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Huju – my grandfather, a”h, was a heavy smoker and he did NOT drink wine (to my knowledge) and he died in his 80’s. So I guess that proves you wrong! It must be the smoking that provides long life and not the drinking.
No, not CHOCOLATE!!
Sparkly – can you speak to your Rav about it? Or is there any other adult you can talk to? Maybe one of your older siblings or another relative? A family friend? If you’re uncomfortable, you don’t have to give them the reason. It really has become very acceptable nowadays to go for therapy. It was even offered as a prize in OORAH’S last auction! You can just say that something happened recently that you feel you want to discuss with someone. Or that you have a lot of crucial life decisions to make and you want to discuss them with someone.
I just realized who you can call! Call Relief in Lakewood! They are a referral service for therapists. They can give you a referral and they may also be able to help you out with the financial part. It’s completely anonymous – you don’t have to give them your name if you don’t want to. They seem like they are really good. They do tons of research to determine which therapists are good, and which ones are good for which issues.
Let me know what happens. Hatzlacha Rabba!
“Lilmod, are you sure when u say ” in most cases is that the Beis Din convinces the husband to give his wife a get.” Per my discussions with a Beis Din in Lakewood, NJ earlier today, as long as one person wants to stay in the marriage, they would at least require counseling and still not necessarily order a Get. Even if both people wanted a divorce, they would try talking them out of it. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying that absent a halachic reason for a Get, my understanding is most beis din would not try to “convince” anyone to give a Get. But I could be wrong.”
First of all, I was talking about after they have tried counseling and tried to work things out and not been successful. I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I am not 100% sure, but I do think that if one person wants to get divorced and the other doesn’t and they go for marriage counseling, if the marriage therapist thinks they are not compatible (not necessarily because one of them is abusive. It can be because they are just not a match personality-wise), he/she will try to convince the other to get divorced. I definitely know of one case like this. I am assuming that most Rabbanim will do the same (after the couple has tried marriage counseling).
I definitely know of cases where only one person initially wanted the divorce, so apparently someone convinced the other person (whether it was the marriage therapist, Rav or the person’s conscience). I definitely know that there are Rabbanim and therapists who think that lack of personality compatibility can be a good reason to get divorced (if they tried to work it out and go for therapy and were unsuccessful).
Wait, you mean there are people here who are older than I am!!?? I never even HEARD of celery soda!
Lenny, thanks for the tip about being “dan l’kaf zchus” but I don’t think that it is relevant here for many reasons. I am too tired to go into it at length, but for one thing there are two people here – you and your wife. I have at least as much an obligation to judge her favorably as I do you. Actually, what I did was to withhold judgment and to assume that it could be either way and that I have no way of knowing which it is. I believe that was the appropriate response to the situation.
Perhaps more importantly, my point was to help you. You are turning to us for advice. You stated this example as though it is proof that you are right. I am pointing out to you that it is possible for such a thing to be controlling, so that is not necessarily proof that you are not controlling. Since your wife and Rabbi did consider it to be controlling and apparently did not consider it to be the best “chinuch-move”, my advice to you is that it would be worthwhile for you to consider their point of view. It is important for the husband and wife to be in agreement on chinuch issues even if they do end up getting divorced.
Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that “controlling” and “abuse” are not black-and-white terms. To you, the word “controlling” has extremely negative connotations which you do not want to associate with any of your actions. Without using the word controlling, it is important for you to realize that it is possible for someone to disagree with your chinuch methods. That person may be right or wrong. It is probably not a clear-cut issue. If that person is the mother of your children, it is a good idea to try to figure out why she thinks that way and to have a discussion about it, with the help of a mediator/therapist.
Joseph, so maybe it’s the first thing I wrote them – that the Rabbanim convince the guy to give the Get.
I’m not disputing you on the halachos you quoted, since I never studied the topic. But my point is that even if what you are saying is true, there is obviously more to it than that. From reading your posts, one could get the incorrect and very negative impression that Jewish women are held captive in bad marriages, which is very far from the truth, since there are very few agunos. Most people who want to get divorced are able to do so, and the Rabbanim do not tell people that personality conflicts are not grounds for divorce.
APY – Pepsi Max has more caffeine. It has the most caffeine of any soda.
Sparkly, I wrote before “Sparkly – then we have to find another way to go about this. Can you make the appointment yourself? Do you have the name and number of a good therapist? Do you have a way to pay if you make the appointment yourself?”
Please let me know the answers to these questions. I want to try to help you. If the answer to either of these questions is no, I will have to try to come up with another idea.
Also, do you know why your mother is reluctant to make the call?
