“It’s not something you take on your own,” I insisted.

We left it at that. But a week later, I found a blister pack of Valium inside his jacket pocket. So he decided to take the Valium after all, I thought. He didn’t want to get into another argument about it, so he didn’t tell me.

I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I figured it wasn’t worth making a fuss over.

One day, four years into our marriage, Aharon came home looking very unhappy, and told me that his longtime chavrusa had dumped him. “He wants a bigger baal kishron,” he explained glumly.

I felt a surge of sympathy for Aharon. “In Shamayim they don’t measure how much of a baal kishron you are,” I told him. “They look at all the effort you put in, and at how you show up every day, rain or shine. Who cares what your chavrusa says?”

He seemed happy with that response. A few days later he found a new chavrusa, and his mood lifted.

A few weeks later, Aharon said to me, “Devora, I have something to tell you.”

In one second, I knew what he was going to say.

“I’m on medication,” he said. “For bipolar 2.”

I was shocked — but not surprised. By the time he made the disclosure, there were enough clues in place that the diagnosis made sense. Having taken some college psychology courses, I was familiar with the basic symptoms of bipolar 2, a milder form of the disorder, and I knew that Aharon’s patterns matched the description.

I was shocked, however, to learn that he was already on medication. From before we were married. And that he had kept it a secret from me all this time.

“I have no problem with your having bipolar and being on medication,” I told him. “But I’m really upset that you were hiding this from me all these years. I thought we were so close! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Aharon looked down at his shoes. “I— I always wanted to tell you,” he said. “But I started having symptoms after we got engaged, and that’s when I was diagnosed, so I couldn’t tell you before we were engaged. At that point, my parents were advised that I shouldn’t say anything to you about it before the wedding. From the time we got married, I wanted to tell you, so I waited until I thought it was a good time.”

My eyes narrowed. “What made this a good time?”

“Well,” he said, “a few weeks ago I told you about my chavrusa dumping me, right? You reacted with so much understanding that I figured you would be able to handle this, too.”

“That was different!” I exclaimed. “Your chavrusa dumping you happened exactly that day! Bipolar is something you’ve been keeping a secret for four years!”

Aharon had nothing to say.

After this conversation, I felt as though my world had been turned upside down. How could you have been so stupid? I kept berating myself. The signs were all there. You even found one of his pills on the floor! Why didn’t you put the pieces together?

I finally understood why, during our engagement, Aharon’s parents had told my parents, out of the blue, that they would help us buy a house. And I had thought, naively, that they were proud of us. I should have known something was fishy.

A few days after the disclosure, I was still walking around in a dark cloud. Aharon couldn’t handle seeing me this way.

“Why are you so upset?” he kept asking me. “Can’t you get over it?”

“What do you mean?” I’d ask indignantly. “I just had the shock of my life! How could you not have been honest with me? How could you have been so two-faced?”

“I couldn’t be honest with you,” he’d retort. “And now you see why! I thought, after the chavrusa incident, that you’d be able to handle this information, but obviously you aren’t! So I’d have been better off not saying anything!”

At this point in the conversation I’d feel my blood pressure spiking. “The problem isn’t that I couldn’t handle the information! What I can’t handle is the fact that you thought it was okay not to tell me!”

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” he’d say, quick to apologize as always. This time, however, the apology wasn’t good enough.

Never before had we encountered a situation like this, in which we were completely stuck over an issue and going round and round in circles over it. Worst of all, I didn’t see a way out.

Ending the marriage was not even a possibility. Aharon was still a wonderful person and a great husband, not to mention the fact that we had two children. But I didn’t know how to go about continuing our relationship after this blow. Business as usual? Not quite.

Seeing how agitated I was, Aharon called his oldest brother, Shua, and asked him to come talk to me.

“I have to tell you,” Shua said, “that from the day you got married, not a day has passed that I didn’t think about this situation and feel disturbed about it. Keeping secrets goes totally against my beliefs, and I was very upset when my parents told me that you were being kept in the dark. But they consulted with experts, and this is what they were told to do.”

