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This week's question, what do you do if a husband or wife wants to grow more than the other at a faster pace? How do you balance taking on things separately or alone and in a healthy way while, keeping in mind that we're doing this to serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu? So first of all, I think that when it comes to these things, everyone's growth is individual. So I don't know if it's so much we're growing at a faster pace than somebody else. We might be more observant than someone. Our spouse might be less observant in some areas. But growth is not just about observance. So one person might be excelling in taking on a particular mitzvah or staying away from a particular aveira, whereas the other person might be working in personal growth. And so it's not necessarily faster or slower. It might be two totally different areas to begin with. We should be very careful when we speak about growth as one person is moving ahead or moving faster than the other. Growth is a very big term, and everyone has to do it in their own way.
It's the only real type of growth, as the Gra explains in Mishle. Now, this can sometimes cause tension in a marriage because, let's say, the husband is working more on his tefillah and the wife is working less on her tefillah, or the wife is working more in areas of tzinias and the husband isn't up to those things yet. Perhaps he never will be. So then it sometimes comes with tension because... We're trying to build a home together. The goal of marriage is intimacy, but the product of intimacy is the home that we build. And the hashkafa of our home is really important because we're trying to impart certain values to our children. And so it can create a tension in the home when one person is moving faster than the other, or even between spouses, where one person starts to look at the other and perhaps in a judgmental way, thinks I'm ahead of you, or you're not moving as fast, or why aren't you moving as fast? And that can create friction and tension and shalom bias.
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so first of all like with anything in marriage while a husband and wife are trying to create oneness and trying to create intimacy the truth of the matter is that we have to be very careful to retain our identity when we lose our identity then who's in the marriage so if a wife is getting too caught up in her husband or a husband is getting too caught up in her wife it creates codependency because you've we've lost a little bit of ourselves true intimacy means that the. husband is the husband and the wife is the wife and there's a new identity that they both share which is that they're spouses that they're a couple so if you lose yourself you're not really present in the marriage and part of retaining your own identity is saying i'm going to do me, and my husband or my wife is going to do what they need to do and i'm going to respect them for who they are, bringing in healthy admiration into the marriage and at the same time i'm going to go at the pace, I need to go.
Now what happens when conflict arises? Let's say the wife has decided she no longer wants to go to the beach. She doesn't feel that's an area that sneers for her. And the husband is not ready to give that up. So now the husband says to the wife, you're taking away the things that I love, the things that we always did together. The reason I'm bringing up this example is because it's an example that came to me recently. Well, in that situation, I don't think that the wife is obligated to do something that she feels is beneath her because it's something that she's taken on. So just because her husband is frustrated. doesn't mean the wife needs to start saying, okay, well, I'll go against the morality that I feel is true to satisfy my husband. I don't think that that's the correct thing to do. At the same time, the wife should understand and communicate to her husband, I can see that this is difficult for you and that the changes that I'm making have an impact that perhaps makes you feel judged, perhaps makes you feel unsafe, whatever the feeling is. And in that communication, the husband should be allowed to voice what's really going on for him, the feelings that are.
really going on. And that's where negotiation comes into play. Because if the wife can start to hear that her husband is feeling frustrated over the fact that now an important activity has been taken away, now we can start to be creative. Okay, well, how, can I get you what you need? I understand and you understand that we are all taking things on ourselves and we're working towards something. Perhaps I'm working in one direction and you're working in a different direction, but the reality is that we have to go with the highest common denominator because. that's the only way to create safety. To tell the wife that she should now go to the beach is unreasonable because she just doesn't feel comfortable with that. It's beneath her dignity. At the same time, there's been a negative impact, and that has to be validated, understood, and worked towards. So if the husband feels like, well, now what are we going to do to hang out together? It's important for them to brainstorm, to come up with activities that will work for both of them that are places where they could hang out and create oneness. What's really important is that our religious views.
should never come in the way of the marriage. I've seen very often couples that are working into totally different arenas, but because they have respect and admiration for one another, because they truly value who the other person is, they're capable of negotiating what sometimes might be very difficult cracks in the road. But they are cracks in the road, and that's all they are. It doesn't mean that the couple has to break up, chas v'shalom, and it doesn't mean that they can't be negotiated. The main thing is respect for another person's process, healthy communication, validation of the way that the other person is feeling, and then... creative brainstorming so that we can come up with a system that works for both of us at the highest common denominator.
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