When a Crisis Comes

Part Three: When a Crisis Comes

Often, everything goes well at the beginning of married life. Several fairly happy years pass, and then comes a time of trials: financial problems, health problems, the death of someone close (G-d forbid). All these things, which you do not think about at first and would not wish on an enemy, come suddenly. Then what seemed unshakable and constant no longer works, and you need to work on yourself and your character again, to work on building your home. A woman who has continued investing in her marriage all this time will find the time of trial noticeably easier as well. She knows that together, she and her husband can overcome it.

If a couple is unwilling to invest in their marriage, they may somehow manage to “pull the cart” along a smooth road, but at the first pothole, the first trial, the family may fall apart. I know many such families. The child of some acquaintances of mine became seriously ill (may G-d spare everyone from this). Treatments began, trips to the hospital, major expenses—and that was the end of the family. They separated. Apparently, situations like these test whether they were sufficiently “together,” united. 

What About in Practice?

It is written about Chava: “And your desire shall be for your husband.” One explanation is that before the sin, the love between Adam and Chava was akin to a parent’s love for a child—it was natural and accepting. Afterward, Chava had to work to ensure that “her desire” would be for her husband.

What does it mean in practice to “be together,” to “let someone else into your self-interest”?

It means, for example, noticing your own feelings and considering that someone else may feel the same way. Suppose a family returns from a trip in the evening. The tired mother feels that she wants a glass of water and some rest! But what is everyone else feeling? We understand what the children feel; that comes naturally. The little ones are tired and thirsty, too—I will give them water first, even before myself. With a husband, it is different. We do not naturally sense his needs. Our task is to include his needs in our own, so that his needs feel like our needs. Some women work on this and merit achieving it.

I remember how every year my father-in-law would tell my mother-in-law to buy herself something that would make her happy, some kind of gift. But she was so modest in her needs, with so little desire for an abundance of possessions… She would ask, “But what should I buy?! I do not need anything!” Yet he would answer every time, “No, you must treat yourself to something!” She went and bought him a new coat: “There! Now I have bought something that will make me happy!” And that was how she truly felt.

Imagine that everyone has finally gone to bed after an exhausting day. Then the wife remembers that the door is unlocked. Who should get up and lock it? Our self-interest says, “I am so tired after feeding, bathing, and putting the children to bed! Let him get up!” But a woman who works on herself will say, “It is only in name that they are the stronger sex and we are the weaker. In reality, women have much more inner strength and hidden potential. I will get up and lock the door myself.”

How does a union of two people become oneness? When they work to include the other person within themselves, to experience that person as themselves, to consider that person’s needs their own. Then the boundary beyond which lies “the other” disappears, and that person becomes “me.”

When blessing a bride and groom, people say, “shetizku l’binyan adei ad” (“may you merit an everlasting home,” meaning that their family should have strong offspring). This can also be understood as “may you merit continually building,” because if you stop building, destruction begins, G-d forbid.

Prepared by Mrs. Zissi Skarzhinskaya