This can all seem very challenging when dealing with such a situation. There is, however, a way to reframe it which will give both spouses a lot more hope and confidence to face the future.
The wife in her letter describes her husband as a “fraud.” Many people reading the question would see things the same way. The question is: Who’s the fraud?
Is it the man who gets up in the morning, gets dressed like a frum Yid, and goes to shul to daven — and later in the day, does things that he knows he shouldn’t?
Or is it the man who is doing the things he knows he shouldn’t, who is pretending to be a frum Yid when davening in shul?
Who is the real man?
Answering this question is something all of us can and should do, because we all have internal contradictions; we all sometimes do things that we know we shouldn’t. This question is at the core of many sefarim that describe our constant battle against the yetzer hara, and answering it can give us all the encouragement and hope we need in order to look at ourselves positively, and start moving in the right direction.
To the wife in this situation, I would say: Please, don’t call your husband a fraud. He’s not trying to fool anyone. He’s a Yid who is nebach struggling and falling into certain bad ways, but that doesn’t mean that the bad ways define him and that the good things he does are just his disguise. Maybe, when he gets dressed in the morning, when he goes to shul to daven, when he does any of the mitzvos he does, he thinks to himself, “If only I could always be this ehrlich... If only I could always be misgaber over my yetzer hara...”
It’s certain that there are many red lines that he isn’t crossing, even if he is doing other terrible things. He isn’t chas v’shalom a secular person dressed up as someone religious — far from it.
