“I Don’t Like All of My Husband’s ‘House Rules'”

My husband and I were raised in very different households. While my in-laws are lovely, warm people, they’re also very proper and formal, and there are strict rules in their home. My own family is much more laid-back, and we all sort of go with the flow. (Did we discuss these differences while we were dating? We should have!)

Our kids, for better or for worse, take after me. They’re much more spontaneous and like doing their own thing whenever they want.

My husband has many rules he’d like to see enforced in the house — e.g., no shoes on furniture, no eating outside the kitchen, proper mealtimes, proper bedtimes. While I see the value in his approach, it’s very hard for me to implement these rules. As a result, we’ve created a monster. There are two sets of standards in the house. When Abba is home, things run accordingly; when he’s not, the kids fall into my pattern.

While I know that it’s my job to uphold my husband’s priorities, I simply don’t feel capable of doing so. And honestly, I understand my kids.

I wind up straddling both sides of the fence, passively looking the other way while my kids break my husband’s rules, hoping he doesn’t find out. I feel lousy about this, but I don’t know what else to do.

I’m so torn between my ideals of what marriage and chinuch should be and my practical reality on the ground.

Rabbi Reuven Epstein, CPA, is a highly regarded dating and marriage expert, serving as a speaker, chassan rebbi, rabbinic counselor, and author. Rabbi Epstein spearheads “The Marriage Project” at Marriage Pro, which provides online and in-person interactive resources for singles and couples looking to maximize their relationships.

Every home has this same struggle to one degree or another. Two people who come from separate homes are always raised with different standards, different approaches to chinuch, have different personalities, and will disagree on how loose or structured the home should be, among other matters.

I believe there’s a profound reason Hashem structured relationships like this. It’s so each person can remove their ego and learn to yield and blend emotionally (in a safe, trusting, and healthy way) with someone who is completely different from them but who ultimately completes them. In short, your struggle is the struggle of everyone you know.

The key to navigating this struggle is realizing that in a successful marriage both parties strive to become one unit, one voice, and have one overall outlook on life. This means that you may be correct about the ideal way to raise children and implement structure in your home, or your husband may be correct. But as long as you aren’t single-parenting, who is objectively correct isn’t important; what’s crucial is that your children see that their parents are on the same page.

When children grow up in a home where each parent offers a different perspective on the same issue, the kids learn quickly which parent will cave in on one issue or another. This doesn’t mean parents need to be in complete agreement on every issue, but it does mean their values need to be in sync. When children experience two conflicting value systems, it leads to instability.