You Don’t Deserve This

Q:

My sister’s marriage has always been difficult. I wouldn’t call it abusive, and I know that her husband isn’t violent, but he’s definitely a difficult person, and I don’t think the two of them have ever had a happy relationship, or even felt especially close. When she complains about him, I always tell her that she doesn’t deserve this. I don’t understand why she’s still with him — and I know that my parents and siblings feel similarly.

But whenever I tell her that she deserves better, she pushes back. She admits that she and her husband don’t get along that well, but says that marriage is for life, even if you’re not happy together. She also says that if she were to divorce, she wouldn’t be any happier. “Who will take my sons to shul, make Kiddush and Havdalah, do my home repairs, mow my lawn, pick up the groceries, put gas in my car, financially support me if not my husband?” Besides, she’s added, there aren’t too many good men rushing to marry a divorcée with eight children, and she doesn’t want to be alone for the rest of her life.

Seeing my sister like this breaks my heart. She’s such a special, thoughtful person, and I can’t shake the feeling that she could be happier.

A:

Some marriages are easy — two mature, healthy individuals make a life together based on caring, cooperation, respect, responsibility, and kindness. They negotiate differences, work out compromises, find quick ways to bounce back from misunderstandings and mistakes and accept each other’s shortcomings with patience, forgiveness, and tolerance.

Nonetheless, even an “easy” marriage is never perfectly easy, just as an “easy” life is still challenging and sometimes extremely difficult.

Most marriages, in any event, don’t fall into the “easy” category. They’re more of a mixed bag. There are ups and downs of every kind: peaceful, happy periods and times of angry conflict; loving, connected moments and moments filled with rage, hurt, confusion, and despair. The marital team functions — they build a family, run a home, sustain themselves materially and spiritually — but not always smoothly or completely successfully. The average marriage is messy. Again, like life itself, it’s filled with contradictions: high hopes, shattered dreams, fulfillment, strife, satisfaction, joy, loss, disappointment, and grief.

And then there are the difficult unions. These experience higher levels of discord and/or more chronic distance or indifference. In other cases, a lack of responsibility, sensitivity, or mutuality may result in severe imbalances in the relationship. Sometimes there are personality issues or conditions that impact the marriage in intensely negative ways. Whatever the underlying causes, there will be more pain and less support, more friction and less emotional intimacy.