Broken Engagements

SJSinNYC

Member

Hereorthere, clearly a career minded woman needs to marry someone who agrees with that philosophy. But you specified For example Feminism is infiltrating the Jewish communitry and often unless the man is going to push the women into becomming a doctor or lawyer or business executive or some other “high powered” career some of them think these days that he will “think of her only as an object”

I’ve never heard of a man PUSHING the woman into a high powered position. “

When he is telling and encouraging her to think of her career as more important then anything else that is pushing, and like I said, I never heard of a feminist who would marry a man, who would NOT do that.

I was drawn to this topic because a friend of a friend of mine recently got divorced within just a year of getting married. The tragedy shocked me. I am not sure how long they dated for or even if they met through a shiduch, and personally, I do not think that is all that relevant. I think it is silly for us all to sit back and guess which type of community is more at fault for a rise in the number of broken engagements. The facts are young couples are breaking engagements and marriages more frequently than ever before.

I was the first of my circle of friends to get married. My husband’s parents and my parents grew up as neighbors, so in a sense we go way back. But now I am seeing all my friends navigate through the stressful world of shiduchim. They often explain that they feel lost and confused.

In my opinion the real problem is that young people nowadays have had more influence from the outside world. That is not to make a specific charge against feminism. Smaller influences, like the way in which we approach a topic like a relationship is altered because of the modern world. Young people then are in almost a unique situation in which they are trying to stick to a torah approach while subconsciously having to struggle with modernity as well. What we really need to do is education people dating and getting ready to get married, not necessarily through pre-marital therapy, but simply to let them know what they are getting themselves into. Marriages are never simply a happy ending; they take work and effort.

I know that I felt, when I was younger, that marriage meant everything was perfect. Before I married my husband, we met with his Rabbi from his yeshiva in Israel. The Rabbi gave us the greatest piece of advice I had ever received. He told us that we must remember arguments happen and it is the way in which they happen that we can use to work in our favor to better our relationship. I think messages like this are what young people need to hear. We need to let people know that its more than just having the same opinions, goals and hopes for the future. They need to know how to communicate.

his is a topic for the feminism thread, so I will answer it there.

It really has nothing to do with feminism (your assertions beside the point), but I responded there anyway.

The Wolf

I’m not convinced that having access to TV, reading books, etc. = a greater chance of having a marriage end before the first anniversary.

Or am I misunderstanding the assumption behind the point that was being made?

The Wolf

When he is telling and encouraging her to think of her career as more important then anything else that is pushing, and like I said, I never heard of a feminist who would marry a man, who would NOT do that.

That’s not pushing. That’s a woman saying “I want to do XYZ” and her husband supporting it.

Pushing would be a man saying to his wife “I want you to go through medical school” even if she doesn’t want to.

Kasha, that’s what I got from talking to chassidish women.

Divorce is a stigma across all of Orthodox Judaism, but more so in the chassidish world.

Kasha, divorce shouldn’t be a dirty word at all. There are plenty of marriages that should disolve including:

1) Physical/emotional Abuse

2) Cheating

3) Lying before marriage

4) Drug and alcohol abuse

And probably plenty more. We should support people who get divorced not make it a dirty word.

What we should do is start looking at WHY people are getting divorced and start heading off the issues before marriage.

For example, hiding bi-polar from your fiance is WRONG. Your fiance needs to enter marriage (and even engagementship) knowing this crucial fact.

Most of those issues CAN AND SHOULD be resolved within a marriage.

I’m curious… of the four that SJS mentioned, which do you think should be resolved within a marriage (and which, if any, do you think are legitimate grounds for divorce)?

The Wolf

Kasha,

So, you would advise a physically abused wife to try to “work it out” with her husband?

The Wolf

You’re asking a hypothetical, not an actual situation.

That’s true.

(i.e. She was once pushed for the first and last time after 25 years of marriage of a loving marriage

That’s not the type of case that I was referring to… and you know it. I was referring to a case where a woman in punched/hit/kicked on a regular basis by her husband. That’s usually what people mean when they talk about physical abuse in marriage — not an isolated incident 25 years earlier.

