Life Cycle

We are getting married in the summer next year. We have lived together for more than seven years and already spend a lot of time together alone. We just watched a video from an orthodox rabbi who said Yichud at a wedding is supposed to be the first time a couple spends alone. Since we have already been alone and sexually active for so many years now, do we still do Yichud at the wedding?

Without even telling us he was dating, our son who is away at college recently got engaged to a young woman he met on his own on the campus outside the auspices of a shadchan or anyone who could give him proper guidance. We were concerned about this and we really wanted to meet her. We invited her to spend a weekend with us and she came dressed in a miniskirt. We soon learned she wears miniskirts every day and that she will not cover her hair after she gets married. She apparently follows a brand of Orthodox Judaism that is permissive of many things our family and community and local rebbeim consider unacceptable. And it appears our son has viewed his relationship with her as a license to adopt that lifestyle which she exposed him to and engage in activities we taught him were forbidden. We are utterly embarrassed and devastated! They are evidently moving forward quickly with plans to wed because she wants her grandparents to be at her wedding and she does not know how much longer they have to live. They might even marry during the semester break less than a month away! We are unprepared emotionally for this. He only recently broke this news to us. We have not even met her parents in person. They live far away. We met them a few times on video. They are nice people, but their Jewish values seem to different from our. Our son has been over their house more than once and says they are nice warm people. They like him a lot and are happy to have him as a son-in-law. This young woman is not bad. She seems like a very nice girl who is warm and caring and very intelligent and wholesome. Our concerns are that he is rushing this relationship when they only met at the beginning of the semester, and she is detracting from his religious observance that he was always so scrupulous to follow in the past. All might seem well early on, but they are both very young and naive.

I have always understood that marriage is so holy that it is forbidden to interfere with another couple’s marriage in a way that might trigger its downfall, even if you perceive the marriage is bad. I know a woman who is a victim of domestic violence. Her husband is terribly mistreating her and denying her access to any resources necessary to get out. She does not have a car because he will not provide her with one and she cannot afford one, and anywhere she goes, she depends on either him or a friend for transportation. And because she does not have a car, she cannot get a job to have the money to live on her own. She refuses to tell anyone she knows, including me, that she wants to leave him. But I sense that she does. I have asked her if I can help her in any way, and besides the rides I give her sometimes, she won’t ask for help. I know that if she had the money and a car, she would be out in no time. She just doesn’t have the courage to ask others for money. If I raised money for her to buy a car and start a life on her own, would I be violating the prohibition against interfering with another couple’s marriage?