Navigating Parenting Challenges: A Couple's Journey

"We have a really crucial question," so began the couple, Shmuel and Hannah, as they settled in front of me at the clinic.

"What happened?" I asked.

"We have a very serious dilemma," Hannah explained. "We’ve reached a point where we are even considering sending our daughter to boarding school. But at the same time, we are really scared of that step and can’t decide what to do."

(Before I continue the story, I should mention that I've changed the details to protect their identity).

Here, I want to share with you, the readers, what led them to consider such a drastic measure as sending their daughter away. I want to take you on a journey through several sessions I had with this couple to understand a bit of their world and the context between them.

The external gap between them is quite striking.

Shmuel is a slender and quiet man. He talks very little and throughout the session, it seemed he preferred to minimize his presence as much as possible. Even when I offered him a glass of water, he politely shook his head.

In contrast, his wife Hannah was in full control of the situation. She exhibited a great deal of confidence; even in the phone calls prior to our meeting, it was Hannah who initiated the contact. She was also the one who completed the payment over the phone and called to inquire about transportation routes from their area to the clinic.

Hannah's tone of voice was slightly high, which revealed itself during the sessions as a significant source of tension between the couple.

Shmuel shared that Hannah’s tone of voice causes him annoyance and rejection. "Every time Hannah speaks loudly, I am filled with unpleasant feelings; it really challenges me." Meanwhile, Hannah expressed frustration and anger at Shmuel's too-quiet tone: "I can’t hear him; it’s hard to lead a normal life that way. Every time Shmuel speaks, I have to ask him three times to raise his voice. Eventually, I get exhausted and have to strain my ears just to hear him. Sometimes, I just guess what he wants to say because I don’t have the strength to try so hard. Plus, I can’t stand that he seems so soft and pitiful."

Hannah revealed to me, "Since I can remember, I’ve felt like I have no place in the world. I grew up in a very difficult home; my father was so self-absorbed that he didn’t allow anyone else to exist in his presence. Both my mother and we children had to spend most of our day occupied outside the house. I would do anything to have people open doors for me. I worked cleaning or babysitting to find my place, as home felt like it wasn’t mine."

"Even physically, my dad could lock the front door and not let us in, claiming he hadn’t returned from work, but we knew he was home and just had no patience for anyone else to be under the same roof. Even when the house was open, my dad was so tense and angry that we preferred any roof other than his."

"This is how I grew into a girl without a backbone and a sense of belonging. Shmuel was the first guy I met; I had no standards, in my mind—any man who was willing to take me under his wing was good enough."

"Then we got married. That marriage saved me; I felt Shmuel redeemed me from Egypt. Shmuel is a wonderful husband—attentive, supportive; he’s like an emotional therapist for me. I don’t know how he has so much patience for a woman like me. I’m so annoying, lacking a backbone, unstable, more of a hindrance than a help—so how can he appreciate me? How does he even have the strength and patience for me at all?"

"So if Shmuel is such a wonderful husband, where is the problem in your life together?" I asked.

"As I mentioned at the beginning, the problem is really not Shmuel or our relationship. I wish for all of Israel to have a relationship as good as ours. What’s hard for me – it’s the kids. In my relationship with the children, I reach unmanageable extremes. They throw me off balance, especially my eldest daughter. I can’t stand her, and she brings out the demons in me. She has numerous issues, and I have no patience to deal with all her problems. She’s lazy, she suffers from obesity, her notebooks look terrible, and her clothes are always dirty—in short, she’s a 'shlemazel,' 'a loser,' someone who can’t get her act together and take responsibility. She tries to put everything on me—I’m the reason she wakes up late in the morning, I have to worry about her clothes, I have to cut up vegetables for her dinner so she doesn’t snack, I have to study with her for tests... just understand, we're talking about a thirteen-year-old girl; she behaves like a kid in second or third grade. The girls her age have long learned to manage themselves and find friends to study with for exams, while my girl is left behind, unwilling to take responsibility and thinking her mom should rescue her life. Enough. I’m fed up with her; it has come to the point where I can’t even do for her the things I’m supposed to. The situation has become so dire that I suddenly find myself replicating my dad's terrible behavior. Yes, the very things I suffered from and promised myself a million times I wouldn’t imitate, suddenly I find myself doing exactly that, even worse."

At this point, tears shimmered in Hannah's eyes. She looked exhausted and helpless.

"I don’t want to tell you the situations I’m getting into with my daughter. Recently, I’ve even started thinking good things about my dad... when I see where life is taking me, I begin to understand him, and instead of being angry at him, I think he just suffered like I’m suffering, and that’s why he couldn’t behave like a decent person... but tell me," Hannah looked at me with a mix of despair and pleading hope, "are life’s challenges really that awful? Do all people live in such a never-ending nightmare? Is this how a home is supposed to look like?"

"Can you give me an example of a situation with your daughter that causes you pain?" I asked.