The Wolf

That’s why I said there are too many variables. BTW, I meant it occurred after 25 years, not in the beginning, but this is almost irrelevant.

Lying about marriage is terrible wrong, but certainly — generally — NOT grounds for divorce by a long-shot. This is what I mean by people purveying divorce as another trip to the grocery.

In any event, in the majority of divorce cases, things could have been worked out. What’s even sadder, is that these people — in most cases — are even sadder after divorce. And what’s even more, often their remarriage will be no happier than their first marriage that they broke up; and it often will include a whole bunch of baggage of its own.

After being an observer of the coffee room for a while, i had to respond to this topic. As someone who can testify that divorce IS the correct thing to do in certain situations, i have been there and done that.

Kasha- how can you say divorce is a dirty word? yes in this day and age, in the unfortunate society we live in there are many many issues that many spouses may have that are not known prior to the marriage, and the only option is to go out. As someone who put in over a year in a marriage to attempt to do everything i can to make it work, it did not help. Do i feel bad that i put in all that time, no. this way i can honestly give you my opinion now, that i have attempted to keep my marriage, and put in all efforts possible with much help and guidance and it was not ment to be. I am very happy now, being out of that marriage for over a year and i am a perfectly normal healthy girl, and if the world looks at me with a stigma, i will just continue to keep my head up high.

especially being pushed by corrupt therapists/counselors.

Just out of curiosity, do you feel that counselors have some reason for pushing divorce at the expense of the happiness of the couple, or do you think that they believe that divorce is the best thing for their clients.

In other words, are you accusing them of deliberate malpractice or gross ignorance?

The Wolf

I happen to agree that there are many charlatans in the frum community under the guise of marriage counselors and therapists who push divorce at the first opportunity.

Why? Because that’s what their secular training in goyishe schools taught them.

When he is telling and encouraging her to think of her career as more important then anything else that is pushing, and like I said, I never heard of a feminist who would marry a man, who would NOT do that.

That’s not pushing. That’s a woman saying “I want to do XYZ” and her husband supporting it.

Pushing would be a man saying to his wife “I want you to go through medical school” even if she doesn’t want to. “;;;;;;;

Supporting would be supporting whatever she wanted to do, pushing

could also be(besides what you said)trying to steer someone into something that she may want to do but need a “push” to get going.

It may not be ‘HARD’ pushing but it most certainly is pushing.

If a someone considering marrying a feminist ‘supported’ her in following Torah more and feminism less, she and her feminist friends would most certainly claim he was ‘holding her back’.

They most likely would tell her to break it off or at least to give it to him for supposedlty ‘seeing women only as objects’.

This clash one way or another could easily cause a break up.

SJSinNYC

Member

Kasha, divorce shouldn’t be a dirty word at all. There are plenty of marriages that should disolve including:

1) Physical/emotional Abuse

2) Cheating

3) Lying before marriage

4) Drug and alcohol abuse”;;;;;;;;;;;;;

And in Crown Heights or Williamsburg how often does a case like this come up?

Very rarely unless you ARE talking about cases so mild, that they do not qualify as “bad marriages”.

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“And probably plenty more. We should support people who get divorced not make it a dirty word.”

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I challenge anyone, to find a qualified Rav who will agree with this statement about not making divorce a dirty word.

Often such things are falsly claimed by women (or their families in a few cases) who have ulterior motives for breaking up the marriage, like for example; Where they can cheat the husband out of his business or inheritance.

Sometimes it is because the women want to become secular and so they falsly claim abuse.

Sometimes they falsly claim abuse of the children when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

The feminist controlled courts, almost always side with the women with no m,ore evidence then a false claim by the women.

There are many men (not necessasrily Jews, certainly not all or most are Jews, but some probably are)

sitting in jail for no other reason then women told outright bald faced lies, about the men supposedly ‘abusing them’ and the courts believed them just because of the feminist influence on all of sciety.

A couple of examples prove the point (even though they are nit marriage examples, the same ideas still apply) like;

The Twanna Brawley case, where Al Sharpton used a woman as a false witness to lie that cops had suoposedly abused her and wa dismissed only because of massive publicity on behalf of the cops that embarrassed the judge into dropping the case for lack of evidence.

