When One Partner Is in Crisis: How Families Can Grow Stronger Through Life’s Storms

Life brings complex challenges including illness, unemployment, moving homes, conflict with parents, and more. These situations naturally create stress and pressure, causing a husband or wife to become tense and on edge. This individual stress can easily spread and affect the entire family.

How can a family cope when one spouse is going through a personal crisis?

Entering the Ark: A Model for Facing Turmoil

The Torah portion of Noach deals with the Flood. Fierce winds rage, water pours in from all directions, and everything seems to collapse. God commands Noach and his family to enter the ark in order to be saved from the turbulent waters.

The book Mussar Avicha (Chapter 2, Section 1) explains this entry into the ark as a spiritual process of inner clarification and stabilization. It represents a time of turning inward: examining what happened, understanding what needs to change, and identifying the tools required to cope with the complexity outside. We ask: what is God “telling” me through these events?

The Difficulty and Necessity of Waiting Inside

Remaining inside the ark is not easy. Life’s forces want to move forward, to break free, not to stay confined within a narrow space. However, knowing that raging storms await outside — and that without proper preparation could sweep us away, gives us the ability to pause, prepare patiently, and do the necessary inner work.

Only after a period of reflection and clear conclusions can one consider “returning to routine.”

Testing the Waters: Knowing When You’re Ready

Gradually, a process of release begins — the raven and the dove are sent out to see whether “the waters had subsided” (Bereishit 8:6–12). This represents checking whether the storm has passed and whether it is possible to renew life in the new form we have chosen, or whether more clarification and adjustment are still needed.

This patience, and the effort to understand what happened and what must be done, is demanding, but essential and worthwhile.

Personal Crisis and Its Impact on Marriage

Crises such as unemployment or illness, God forbid, are extremely difficult for the person experiencing them as they place the individual in a new reality they never knew. Often, this new situation strips away any sense of stability, security, and even self-worth, which inevitably affects the marital relationship as well.

The spouse who once provided support now needs support themselves — or far more of it. The partner who once brought calm into the home may suddenly become the source of worry and tension.

This can become a defining moment for the other spouse. Despite their own difficulties, such as reduced income, increased responsibility with the children, and added stress — if they manage to offer genuine support during this time, the crisis can become a deeply meaningful and bonding marital experience.

Turning “Your Crisis” into “Our Crisis”

Entering the ark during a storm serves a crucial role. The family must face the crisis together as a unit. The struggling spouse needs to know that what they are going through is not only “my problem,” but “our challenge.”

The family must turn inward, examine what happened and why, and develop tools and perspectives for the new reality. Only after forming a shared approach and practical strategies, can the family “open the window of the ark” and assess whether they are ready to move forward.

If they are, they will emerge stronger, more united, and better prepared for the new path ahead.

From the book “Together Through the Torah Portions” by Moshe Ilan, social worker and marital counselor.