Joseph, so maybe l’maaseh what happens in most cases is that the Beis Din convinces the husband to give his wife a get. Or as Lenny said, maybe once they get a civil divorce, that is grounds for a halachic divorce.
As I wrote to Lenny, I think that in general, men who refuse to give their wives a get are very much looked down on, and I think that most Rabbanim do consider personality conflicts to be a reason to get divorced and will try to convince the husband to get divorced.
Lenny, in general men who refuse to give a Get to their wives when the wives want to get divorced are very much looked down on in the Frum world, and I do think that in most cases, Rabbanim try to get the husbands to agree to a divorce (after seeing if things can be worked out).
ZD – I apologize. I see that you were right.
Lenny, I don’t know the details of most people’s divorces. All the people I am talking about have Gets. I did not know (until I read your post) that a civil divorce is considered Halachic grounds for divorce. That may be the way that many of the people that I know got divorced, and that may explain why I have never heard of a case in which the Beis Din refused to grant a divorce.
I agree with ZD that it is not worthwhile to stay married to someone who does not want to be married to you, and I think you should take his advice to heart. I think that in most cases in which one person wants a divorce and the other doesn’t, the other one usually realizes (perhaps with some help from the Rabbanim or therapists involved) that it not worthwhile to refuse to grant the divorce and to insist on remaining married when the spouse doesn’t want to. That is why there are relatively few agunos around.
Spunk – thanks! your vocabulary usage is better than mine – I couldn’t think of the right word.
RebYidd23- it can definitely be worsened!
Joseph, people get divorced all the time because of personality issues. If what you wrote is true, almost no one would be divorced.
MA – if I were in Sparkly’s situation, your comments would make me more depressed!
Sparkly – I’m a bit surprised that your mother won’t make the appointment. You have mentioned in the past that she thought you should have a mentor.
Do you know why she won’t make the appointment?
Sparkly – then we have to find another way to go about this. Can you make the appointment yourself? Do you have the name and number of a good therapist? Do you have a way to pay if you make the appointment yourself?
Lenny: “nishtday, per The Jewish Press, “controlling” is when the husband yells at & puts down his wife because the bathrooms weren’t cleaned well enough or the shabbos dinner is not edible. It’s like abusive type of mind-control. I’m very libertarian & the opposite of controlling. The funny part was the Rabbi thought controlling meant making my kids play baseball when they were little instead of playing video games because I was “controlling” their activities.”
Lenny, in common usage, the word “controlling” can be used in many ways. Personally, I use the word “controlling” very differently (and much more liberally) than you do, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. The word “abuse” as well can be used in many different ways. What is important here is that your wife feels that she is being controlled and abused, and therefore it is an issue that has to be worked out.
In terms of the way you treat your kids, your wife clearly thinks it is problematic even if you don’t. She may be right or you may be right, but it is definitely something you should speak about to and get feedback from a professional, if you care about your kids. Just the fact that the two of you have different views on the topic is cause for concern and something that needs worked out.
In terms of the baseball/video games example, that is the type of thing that really depends on the precise context -exactly what was said and how, and what your children are like, etc. It can be controlling or it might not be, and there is no way for anyone to know who doesn’t know all of the facts.
Lenny – I was simply saying that I (and the other posters) don’t know and we should not jump to conclusions. There are many, many possibilities and we do not have enough facts to know, and I did not think that some of the comments being made were helpful to you. You already have negative feelings about both your wife and your Rabbi (perhaps justifiably), and it will not help your situation if people add to those feelings. It certainly will not help you to maintain your marriage as you want to do, and in the advent that you do end up getting divorced, it will not help you make the divorce process as civil and less hard (I don’t want to write easy in connection with a divorce) as possible.
Reuven – I do apologize if I came across too harshly. I just find that this is a common mistake that people inadvertently make. Since they don’t know the other people involved in a situation, they forget that it is Loshon Hara to say negative things about them to the “poster” or “speaker” who does know the person.
This happens in every day speech all the time, and I have been nichshol many times myself. For example, let’s say Sara is telling me about someone who did something to her, if I say to her, “That was so obnoxious!”, that is Loshon Hara since Sara knows who the person is. The problem is that since I don’t know the other person, it is easy to be nichshol since it doesn’t “feel” like Loshon Hara when you have no idea who the other person is.
It is precisely because it is such a common and easy mistake that I wanted to be “m’orer” the oilam about it.
ZD and Joseph – As I said, I don’t know much about the halachos, but I really don’t think it happens very often that L’MAASEH, the Beis Din refuses to allow someone to divorce. It may be true, as you wrote Joseph, that in halacha, there is theoretically such a possibility, but I don’t think that L’MAASEH, it happens very often. ZD only gave one example that he knows of and you haven’t mentioned any. Personally, I know tons of people who are divorced and I have not heard of a single person who wanted to get divorced but was not allowed to.
