“Why Doesn’t He Take the Initiative to Help Me?”  

Written with Zivia Reischer

Rabbi Shafier,

My husband is a good person and I try to be a good wife. I know no one is perfect and that in marriage you need to overlook a lot of things. I try to focus on my husband’s strengths (and baruch Hashem there are many) and not to focus on what he does wrong. But sometimes it gets to be too much and I just snap.

For example, this year the Yom Tov calendar was very challenging. It seemed like every other day was Erev Shabbos or Erev Yom Tov, the kids never seemed to have school, but of course we both had to work regardless. I was cooking nonstop for a month — plus all the shopping, cleaning, and laundry that making Yom Tov entails. Meanwhile my husband would come home from work and plant himself on the couch while I’d be frantically trying to cook and the kids would be demolishing the house around me. I’d be trying to make supper and make Yom Tov and keep everything going and he’d literally just sit there — or maybe if it was really noisy, he’d go into his study and shut the door! As if the kids weren’t climbing the bookshelves or dumping out all the toys or pulling on me and crying while I was trying to get everything done. Eventually I just lost it and screamed at him to get off the couch and help me.

He did get up and help, but he was quiet and distant for a few days afterward. I know I’m not supposed to yell like that, but I don’t get him. Why does he just sit around and watch me struggle? Why doesn’t he take the initiative and get involved and help? I get that he feels hurt when I talk to him like that, but I don’t know how to change this dynamic.

You’re a hundred percent right that he should take responsibility and help you. But you can be right or you can be happily married — not both.