“It doesn’t matter what you say. I can’t un-hear everything he told me"
Reuven called me as soon as he dropped Leah off after their fifth date. “I just want you to know,” he said, “that I told Leah a lot of stuff. I wanted to be honest with her.”
I cringed. Reuven had gone through a rough patch during high school — he’d had a tough time with his parents and bounced around between yeshivahs, trying to find his place. It had been many years since then, and he was settled and happy; if you met him now, you’d never know. Which was why he decided to tell her.
“I understand,” I told him. “Of course, you need to tell her.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s important to start off with complete honesty. I told her how terrible it was, how my parents didn’t understand me, how the system was killing me. I told her how angry and frustrated I was and how depressed I got. It was like drowning in a black hole of despair.”
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