The Power of Truth

Donny has a marriage where his wife already has one foot out of the door. She’s already made a number of visits to the Judge of the rabbinical court to discuss initiating a divorce. She loves and cherishes her husband, but he’s just been so hard to live with, that she doesn’t know what to do with herself anymore. She’s by no means perfect, but her husband has really made some big mistakes.

One of his main mistakes is that he doesn’t communicate properly with his wife. He bought a new business, and he put everything he had into it, but unfortunately it just hasn’t gone well financially. And, instead of talking about what’s happening, Donny is responding to the stress by hiding from everyone – his vendors, his creditors, his customers, and his WIFE – he’s stonewalling them all. His wife emails him and texts him and calls him, and he simply doesn’t respond. He justifies his behavior by telling himself that his wife doesn’t understand all the pressure he’s under. How is she going to help him, if she doesn’t even know what’s happening in the business, and why he’s so stressed in the first place? Better that he should not waste time trying to explain everything to his wife and just keep his nose to the grindstone.

But Donny’s been stonewalling his wife for a while now, and trying to avoid discussions about their finances, and at the same time Donny has been scaling down the amount he gives her to spend. This is when things really blew up and caused open warfare. He’s reached the end of his options. He and his wife have already done the rounds of marital therapists; his wife even left once already so he knows it could happen again, any day.

Donny knows that if his wife leaves, this time it could be for good, and if she gets remarried, and his kids end up being raised by another man, he doesn’t know if he could live himself. But he doesn’t know what to do to prevent this from happening, so he’s completely desperate, and that blessed desperation is what brought him to my door.

At this stage in the game, there is no time to lose. I had to give him the unvarnished truth: “The Torah says that a husband has to provide for his wife and kids. Donny, you agreed to that condition when you signed your marriage contract! Even if she wants a lot of money every month, and you say: “We don’t have it! I have bills to pay, and you’re going to make us go bankrupt!” If she insists that she needs the money to pay for clothes and toys and lessons for the kids, you have to find a way to meet her needs.”

He tells me: “She’s doing me in! She has no idea of the value of money. They want to close my business down, and my wife is still asking me for huge sums of money?”

I had to tell him: “Your wife is right! You have to pay up. Granted, she sounds like she has her own problems. But the only way you, Donny, are going to save your marriage, and get out of this terrible situation, is if you look at your wife as though she’s an angel, and as if all the problems in your marriage are yours alone. What can you do to shape up, and unlock your power, Donny? How are you going to do that?”

The only way for Donny to unlock his power was by giving it up. Donny had to realize that he didn’t really have any power to begin with.  It was a tough realization, and it took Donny three days of agony, until he’d really internalized that he was, in fact, utterly powerless.

Once he reached the point of humility, he called me to tell me: “I just did something that I never thought I could do, ever, in my life. G-d help me, it should be the right decision. I just told my wife that she was absolutely right about everything. I am a terrible communicator and I haven’t been honest either. I should have told her about what was going on in the business, and involved her, a long time ago. So then, I told her that I was going to give her control over all the remaining money we own. I told her, she can be in charge of all the bank accounts, and that I’m sure she’ll end up doing a better job than I have been doing.”

You know what? Donny got peace in his home. That was it. All it took was for him to come clean about his miscommunication, and for him to make a real attempt at meeting his wife’s deeper needs for recognition, and to feel like she’s significant, and an adult person in her own right.

Donny is a smart guy. You only have to talk to him for a few minutes to see he’s very sharp, mentally. He has the potential to manage that money very well – but G-d isn’t letting him do that. G-d is telling him that he could go to the best financial advisors and planners, and attend all the most popular seminars, but that if he keeps trying to do things “his way”, and not telling the truth, he’s just going to keep spiraling into debt, and having more and more pain and heartache at home.

Donny received the whole truth from G-d and he accepted the whole truth, even though it was hard for him to do that, and once he started to live that truth, the problem went away. His wife has stopped sending him hostile emails, and stopped making frantic phone calls. The yelling and screaming has stopped, and peace reigns in their home.