If disagreements between spouses aren't in a mutually respectful manner, keep them behind closed doors
“Adina” spun her chair to face me directly, practically glaring at me. I had just raised an eyebrow (or two) after her husband, “Ben,” had complained that she often confronted him at their Shabbos table.
“So what if we disagree in front of the children?” Adina challenged me. “Is that a crime? Look, when I was growing up, my parents often quarreled with each other out in the open. I think it’s healthy for kids to see that parents can disagree and still survive. How else are they supposed to learn that? Some children never see their parents argue. And then, when they grow up, get married, and have their first fight, they’re so bent out of shape that they run right off to the beis din for a get.”
Tilting her head toward her husband, Adina continued her harangue. “Ben, however, comes from a home where his parents only disagreed behind closed doors. To him, ‘conflict’ is a dirty word. I guess that’s why he gets so hypersensitive whenever I just express a different point of view.”
Ben and Adina were not coming to me for marriage counseling, although they certainly could have benefited from a few sessions of that. Instead, they had come for parental guidance in dealing with more than one problematic child. And in the course of describing for me what their Shabbos table was like, Ben had slipped in a charge that Adina often embarrassed him by harshly criticizing him in front of their children.
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