Never There for Her

Joe wants to know why his wife is always so sad and uninterested in him. He provides her with a great standard of living. He buys her gifts and tells her how much he loves her. Why is she so glum?

Sally says her husband is a “great guy.”  It’s not that her husband is unfaithful. He’s not. It’s not that he doesn’t love her. He does. The problem is that Joe’s love for his wife is not adult love based on mutual need gratification; it’s a dependent love where he expects his wife to take care of him like a mother.

A man who is always busy with his business, his choir, his jogging, his computer, his friends, his weight lifting, his traveling, HIMSELF – will never be able to have a happy marriage.

Sally’s desire for Joe waned and it became increasingly more difficult for her to want to sooth him after a “tough” day when he is never there for her.

Sally felt sad and alone.

Sadness, by the way, is the biggest problem that a person can have; it lasts 240 times longer than any other negative emotion (see recent study).  Fear, anxiety, and even humiliation pass much more quickly than sadness does. Why? It’s the nature of people to ruminate about sad events more often than any other type of negative emotion. This is why the Torah considers sadness even worse than sin itself – because it is though sadness that people are led to commit additional sins.

At first when Sally told her husband that they needed marital counseling he refused. Why should they go to some outsider to discuss their personal lives? If she has a problem, she should come to him. They are both intelligent people. He knows as much as any therapist. Together they can resolve whatever comes up.

But the problem was that nothing was getting resolved and Sally was so “polite” that Joe couldn’t see how he was killing his marriage.

I agreed with Sally that it was not her responsibility to get her husband into therapy, but I told her that she needed a way of communicating her real feelings to her husband in a constructive way so that he would better understand how he could help to improve their marriage.  She prayed and then shared with him that her desire for him was waning and that she didn’t want it to wane any further. G-d helped Sally and Joe understood that this was something that they couldn’t handle on their own.

It’s important for people to be honest with themselves about what they are able to handle by themselves and what they need assistance with. It’s not a mitzvah (a good deed) to stay quiet in a situation such as Sally’s unless you possess the spiritual and emotional strength to hang in there without becoming sad, angry or experiencing any other very adverse effect. But, if you see that you marriage is crumbling before your eyes, G-d forbid, you have no choice but to act and get the best guidance that you can find.

Joe certainly has the capacity for a great relationship based on the deeper sense of commitment and reciprocity that his wife is yearning for. More than anything else, it is Sally’s yearning for oneness with Joe and her dissatisfaction with his past behavior that is now helping Joe to make corrections in himself. Likewise it was Joe’s self-centered avoidance of his wife that has best helped to strengthen Sally to be more firm with her husband and better able to express her needs to him.