To See the Good

That woman is me, the mother of the kallah.

I grew up in a family where we never spoke badly of people. If someone said or did something nasty, we assumed the person was having a bad day, or going through some difficulty in life, and continued to view the person as good.

I knew bad people existed, but I didn’t realize that good people could also be bad.

I got married over 30 years ago, before the concept of personality disorders was widely recognized. Accustomed as I was to seeing the good in people, for a long time I made excuses for the problematic behaviors my husband, Menashe, exhibited. When he borrowed large sums of money that we couldn’t afford to repay, I told myself that he would find a way to make the loan payments. When he squandered that money in high-risk investments, I told myself that he was simply trying to earn parnassah. When I learned that he was frequenting casinos and betting on sports matches, I told myself that he was under stress.