Another case is the Duke Lacross case where the prosecutor went ahead forcing the case against the innocent boys, and would getting fired for prosecutorial miscinduct, again ONLY because of

months of nationwide publicising of the case on FOX News and Talk radio.

Cases of false charges in marriage are usually more private and les scritinized by conservative media so sometimes such cases can cause an innicent man ti be railroaded into jail on false charges.

There are plenty of reasons to break a marriage besides cheating and drug abuse. The number one reason is because you want to. If you really want a divorce despite the public embarrassment and stigma that accompany it, not to mention the stigma on your kids as regards to shidduchim, you probably have a good reason. If you and your spouse after some time do not have a good relationship, you need a solution.

Of course in all situations you should try to work on the marriage first. You should certainly employ marriage counseling as well as counseling for each of you. But in the end, staying in a bad marriage is a crime to yourself and your kids.

Yell at me

Most divorces are preventable. It is unfortunate some people don’t give it a chance, and run to divorce court at the first sign of difficulty.

Al pi halacha, a person cannot insist on a divorce just cause s/he wants it. There has to be a reason that is considered actionable under the eyes of halacha.

Kasha, according to halacha it is actionable if a woman burns the husband’s dinner.

The main cause of divorce is marriage (ok that was a tongue in cheek statement). The truth is some people are emotionally pushed into quickly getting engaged to the wrong people (he’s a top boy, she’s a baalas chessed, it’s a perfect shidduch), who might otherwise be nice people but are still wrong for each other. They get married for the wrong, though possibly well-intentioned reasons, and barely know each other. They might eb too young, too immature, too self-centered to be ready to give themselves over to living with someone from a different family, who is NOT mommy and daddy, and used to doing things differently from the way in which they were brought up. the adjustment may be TOO hard for such a person, and counseling cannot help, ebcause fundamentally they are wrong for each other. Should they stay in such a marriage and make each other miserable. Should a girl or boy who are very warm and demonstrative and marry someone who is not so, stay in a marriage where they feel unloved? Marriage takes a lot of work, and some people are not cut out to be together. The tragedy is if there are children involved at this point.

Arosem I am so glad you have never been abused by feminists or abused in the name of feminism, becuase my life has been ruined by it from childhood till my 20’s or so.

By that time a patters was set then other then stepped in to make sure I could never fix the wreck, my life had become.

Speaking from experience, I have been directly involved with divorced people who were lied about and cheated by their feminist wives.

Since you are (falsly)claiming that not supporting lies by femninists is supposedly “claiming that no abuse exists” which I never said.

By YOUR claims against me your are by that same token claiming that women have never lied in divorces, or abused the court system;

Aside from your outlandish and ignorant claims that women supposedly never abuse the system, and never LIE to judges and courts who are extremly sympathetic to the feminist man hating, aganda;

My factual claims which you cannot refute and which are supported by my two examples that very much apply to the situation of a family and by statistical data, like all the court records which show MASSES of men convicted just because in each of THOSE (not ALL cases, but THOSE many, that I am talking about)

cases, a woman claimed abuse and divorces where the woman was the abuse and the cheater etc…and who still was awarded everything by the pro feminist anti male judge.

A prosecutor who deliberately withholds evidence to promote the feminist agenda in the Duke Lacross case,will do the same thing in divorce cases, so it DOES very clearly, prove my point.

And you claims that the children in most cases are more damaged by parents staying together are refuted by the cghildren themselves who later talk about how they were the ones whi were traumatized and felt guilty that THEIR fighting with their siblings or not always getting the top grades or not keeping their rooms clean enough, was what they as kids, had thought CAUSED the divorce.

This is besides the many many cases where the parents (usually by far, the mother) get custody and then very often uise that time to brainwash the kids into hating the other parent (again by far usually against the father since it is usually the mother, who does it)This happened to my step father and to a frend of mine and I just read about another case (among many that are ut there)where the mother had moved to another state to far for the father who had no money left after paying exhorbitant alimony to take time off from work to visit often.

When he did visit there was always some sudden trip or other thing the mother suddenly had to take the kids to go do so he could not see them then.

She lied that he did not care about them so he supposedly never came.

