely different. Love isn’t a third party between husband and wife. It’s something we build ourselves, created from within, through the joining of two souls. The raw material for that building is our character traits. That’s why the traits matter so much.

True love is often the result of a good marriage between compatible partners. If you build the relationship on strong foundations, love will come.

That’s what we learn from Yitzchak our father: ‘He took Rivkah, and she became his wife, and he loved her’ (Bereishit 24:67). First a marriage built on true match and suitability, and then love arrives.”

A Stable Spiritual and Value-Based Bond

Attraction and powerful love are essential ingredients in any successful marriage, but love alone cannot overcome everything. Emotional infatuation can definitely fade — sometimes even shortly after the wedding, when people discover the less charming sides of one another, which exist in every human being.

It is therefore important from the beginning to base marriage primarily on a spiritual bond of shared values, shared growth, each person according to their nature and capacity — together with affection and mutual attraction.

Marriage is a holy, value-filled reality, and it grows out of a foundation that includes material pleasantness too, which is also legitimate and truly needed.

If we aim for a relationship based on:

1. Strong compatibility (as described above)

2. Mutual fulfillment of needs

3. A sincere desire and commitment to bring only good and happiness to one’s spouse

4. Spiritual values

— then we have created a strong foundation. And on that foundation, with God’s help, true love — the pure, stable kind, can form naturally, including emotional warmth and enjoyment. That kind of love brings joy and deep satisfaction to a couple for many years.