Dear Rabbi Gruen,
Thank you so much for your insightful Torah classes. I really enjoy the way you present everything in a logical, easy-to-understand way. However, after listening to your class on surrendering in a marriage, I found myself strongly disagreeing with what you said.
You prefaced your comments by saying that you “didn’t mean to be disrespectful or dismissive” but that is how you came across, and I was left feeling very hurt, as my situation is a bit similar to the one you were describing. I feel that until someone understands the pain of being in such a lonely marriage, it’s easy to tell a wife that “you need to respect him,” but respect isn’t a button you can press. You also suggested that if such a wife would only treat her husband nicely, it would make a lot of the issues better, but it’s just not as simple as that.
Like most girls, I got married prepared to give my husband so much respect and to treat him as a king. I was taught that a wife must follow her husband and subject herself to his wishes and be mevater on her own, etc., which is, of course, proper with a healthy spouse. However, when a husband treats his wife horribly, puts her and everyone else constantly down with rough language, and does whatever he wants without taking her needs in consideration, those ideas don’t work, and she finds herself slowly losing her respect for him.
My husband is far from abusive — he’s just very thoughtless and blunt, and lacks social skills and self-awareness. He has very poor middos, makes no effort to improve them, and doesn’t behave like a mentsh. His whole family has similar issues (which he realizes). In fact, many of his family members are worse than he is.
But he refuses to go to therapy and I have gone myself, to learn how to accept the situation and work with it. Over the years I’ve learned how to protect myself and how to put my foot down strongly when I really need something. Even though it doesn’t feel good being a “bad wife,” at least I’m not bitter at not having my needs met. I’ve also been very firm about the kind of language I won’t accept, which has made him tone it down a bit, but it’s also led to me losing respect for him and feeling like his mother. I know my situation is quite complicated, so I just want to focus on two concerns:
Firstly, hard as I try, I have close to zero respect for him. I know that sounds terrible, and if you have a year to listen, I could give you examples and stories of horrible times when I’ve been mistreated, which has made me lose respect. I fully understand him and don’t blame him for acting like his parents, but all the same, I don’t really understand why he can’t change. And I just don’t know what to do about not being able to respect someone who doesn’t deserve my respect. It’s not about the way I act — it’s the lack of any feeling of respect for him. Over the years I’ve had to teach him so much about how to treat a wife and kids, and yet, even today, it’s still basically a choice of be quiet and get treated horribly, or put down your foot, explain why he can’t behave that way, and be treated better but lose respect for him.
I’ve learned to let go and look away from any awful behavior or speech that doesn’t directly affect me, but at the end of the day, it’s so hard and so lonely to live with a husband who lacks empathy and lives in his own bubble.
I've tried making a list of his positive qualities and reviewing them, but honestly, I'm in so much pain half the time that it doesn’t help. I know how important a healthy home is for the children and I so badly want to give it to them, so it really hurts me that my home is far from ideal.
Secondly, even though I’ve learned to accept his behavior, my kids are growing up now and hard as I try, some of them, especially the boys, have started mimicking his behavior, and this is the part that’s killing me. I look around at other wives who have successfully lived with difficult spouses and I’ve noticed that very often, the children end up copying the bad traits of the problematic parent. My sons talk down to me the same way as my husband does and are also dismissive of other people in general. It frightens me to think that their wives might have to go through what I’ve been through with their father. As long as it was only me paying a price, that’s one thing. But I feel like I’m being punished twice, with a difficult spouse and now with difficult children, and this increases the tension between my husband and I.
I’d be grateful for any advice. Thank you