And I know for a fact that a Beis Din can allow people to get divorced even if neither of them did something wrong. There are plenty of people who get divorced because they are not a good match personality-wise, even though neither of them did anything wrong! I just checked out a divorced guy who was redt to me, and I was told by one of the Rabbanim involved that they got divorced only because of personality reasons (I decided not to go out with him, because I didn’t think his personality would work for me either.)
reuventree55- I wrote that you have no right to judge the OTHER people involved. I wasn’t referring to Lenny – he is not the other people involved. You are judging the other people involved without knowing anything about them. On the other hand, I was commenting on the posts that you yourself wrote.
APY, I think your comment is Motzi Shem Ra. You may not know these people, but Lenny does. Why raise negative ideas in his head about his wife and Rabbi? And you have no evidence for your comments other than what Lenny wrote. There may be some very good reasons why the Rabbi didn’t say anything to him. Maybe he thought that it would make it worse. Or maybe he did say something and it went over his head. Or maybe he thought that it would be better for the wife to find a way to deal with it herself. I could definitely see why he thought that speaking to the husband directly wouldn’t be a good idea. After all, it was the wife who approached him and not the husband. He is not allowed to repeat what she told him w/o permission and she may not have wanted to. He also has no way of knowing if it’s true or not, and again, he may not have thought it would be helpful. His job was to try to help the wife find a way to deal with it.
In general, posters have to be very careful about jumping to conclusions. You only know a snippet of the story, and even that much may not be completely reliable or objective. You certainly have no right to judge the other people involved without hearing from them!
“Nishtdayngesheft, wanting to remain married isn’t an example of controlling someone. Shulchan Aruch recognizes many cases where Halacha denies a spouse’s request to divorce.”
Joe, I think Nisht was saying this based on reading all of Lenny’s posts carefully. I also have the same feeling as him. He did not make this comment based on the fact that Lenny wants to remain married (since he did not feel this way after reading the initial post, but only after other posts).
Also, I’m not an expert on the topic, but I have never heard of a case in which one spouse wanted to get divorced, and the Beis Din would not let them (after going through marriage therapy and trying to work things out). I think that is probably extremely unusual, especially if it’s the wife who wants the divorce.
Reuventree555, from Lenny’s posts, it is quite clear that he did not mean it that way at all. He simply meant that he is her Rav and she confides in him and she is closer to him than Lenny is (since she goes to him for aitza more than Lenny does), so Lenny feels that he is more biased to her views than to his. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is good that she has had someone to speak to all this time, and there is no reason to read things into it and put suspicions in people’s heads.
In fact it probably is a much better to go to Rabbanim for Aitza than to the Coffee Room. I am very happy for Mrs. Lenny that she has an actual Rav to speak to and doesn’t have to resort to the CR!
wow, that’s really tough! But I’m not sure why that should stop you from getting help. Is the issue that you need to tell your parents that you want to see a therapist and you don’t want to tell them why? If that’s the case, can you tell them you want to see a therapist without giving a reason?
“And how come some people daven SE in 30 seconds, literally?”
How is that possible? Even on Erev Shabbos right before shkiya, I don’t think I can manage to finish Shemone Esrei in less than 2 minutes.
That is racist!
“What’s hilarious is that between the kids yeshiva schooling, new cars, vacations, sizable donations to our shul, etc… etc… we’re doing quite well.”
Marriage is not about money.I definitely think marriage therapy is needed here.
ZD, as I wrote in my earlier post, in many situations, your words would be excellence advice. I just didn’t think there was enough evidence at that point (after Lenny’s initial post) that this was one of those cases. However, after seeing Lenny’s later posts, it does seem that this may be one of those cases and Lenny would be well-advised to take your words to heart.
Either way, they should definitely speak to a Rav, Beis Din and/or marriage therapist as soon as possible.
ZD, he never said she hated his guts. The fact that someone wants a divorce does not necessarily mean that she hates her husband. I do agree with you in principle that it is probably not a good idea to stay married to someone who wants a get, and your advice is probably wise advice for the majority of situations, but I am not sure there is enough information here to assume that it is accurate for this particular situation.
Sometimes things can be worked out, and I think that most Rabbanim and therapists would agree that it is kidai NOT to get divorced too quickly, and to try to see if things can be worked out first, particularly if there are kids involved.
Sparkly – anyone who goes through some kind of trauma should definitely speak to a therapist. If you know someone who committed suicide, that definitely qualifies as trauma and definitely requires at least one session with a psychologist.