"Of course!" Hannah replied, "I have plenty of examples! Just her presence overwhelms me; her whole personality is a bundle of nerves in front of my eyes. Just today, she came back from school and of course threw her backpack on the floor by the entrance. After a quarter of an hour, I see her clothes tossed in the hallway. That was already a bad start to what was going to be a terrible afternoon. I bit my tongue and didn’t dare to remind her about the backpack and the clothes because I was afraid of the words that might come out of my mouth, but after that, she totally overwhelmed me. That was when she decided to bake cookies in the kitchen. This girl doesn't know how to leave the surfaces clean, and just thinking about how the kitchen was going to look drove me insane, so I calmly said, as best as I could manage, that I wouldn’t allow it. Right away, she started her sirens, and I—no matter how hard I tried to project confidence, I felt horrified inside. I felt like the worst mom in the world, a cleanliness freak who won’t let her daughter breathe, and the moment she started wailing, I went to my room and slammed the door with a huge bang, and I’m embarrassed to tell you what happened. The door frame actually came off. When I saw that, I was horrified because as bad as my dad was, as angry as he was, he was never violent. I’d never seen him break something in a rage, and if I'm getting to that point, then either I need to be hospitalized, or I need to send my children into foster care, or I don't know what..."

Hannah sighed again, a long and drawn-out sigh. She cast her desperate eyes to a distant point in the room. She looked like a broken person.

After a silence that stretched on for several minutes, Hannah straightened up in her chair. "You see, this is exactly where my dilemma lies. We thought of a really good idea: there’s a program in the North that is an amazing educational framework that isn’t designated for girls from broken homes or anything like that, but for families wanting to give their daughters a higher-level education. We thought about a simple idea, to transfer her there. I tell myself that no one will understand that we chose this place out of distress, and I really think it would do Abigail good because if I can’t be a nurturing mom at home, then why not give her something truly good? Why should she continue the cycle of suffering I went through at my parents’? Let’s be brave and invest in the right place! On the other hand, I tell myself, are you really in such a bad situation that you can’t raise your daughter?!"

Hannah's eyes were once again filled with hope as she looked at me: "So what do you say? I feel like every additional day I don’t get up and make real change, it’s a catastrophe. So let's go, it’s time to grow up and face reality and understand I can’t continue this way!"

"I hear your story," I responded. "I feel and understand that you’re dealing with a difficult reality. You’re carrying so much pain, difficulty, and insecurity, and along with that, you’re also punishing yourself and grappling with feelings of guilt. I suggest we leave all the ideas for technical changes aside for now and work on what’s happening between you and Shmuel."

"Between me and Shmuel?!" Hannah looked at me in disbelief. "I told you our relationship is great. There are ups and downs, like in any couple, but Shmuel is a rare person and such a supportive husband that I have no struggle with him. Until today, he has been my emotional therapist, which is almost an impossible task considering we’ve been married for almost fifteen years and I’m a complex case… but he has always been the one who listened and solved the problems, made sure I took retreats to recharge. Shmuel is a perfect husband; there’s no point discussing our relationship. That’s not the story!" Hannah was adamant in her opinion, crossing her arms in a posture that said "no entry," every muscle tensed like preparing for battle.

"I believe you," I replied calmly. "I have no doubt that the relationship between you is as you describe. The reason I would like to open the topic, however, is this: I believe that relationships are the most profound and significant connections in life, and because of that, they are also the connection through which you can initiate much more significant changes within yourself. Thus, even though your difficulties manifest in connections with others, I believe that between you and Shmuel lies your power to reach more stable places within yourself, and consequently also to establish stability in all your relationships: whether it’s with your father, your children, or really with anyone."

Hannah didn’t give up on herself. Despite her initial resistance, she decided to trust and dive into the waters. During the process, fascinating things became clear: we saw within the relationship that developed between Shmuel and Hannah patterns of appeasement versus control, and irresponsibility versus over-responsibility, which had become fixed between them. Shmuel, who himself had not experienced an easy life, saw the weaknesses Hannah displayed as a very safe and protected emotional anchor. Shmuel experienced feelings of abandonment in his childhood, and he entered marriage with a great fear that his future wife might abandon him at any moment. Paradoxically, Hannah’s evident neediness created in him a strong sense of security that "here she is, this weak woman, depends on me because only I can support her." Thus, they essentially created an unwritten agreement of "I satisfy your emotional needs by being miserable and needy, and you fulfill my emotional needs by being the protective man willing to give your soul to take care of me."

And now I conclude with questions for reflection. Dear readers, what do you think will happen when Shmuel and Hannah become stronger?

What will happen to Shmuel when he builds trust and isn’t afraid of abandonment?

What will happen to Hannah when she connects more with herself, trusts herself more, and needs Shmuel’s soothing services less?

And what will happen to their relationship? Will it suffer? Will it deepen?

What will happen to the relationship between Hannah and her daughter Abigail?

Rabbi Aryeh Ettinger is a counselor and founder of a school for training marriage counselors.