From time to time, I write an article about shalom bayis issues. Not because I have answers. Far from it. I have only ever been married to one person, so even me giving answers that work for my wife might not help you unless you too are married to my wife.
So instead, my goal is more to complain—to discuss things that might come up over the course of a marriage that if people can relate to it, they’ll say, “Oh, good. It’s not just my wife,” and that will help with their shalom bayis. Unless there’s something here that’s just my wife. I’m hoping there isn’t. But I’ll never know, because no one is doing this kind of column for me. All I can say is that DISCLAIMER: Maybe some of these are not my wife at all. They’re things I’ve heard.
Let’s go with that.
One of the most depressing things about shalom bayis is that you can try to always get along with your spouse—to never raise your voice, to always be mevater—and still things will come up or turn into bigger things that you can’t be mevater about, just by virtue of time. You’re married to this person forever, ideally (Let’s put it this way: The happiest marriages end when someone is niftar.) and things come up over the course of forever that will lead to sticking points.
Here are some examples:
Talking To People You Don’t Know. You know how sometimes when you’re schmoozing with your friend, one of his friends comes by—some guy you don’t know—and they suddenly start schmoozing about stuff you know nothing about while you stand there and wait for the conversation to be over so you can get back to your thing? And they have no idea you’re bored, because for the first few minutes you politely smiled and chuckled at their jokes, so they’re like, “Oh, it’s a 3-way conversation!” and they don’t seem to realize that you have not said a word in about a half an hour?
And neither of them are making any efforts to include you in the conversation. They’re just talking about things you have no clue about. They sound like they’re about to end the conversation, and then one of them goes, “Oh, and how’s Yossel?” “Well, Yossel’s being Yossel!” and they both laugh, and you laugh too even though you don’t know Yossel. And they’re like, “Classic Yossel!”
No one turns to you and goes, “So this is the story with Yossel…”
So when this happens with your friend, you can just walk away. And then the guy will ask your friend, “Who was that? Is he always like that?”
“I don’t know. I thought we were including him in the conversation! I even turned to him at some point and said, “Yossel’s his cousin!””
I don’t even know the name of the person you’re talking to! But Yossel’s his cousin!
But when it’s your spouse, you have to stick around. And you’re going to keep having these instances come up, where you’re walking down the street with her, and you run into some woman she knows that you do not. And then you stand there nodding for a whole conversation and only later find out who the person was.
And maybe your spouse can eventually learn to include you up front, but even when she does, most of the time, she’s going to say something like, “Remember? This is the lady from all those stories I told you.” and you’ll say, “Sure!” because she’s standing right there, and you don’t want to say, “What?!”
You don’t remember any of those stories. I do not remember a single story that my wife told me where I couldn’t picture the person it was happening to. You can’t tell me stories and then later say, “And that’s the person!”
I mean you tried to know all her people. At the beginning of your marriage, you went to her friends’ weddings because it’s called being a supportive spouse. That’s what you told her when you wanted her to go to all your friends’ weddings. You sat there with all her friends’ husbands, and she sat there with all your friends’ wives, all so this wouldn’t happen. You put in the effort. But then she went ahead and met several new people since then, so all the good that did. It’s like it never ends.
And it’s fine when it happens once, but it happens a lot, because she makes you take walks with her, and that’s what happens when you take walks—you run into other people taking walks. And they all want to talk, because walks are boring.
Sometimes, your wife actually makes an effort to include you in the conversation. She asks the person things like, “How’s your husband?” and turns to you like, “You know her husband…”
Maybe. I don’t know who she is; how can I know who her husband is? Does she have a picture? I know a lot of guys by face. Most of them are husbands.
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“Yossel.”
“Why doesn’t he walk with you?”
I can’t ask that.
You’d think by now you and your wife would have a signal.
Talking Loud Enough. It can’t be an auditory signal, though, because at some point, over time, someone’s hearing starts going, little by little. And this will be another source of friction. Once your hearing starts going, you end up yelling more. Especially before you admit it. Just to be heard at first, but sometimes your spouse talks and forgets to be heard and then finishes their whole sentence and you go, “What?” and then she gets upset that you’re asking, “What?” because you always ask “What?” and because she doesn’t want to repeat it because everybody else in the room heard it, or because she didn’t want everyone else in the room to hear it, or because frankly she doesn’t remember the clever way she phrased it the first time.
Sometimes, one of you has a memory issue kick in first, and the other one has a hearing issue kick in first. That’s fun.
And the thing is that this argument will come up a lot, because you and your wife have to talk all the time, because that’s what all the experts say: Marriage is about communication. Thanks a lot, experts! You’re just causing problems.
And this will happen sooner than you think. Nothing before marriage prepares you for how much time you’re going to spend shouting, “What?” from other rooms of the house.
And then when you do ask, “What?” and she’s not talking to you, you get yelled at too, because you’re already asking, “What?” way too often, considering she’s not always talking to you. In fact, she was talking lower because she wasn’t talking to you.
My wife has whole phone conversations with her mother where she goes several minutes without saying a word, and then suddenly she talks, and I think it’s directed at me.
I had no idea you were on the phone. I’ve been in this room for ten minutes.
Also, sometimes you think she’s talking to someone on the phone so you’re not really listening, but it turns out she hung up a while ago and was talking to you, and you had no idea. A lot of shalom bayis issues are caused by technology.
So what we do now is I text my wife things from across the house. It’s a great shalom bayis saver. Have the technology work for us! And this way, if one of us says, “You never said that,” there’s proof that we did.
“Oh. It didn’t deliver, for some reason.”
Technology still finds a way to mess with your marriage.
I don’t even always have to type my texts. I push the mic button and I speak into the device, and I have to speak slowly and carefully and say things like “comma” and period” so the software puts it in. I could be saying things that clearly to her in person, but this is better. Maybe because I can see which words it missed. It doesn’t just give me a vague “What?” and then I repeat what I said from the beginning and then it says, “I heard that part. You keep repeating the part that I heard.”
And half the time that I’m dictating my texts, she appears in the room before I finish and says, “What?” because she thinks I’m talking to her—which I sort of am, but not yet—and now her “What?” shows up in the middle of my text that I then have to erase, and it’s going to take longer for her to get the urgent message I’m trying to give her, that she’s now going to have to go back into the other room and get her phone so she can see what it is. So this is only going to get worse, probably.
We’re out of space here, thank goodness, so those are the only examples we’re going to talk about today. There are way more examples, and if you think of any, and you want to help me help everyone’s shalom bayis, you can send them in, and I may talk about them in a future article. Without mentioning your name, of course, in case your spouse reads this. In case it is just you. n
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.