She kept them out of sports because she was pocketing the money he sent for sports equipment (which was supposed to be taken out of the amlinony that he always paid in full every month) telling them he did not want to show any fatherly love for them.

Years later one fo the boys who he had been very close with before the diviorce with said he never wanted to ever talk to his father again.

That is how messed up he had been by feminist ways.

SJSinNYC

Now I understand your position! You think EVERYTHING is a anti women conspiracy!

“Nevertheless, not being warm enough or feeling “unloved” is not a halachicly actionable reason for either party in the absence of more substantiative reasons.”

Actually, does the Torah not state that if the husband finds something unseemly in his wife he should give her a GET? And if she remarries, and her second husband hates her and divorces her, she cannot be re-married to the first husband. Check out Devarim Perek 24, Pesukim Aleph and Gimmel. I would find it rather hateful to be married to someone who made me feel unloved. But the Torah clearly uses finding fault and hate as criteria for divorce. Why should two people who make each other miserable stay in a loveless marriage?

Smartcookie Denying the obvious does not help.

The Feminists are the ones who rally and advocate for such things

and no one else, does.

Arosem;

I did not twist your words (Words cannot be twisted anyway. They can be lied about or mocked, but not ‘twsited’).

You made false statements about what I supposedly said and I pointed that out.

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“Firstly, I never said anything about the corruption that may lie behind some people, both men and women, when they involve the courts in their private relationships.”

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Well I did, and you falsly claimed that I had supposedly said that there is never any abuse in marriages and I never said anything like that.

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“I think, though, that it is a far stretch to even say that this is the case most of the time.”

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That is what you WANT to believe, that does not make it true.

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” Do you honestly believe that so many people are so malicious in their pursuits for wealth and control?”

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Absolutely, just look at all the crime stats.

Something like 65% of those responding to poll at a big well known University (I think it was Harvard)said that they thought it was OK, to cheat on a test.

Look at the popularity of movies and TV shows promoting evil like “Breaking Bad” (the daily lives and adventures of drug dealers).

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“I think that perhaps many more of the people that you assume to be seeking out divorce deserve the benefit of the doubt that there are indeed serious problems involved.

”

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The same could be said of those who get abortions or say Loshon Hara (of which there is plenty in many doviorces).

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“But if you look back to my original post, I never claimed that people never lie to get their way in court. A statement like that would be just as crazy as claiming that abuse never happens in a given community.”

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And yet in your first post to me, you falsly claimed that I had supposedly said that.

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“Secondly, I think that your definition of feminism is a little off. I know that this is not the place for such a discussion, but I will just say that siding with a woman does not automatically equal a feminist agenda (although depending on the motivation it can be, but may very well have nothing to do with what feminism actually is). ”

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You are doing it again.

That is not my definition of feminism.

Nowhere did I EVER say that anyone who EVER sides with any woman in any situation, was a feminist.

In fact in a another thread I pointed out that feminists were against women truly succeeding, when they did it on their own and were conservatives like Sarah Palin.

But someone who sides a with woman, when it may be questionable whether in a particular case, it is following Torah or not, and who will make excuses and attack those who point out that it may be wrong in ‘that’ case, or who make false accusations against anyone (like you did to me) me who does not toe the feminist line is obviously a feminist.

EDITED

“I’m not sure what is relevant about the fact a woman cannot remarry her first husband if she ever married someone else subsequently. “

I only quoted that because the posuk says if she marries a second husband and he HATES her, he may divorce her. The rest of the posuk was not specifically relevant to this issue, only th idea that a man could divorce his wife out of hatred for her (no specifics of why, just that he does).

I am not a big fan of even the idea of divorce. I think a couple should always try hard to work through their issues. But sometimes, there is nothing there for them to work WITH, much less through. Some people are not ready to get married, are not right for each other, and do not yet grasp what a true commitment means. In that case, I don’t think that two lives (more, if there are children involved) should be ruined just for the sake of staying together. BTW, the permanent emotionally damaging effect that a bad marriage has on the kids where constant arguing and/or abuse is involved, is far worse than the ultimate effect of a breakup. Many kids have expressed the relief they felt when their constantly arguing parents finally divorced. It’s a tragedy all around.