A long time ago I met a Jew and he told me: “I am fifty-five years old and have been married for thirty-five years, God willing we have seven children. In recent years we have started to marry our children.
Grooming children is a heavy expense and a lot of pressure, but it is also a great joy that you get to marry your children.
Admittedly I get to marry my children, but on the other hand I have noticed that I am not actually married and my marriage is going to perish.
We have never had a good and successful relationship, we were not so many but we did not invest in our relationship. We did not go for a walk and spend time together, we did not try to respect each other, not to listen to each other.
The race of life, livelihood, raising children, have probably diminished my and my wife’s attention from the bad relationship that is happening between us.
Neither I was a great righteous man nor my wife was a great righteous man in all that goes on between us. But what was was.
In the meantime, years have passed, the older children have been married and the younger ones have remained and they were in boarding school meetings, so during the week none of the children were at home.
But maybe only then did I notice, maybe only then did the token start to fall on me, that something bad but very bad is happening in our relationship.
When there are children in the house you are in such a bubble, you are less checking and less paying attention to how the relationship with your wife is. But when you come home from work and no one is home because the kids are married or sitting, and except for your wife and you no one is home, and you do not sit and talk because she is busy with her things, or she is not home at all because she goes to the gym or goes out with friends, then you understand That something bad is happening here.
And not only that but also some of the conversations that were between us, my wife almost never turned to me, talking to me or just sitting and eating dinner together.
I approached her one evening and started talking to her: ‘Everything is fine with you, what are you going through?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘Nothing happens to me‘, she said.
Mordechai Roth Photo: Reuven Hayun.
‘What nothing?!’ I answered angrily‘You notice that you live with me at home and you eat alone, Sleeps alone in the living room, And barely talking to me. You’re not talking, Hardly shares. It is called that there is nothing? It seems to me that you are completely detached from me!’.
Then she threw away the next sentence that just completely chilled me.
‘You’re right, Unfortunately I have been emotionally disconnected from you for ten years.
What connection has there been between us in the last twenty years besides the occasional quarrel. No respect, No good words, There is nothing in common between us, Not even one good experience. What is between us‘ She said in pain. ‘I have been discouraged from the relationship between us for many years. I think maybe we’re both guilty of it. But this is it, My heart is already broken, My heart is no longer here it is disconnected from you‘, She said in tears.
‘You think that’s what I wanted? That’s what our married life will look like? But that’s life!
You no longer notice that I have been cut off from you for years, It was just that the kids were home so less did you notice it. But now you’re starting to notice. You think I’m having fun with this disconnect?! But I did it reluctantly so I could survive this life, Because it is hard for me to be connected and on the other hand to live without love and without any connection‘.
I am in most of my stupidity where I will notice that the situation here needs treatment and change, I was offended and told her angrily:
‘If I’m that bad then continue your disconnection‘.
And that was the end of our conversation. Life went on as usual: Wake up in the morning, Going to pray, work, At night he studies the daily page in the regular class at the synagogue, And so again the next day.
one night I slept in the bedroom and my wife slept in the living room, It was after me again Fight Stupid that was between us.
It was two in the morning, I hear a faint noise from the living room. I walked to the living room quietly on tiptoe, peeking, And I see my wife really crying, She has a small book of Psalms that she received from me at the beginning of our marriage and she is really crying and saying: ‘The name will help me and my husband, What will happen to us. I want peace home, I want love, The name will help us to have our eyes opened and we will live in peace and love. I do not want to divorce at the age of fifty-three, This is the example I will show my sons, To my grandchildren?!’
And she cries and cries.
The truth is I could not hold back my tears and started crying Deaf along with her‘Name what will happen to us‘ I asked as I cried softly.
I did not want to startle my wife and returned quietly to the bedroom as I continued to cry quietly over myself, For my pride, For my stupidity.
About our lives.
Then I thought maybe it’s time for you to go to a counselor to help you. Then the second voice in my heart told me to leave you, You are already fifty-five and there is no way there will be a change and your wife is already cut off from you anyway, Leave leave.
But my wife’s crying tore my heart out and in the end I decided I was doing something with myself, Let it go on like this it can not be so.
And here I am with you Mordechai, What do I do if there is a chance at all or is everything already lost“.
I cried out for sure that it can be fixed and you can live a happy and happy life, Took me A long time to convince him that there is even more chance.
I tell this story because I come across stories that people come to me at my age Fifty sixty and whose relationship is already completely over.
After we have married most of the children or adolescence is doing its thing, Then we already become a serious emotional disconnect and then it’s really harder to connect the couple, Because for years a person lives in a certain way and start working on the virtues and the mind it is not a simple thing to make changes in older age.
Even though I have seen cases that have managed to connect together even at the age of fifty and up, Then it was like a remarriage –Great light of A bond of love that did not exist. But it’s not simple at all.
I feel so sorry for those people, Thirty forty years lived in quarrels or without any emotional connection, What do they have together now? is nothing!
And usually at this age the problems get worse In a relationship, A person as he grows older finds it harder to stop himself.
The mental and marital difficulties only get worse.
I sometimes see people retiring after so many years of work, And instead of having fun with their wife they are many and suffer instead of living and having fun together.
So they quarrel or divorce and live alone in a horrible and terrible way.
I shout a big and bitter cry Do not wait until the age of fifty sixty and then fix your marital relationship, Do it now – Invest, Respect, You will love, Listen and if it is difficult and you do not succeed alone there are people who help with it.
Said Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta God did not find a vessel holding a blessing for Israel but peace.
People go to child education courses on how to behave with their children. This is a very important thing, But first and foremost it is a personal example, How parents live among themselves This is the safest recipe for good and righteous children.
They will see parents who respect each other they will also respect, They will see love they will give love, They will see listening they will also listen.
I wish you to always live in love in peace with joy and faith. Shabbat Shalom and blessings to all the people of Israel.
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