The Temptations That Break a Marriage

Just Plain Rivka posted the following note, and it set off a fireworks display of ideas in my head.

Thoughts that I’ve been thinking for a long time and never had the words or the guts, to be honest, to say are now, perhaps, ready to be said.

Maybe….

She’s not wrong.

Resentment is real. It’s corrosive.

It can turn a decent man into a disappointment and a home into a war zone.

A wife who lives in resentment will hollow out a marriage from the inside.

Every married man knows this, whether he has words for it or not.

Yet, resentment does not appear out of nowhere.

It grows in a specific environment.

And in this dynamic, the heavier responsibility does not belong to the wife.

It belongs to the husband.

A woman is built to notice flaws.

Many so-called manly men have ranted for hours and spilled much ink, trying to point to this “flaw” of women.

They declare that women are just creatures of bitterness or neurosis.

There is an unfortunate resurgence of this notion today.

I think it’s because most men never learned how to frame this properly.

Or they have learned but learned from the wrong places.

Learned that it is a man’s role to conquer and subdue.

That is so wrong.

Your wife is your queen. And what you call her flaws are a feature, not a bug.

As a Gibor, you must realize that it is by design.

Evolutionarily speaking, women carried asymmetric risk.

Pregnancy and child-rearing made them more vulnerable.

Survival depended on constant assessment.

Always asking the same questions.

Is this man stable?

Is he reliable?

Can I trust him when things get hard?

That wiring didn’t disappear when we got central heating and desk jobs.

Many discuss how this evolved in women.

Men are driven outward toward status, competence, and validation.

Wives are highly attuned to whether that drive is anchored to the home or pulling away from it.

When it detaches, the alarm system activates.

The Torah named this thousands of years ago in two words.

Ezer Kinegdo.

Helper-as-opposition.

Perhaps like a coach, who may not always realize her role but will surely fill it.

A woman stands opposite a man as a corrective force.

As the constant presence, silently demanding a space be made for stability and security.

There are healthy ways she can do this and, of course, unhealthy ways.

We all have baggage we bring to the table that we are responsible for.

But generally, when he is aligned with his mission, she is his helper, guide, support, and rock.

When he drifts, she becomes resistance.

She presses. She questions.

And no, this does not describe the entirety of the wife’s role.

There is so much more, obviously, to a woman and to being a wife.

This is simply one critical dynamic of relationships.

Perhaps one of the most important dynamics of marriage.

Proximity sharpens perception.

Over time, a wife will often see more flaws, not fewer.

That alone is not the problem.

The danger begins when flaw detection becomes fixation.

When the man she married gets crowded out by the man she now has to monitor.

Resentment grows when the scan keeps returning the same answer.

He is filled with flaws.

This is the temptation Rivka speaks of.

If a woman can let go of the constant scan, she and her husband will go far.

But, as she made clear in one of her comments, the husband has his own temptations to resist.

She acknowledged that she may not be the person to speak on the experience of being a husband.

Ha…

That’s where I come in. In my own admittedly narcissistic way…

(i’m not trying to be narcissistic.)

As a husband myself and a man with flaws, I’ve been desperately trying to put this concept into words so that I and perhaps fellow Giborim can learn from it and develop strategies to grow, to be better.

To be bigger.

And so, the question.

What is the temptation husbands must learn to resist?

Men want respect.

They want to feel effective, capable, and significant.

That desire is fuel, but fuel burns no matter the direction it’s pointed in.

If a man trains himself to receive validation primarily from outside his marriage, the marriage will begin to starve.

This happens quietly, over time.

You come home tired.

Preoccupied.

Half-present.

Your body is in the room, yet your attention is elsewhere.

Work gets your best energy.

The phone gets your focus.

It doesn’t matter what you do.

From Wall Street to Askanus.

From Kiruv to real estate magnate to being the next big thing on the speaker circuit.

The people who don’t have to live with the consequences of your choices get all your charm.

Your wife feels this long before she can express it.

She doesn’t need language. Her nervous system knows.

So she watches more closely.

She needs to know if you are still solid.

With all your success, she says, “I still see you. The real you. Are you going to be here for me when I really need you?”

This is where people get it wrong.

They tell the woman to stop resenting.

They tell the man to communicate better.

Neither cut deep enough.

The real issue is attention.

A Gibor husband understands that attention is not neutral.

It is directional.

It either gathers the home or fractures it.

He does not let it bleed into every arena that flatters him.

He does not anesthetize himself with admiration, alcohol, porn, endless scrolling, or the cheap respect of people who only see his surface wins.

He understands something brutally simple.

Where my attention goes, my marriage lives or dies.

This is why the burden is heavier on the husband.

It’s not that women are weak, nor is it because men are villains.

It is simply that distraction destabilizes the system first.

Leadership always carries more weight.

And before everyone starts throwing stones at me because I called the man the leader, let me explain.

Yes, the man is the leader of the home.

He is the king, and his wife is the queen.

They both lead, but the mantle of responsibility for the security and stability of the home rests squarely on the man’s shoulders.

The wife brings so much color and direction to the home, but the onus is always on the man.

These days many women have been forced to take on the masculine role because so many men have abdicated the position.

And that is leaving marriages stagnant, flailing, cold, and filled with resentment.

Sorry, this is just the way it is.

Now, feel free to throw stones.

I am a man, and I should be strong enough to take it.

(To be clear, there are many other issues men and women are facing as well. This dynamic I am describing is not the only reason why things could go wrong. There are many things that either or both sexes struggle with and excel at. But I do feel this is the issue that lives right at the top and must be addressed sooner than later. Our communities are drowning. More so because of the men than the women.)

Yes, a woman must resist resentment.

That is her avodah.

It is real work.

Left unchecked, resentment will poison everything it touches.

But it is far easier for a woman to loosen her grip on resentment when the threat signal quiets.

When the man in her home is present and not distracted.

When his striving is visibly tethered to the “us,” not to the “out there.”

Breaking the cycle requires both sides to turn inward instead of outward.

The wife must resist the pull to reduce her husband to a ledger of failures.

The husband must reclaim his attention like a weapon and aim it where it belongs.

A man who disciplines his attention gives his wife a secure place where resentment cannot survive.

I am not perfect.

I am a child of this modern world.

I am learning how to deal with this now for the first time at the ripe old age of 40.

My midlife crisis year, the age I finally grasp Binah.

I know many of you are learning to deal with this as well.

It’s a hard-knock life out there for men and women.

This is a worldwide phenomenon.

Yes, even the frum ones are stuck in the muck and mire.

Don’t even get me started.

But this is the avodah, fellow Gibor.

Be a man.

Everything else is commentary.