The Diamond on my Finger
A courageous young Jewish wife in the USA writes about her marriage, which is on the verge of destruction since her husband has succumbed to the temptations...
By A Young Jewish Wife in the USA
Why do we use diamonds on engagement and wedding bands? Besides the well known idea that marriage is to “polish your diamond” and that a marriage should be unbreakable, symbolic of the fact that nothing can cut a diamond besides another diamond. I would like to posit another idea: diamonds are judged not only by their size, but also by their clarity. The best diamond is one that has no opaqueness and no blemishes. When you look at such a diamond, the beauty is in the tremendous dazzle of the clear white reflecting in so many colors around the room.
This is our souls. The Gemara says that Sara and Esther were among the most beautiful women who lived, because the beauty and purity of their souls shone through their bodies – and we see this in terms of the radiant faces of tzaddikim as well. However, sin causes the soul to be increasingly opaque and concealed within our bodies. The more blemishes and opaqueness, the less the radiance of the soul can shine through the gray and black muck. The white purity of our inner diamond can be so obscured that, much like a raw diamond, you might mistake it for a sooty rock and never dream that it is capable of being so exquisitely beautiful!
This is also my situation. My husband and I live in America in a large frum (religious) community and have been married a couple of years. We are both baalei teshuva who work full time, we own a house and an adorable rescue beagle, and live busy lives filled with various events and outings, and the inevitable sports events my husband craves. We each try to get to a shiur or two a week, a date a week, and a double-date with friends once a month. Typical middle of the road, American, frum young couple, right?
Wrong. The house has been torn apart by my husband’s addiction to porn and various other escapes, which I discovered four weeks ago today. Not only that, but he lied to me about it for our entire marriage. Here, I had been pouring my entire self into this marriage, trying to build a Torah home – and he had been turning around, pouring it into a computer. The depth of the betrayal makes me shudder.
In the secular world, this kind of shmutz (filth) is commonplace, accepted, and everywhere. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, Maxim, advertising, the girls that cheer for every sports team – you name it. The hard core stuff is just as numerous, a centimeter below the surface. A secular person might even laugh at me and call me insecure for insisting that he have eyes only for me – and the fact that he lied about it to be expected by a male fighting for what he considers normal.
But in a Torah home, this has no place. Kedushah and impurity simply don’t mix – it’s like oil and water. We are supposed to be a light unto the nations, and commanded by Hashem to be an am kadosh – a holy nation. There can be no brachah and hatzlachah (success) in a house, and certainly no shalom bayit (peace in the home), without kedushah – all the more so, when one party is committing some of the worst sins in the Torah, and lying to his wife about it to boot. It’s not punishment, it’s simple spiritual consequences.
All of a sudden, everything became crystal clear – why he lost his job so suddenly and hasn’t been able to find another one after more than 1½ years of looking, why getting to that one shiur a week has been so difficult for him, why he spends so much time on the computer, why he got into that accident, and that tree that fell smack on his car and not mine (or anyone else’s) on Shavuot (when we celebrate the receiving of the Torah) – and why no matter how much emuna I pumped in, we continued to have serious shalom bayit issues.
Even more, the three weeks before my discovery had been the most tranquil of our marriage. We were both elated. I later discovered that he had sworn off porn as of the first of the secular New Year, and then succumbed to his addiction three weeks later. That day we had a huge fight and a virus attacked his computer, and it was while trying to fix that virus that I found the virtual record of his transgressions, with every folder stamped with the date and time he downloaded it (needless to say, it was all wiped along with the rest of his computer’s hard drive).
In the midst of this betrayal, my life has been turned topsy-turvy. The first two weeks I cried nonstop. I could hardly think, eat, work, anything. I vacillated between depression and rage. Then one day something changed – I let go. I decided to take care of myself, and the rest is not mine to fix – only mine to daven over and decide how to best respond to the answer I receive. Now, I fight the battle one minute at a time: to smile when I wake up in the morning and say Modah Ani with kavannah (intent, concentration) and thank Hashem that I can breathe and that I’m healthy overall, to thank Hashem and think about how much He loves me when I find a great parking space and make my train by a minute, to say Tehillim when I’ve run out of words in hitbodedut. And beyond my wildest dreams, now that I have the entire picture, I am so grateful that I was not granted the child I had been davening so hard for before.
The big problem is that it is so hard to do the right thing, and so easy to give into the Yetzer, especially when I’m so exhausted and overwrought. It’s hard not to feel betrayed by the Master Shadchan (matchmaker) when I davened so hard for a fine, kosher chattan (groom) when I was dating, and that I not make a mistake and ever need to divorce like my parents did when I was a toddler. The nagging question keeps dangling: How could Hashem let this happen to me when I prayed so hard that it wouldn’t? Like the no I received with regard to having children, I hope that this one becomes clear soon. I know that emuna is all I have to fall back on.
Sometimes the despair is a palpable weight on my heart. It’s so sad – my husband and I have so much going for us, and it has been totally destroyed by addiction, lies, and shmutz. We’re like a person in cardiac arrest, on the operating table, with Rabbis and professionals doing open heart surgery, trying to see if there is any way to save our marriage – and my husband is the patient in denial, wondering what all the fuss is about. The diamond is there – but it is so covered in rock that even the diamond has forgotten its essence. And the diamond on my finger? Only Hashem knows.
7/25/2011
i spk from personal experience If it had only been sports illustrated no big deal….but its not by a long shot. You can lead a horse to water but u can't force it to drink. When there is a will theres a way.when there is no will there is no way. Unless your husband acknowledges & accepts that he has serious problems & issues & wants to deal with it…& gets the help he needs ,then give it a chance,if not .don't waste too much time or effort if any. I speak from personal experience & my situation was worse .
7/25/2011
If it had only been sports illustrated no big deal….but its not by a long shot. You can lead a horse to water but u can't force it to drink. When there is a will theres a way.when there is no will there is no way. Unless your husband acknowledges & accepts that he has serious problems & issues & wants to deal with it…& gets the help he needs ,then give it a chance,if not .don't waste too much time or effort if any. I speak from personal experience & my situation was worse .
10/22/2009
It All Worked Out for the Best Anonymous author here – although normally we are 100% against divorce, in this case there was simply no relationship to save. As of this writing, I am divorced with a get after big miracles and living very happily in Israel. I had no idea that Hashem was destroying my life in order to give me a new life that was better than I ever could have dreamed of!!! Every minute was a battle back then, and now, every minute is a dream. With emuna, there is always a happy ending.