Hatzlacha Rabba and best wishes for a Gut gebentched yor! (please excuse the poor yiddish spelling)
Sparkly, I agree with Gofish on this, especially her last point. It doesn’t hurt to learn Chovos Halevavos in addition, but that should not be the only hishtadlus you do right now.
“Seriously, Geordie and DY, why shouldn’t that logic be applied to the coffee room? Why do posters criticize Zionism, MO , OK etc when they also don’t come from their community? The same applies when the above group gods after charaidi etc.”
I have yet to see any posters on the CR posting about how terrible it is to murder or to be a drug dealer.
Pringles, knowing you’re a teen makes a big difference, so I’m glad you told us that. I definitely would advice that you:
a) make sure you are getting enough sleep
b) make sure you are eating enough
c) go to the doctor
d) make sure you have a sense of purpose in life. Maybe going to a shiur or having a chevrusa can help with this. I would definitely recommend learning Chovos Halevavos, Shaar Habitachon.
e) Make sure that you have enough of a social life.
f) exercise
g) eat some chocolate
h) in general, make sure you have no needs that are being ignored.
i) consider cutting down your hours of work or taking a vacation.
Hatzlacha, and best wishes for a Kesiva V’chasima Tova!!! Please keep us updated!
Sparkly, I really don’t see why you think Pninim is not for you. From what I know about Pninim and about you, it seems like a good fit to me. I don’t know anything about Rinat Tzipora though, so it may be better. I could see a Neve school being good for you, if it’s the right one. The atmosphere there is really nice, and the campus is gorgeous!
I’ve been told to eat dates so that I would have a lot of dates (or maybe not a lot – just good ones). I was at my best friend’s house the Rosh Hashana after I was told that, and I wanted to eat a date, but I was too scared of bugs. She was even more nervous about bugs than I was, but she ate one in my zchus since I didn’t want to. Is that a good friend or what!!!
(Now, I’m waiting for all the comments about how irrational it is both to eat dates for a segula and to be scared of eating dates because of bugs and to let your friend do it for you because you are too scared to do it yourself…)
Thanks Person1! It’s nice to be appreciated!
I just always feel about guilty about posting because of all of the LH and MSR on the site. My rationalization is that maybe there is less because of me, but I’m not sure to what extent that is rationalization. Also am not sure to what extent it’s even true.
In any case, I don’t have too much computer access at the moment so it’s not much of an issue. I will probably be getting more computer access soon, so we’ll see what happens then. I would love to try to “abstain” during Aseres Y’mei Teshuva at least, but I’m not sure if that will really happen.
DY: I actually just saw it a few minutes ago.
Sparkly: Wow, someone finally noticed my absence!!! I was getting pretty insulted. I think it took about 10 days for someone to notice! Other people get threads when they are gone for a day..
Person1: good idea!
Meno: Shaychus?
Actually, I don’t really have too much computer access at the moment. Which is probably a good thing,,,
The Sifsei Chayim explains the first example you gave. I don’t have the Seifer on me, and even if I did, I would probably not be able to do justice to his explanation. But basically, he says something to the effect that everything that happens to a person is from Hashem even when it comes about through someone else. However, when something happens through someone else, it is MUCH harder to have bitachon that it is from Hashem. Therefore, it would be harder for Yosef to have bitachon that it is from Hashem if it came about through people. Since he would have less bitachon, he would be zoche to less hashgacha pratis and more likely to come to harm.
The basic idea is that everything is from Hashem, but when it comes about through others, it is more challenging to have bitachon that it is really from Hashem.
Sparkly, I would like to ask you mechila again in case I wrote anything that hurt you since I last asked mechila.
Why don’t you ask why Rabbanim don’t speak out against drug dealers, thieves and murderers? Whatever reasons you can come up with, apply here as well.
I don’t know anything about the Halachic issues involved with a woman saying Sheva Berachos, but there is one big difference between a woman saying sheva berachos on the one hand and a woman saying Kaddish or women making a zimmun on the other. The big difference is that no one is gaining anything by the woman saying the sheva brachos as opposed to the man – there is no extra Mitzvah being done, and hence there is no reason to do something that could be considered a breach in the Mesorah. In the other cases, a Mitzvah is being done that would not have been done otherwise. Even in the other cases, it MAY be problematic, but it seems to me that in this case it is DEFINITELY problematic since there is no extra Mitzvah being done, so it SEEMS pretty clear that it is not l’sheim Shamayim.
Pninim
Pninim would be a good choice for you.
Sparkly – in any event, whatever schooling you need for pharmacy, you need way more to be able to teach Halacha. And certainly you need more than 2 years, which is what I had originally said. There is a reason why most schools have men halacha teachers even if they don’t have men teachers for anything else.
thanks Mods.