Unfortunately, there is sometimes a lot of confusion in marriages today regarding obligations and how to address them. In this area particularly, neither the husband nor the wife should have to ask for the other to meet their obligations. And if either husband or wife is not acting as they should, even if the other spouse lets it go, that doesn’t excuse their behavior.
A recent case I dealt with involved a couple where for years the wife had been behaving in a clearly non-Torah’dig way (for lack of a better term) towards her husband, and her husband said nothing, because he didn’t know how to relate to the idea of not connecting at all. Eventually, however, he did speak up, and instead of listening and trying to solve the problem, the wife told him how hurt she was that he had said nothing about the issue for years!
They ended up going to a therapist, who backed up the wife and told the husband that it was his fault for not having the seichel to raise the issue earlier. While speaking up earlier could definitely have helped matters, I was shocked to hear that an ostensibly frum therapist was so lacking in clarity and the Torah hashkafah that he didn’t even mention to the woman that she had been doing the wrong thing all along.
I would also like to clarify another point that the husband makes, when he writes that his wife seemed to think that cooking for a family sitting shivah was more important than making time for him. His wife isn’t cooking for the family because she thinks the family is a higher priority than her husband. She’s cooking for the family for herself — because it gives her a feeling of fulfillment, because she feels good and happy contributing in this way. This misconception is very common and it’s important to remember that, for example, the husband who comes home late because he was helping a friend with his car wasn’t putting his friend before his wife — he was putting himself before his wife.
It’s not always right to put oneself before one’s spouse, and if what you’re doing seriously inconveniences your spouse, you should stop and discuss it. If this man’s wife was cooking all afternoon for a family, then that would be her issue in her time, and the husband would have no right to intervene. In this case, however, she is impacting him directly and so she must take him into account when deciding how to spend these evening hours.