Hearing Shua acknowledge how disturbing the secret was made me feel a lot better. Now that my hurt was validated, I could put the situation into perspective.

Had I known about Aharon’s diagnosis, would I have broken the engagement? Very likely, I had to admit. So it was bashert that this should remain a secret, because otherwise, where would I be today? An older single, very possibly. Instead, I was happily married and had a beautiful life — even with Aharon’s condition.

Aharon hadn’t been trying to hurt me, I realized. He had simply been afraid to tell me.

“I’m ready to move on,” I told him. And I really thought I was.

For six months, I went through the motions of regular life. Except that everything Aharon did bothered me. If he was down, I was upset that he was so needy and unmotivated. If he was up, I was upset that he was focused on other areas of his life and didn’t need me. If he was stable, I found other things to complain about.

I was having my own mood swings as well. Sometimes, I felt close to Aharon, so I bent over backwards to make things better for him, while other times, I felt resentful about the whole situation, so I became emotionally distant.

I finally understood why other couples weren’t always smiling at each other and talking sweetly, the way Aharon and I had always done. When there’s pain in a relationship, nicey-nice doesn’t happen. And small things that go wrong become amplified by all the underlying hurt.

Amazing how one little secret can cause a beautiful marriage to unravel, I thought bitterly.

One day, Aharon had a routine appointment with his psychiatrist. Since I knew about his condition already, he asked me if I wanted to come. I said yes, thinking it wasn’t a big deal.

It was a big deal. Sitting in the doctor’s office and watching the doctor scribble notes and then hand over a stack of prescriptions made the full reality of mental illness hit me smack between the eyes. I left the office feeling shaky and unsteady.

When I tried explaining to Aharon how I was feeling, he frowned. “So why did you have to come with me?”

Now he was upset with me, and that really wasn’t fair. Why didn’t he understand me? Didn’t he realize how horrible it felt to have been duped for four years and then suddenly dragged into a world of mental illness?

Going to the psychiatrist made me realize that there was no way I could make this problem go away, no matter how good a wife I was. That realization caused me to feel cut off from Aharon, and barely interested in the relationship. In the days that followed, I became more and more frozen in my interactions with Aharon. He tried to thaw the atmosphere, making light conversation and attempting to keep things normal, but I was having none of it.

Eventually, I began feeling that the situation was intolerable. I can’t live like this anymore. I must do something. I need to get help.

In the past, when I had been in need of advice in other areas, I had met with a rebbetzin in my community who offered private counseling. I decided to book an appointment with her to discuss the situation.

“I need to speak with the Rebbetzin as soon as possible,” I told her secretary.

“There’s nothing available, unfortunately,” came the answer.

“What about a phone appointment?” I asked.

“Her schedule is completely full.” End of conversation.

I couldn’t believe it. I had finally reached the point where I had admitted I needed help, only to find that the door was closed in my face.

Agitated as I was, I was not about to reach out to just anyone. I wanted someone who knew me, whom I trusted and felt comfortable with. Who else could I call?

In my desperation, I decided to call the rebbetzin’s husband, the rav. Surely he would answer the phone.

It actually took me three days to get through to him. First he was busy, then he was away, then he was busy again. When he finally picked up the phone, I briefly described the situation to him, thinking that he would offer to put me in contact with his wife. He didn’t. All he said was, “It sounds like you are really hurt, and you need time to accept the situation. Give yourself time to feel better.”

When I hung up the phone, I was fuming. What was that supposed to mean, give myself time to feel better? It was half a year since I’d found out about Aharon’s condition, and things were only getting worse.

That evening, Aharon came home holding a package of candies. “I bought this for you, Devora,” he said hesitantly.

He’s trying so hard.

I looked at Aharon standing there with the candy, silently begging me for acceptance and forgiveness. And I saw someone who had shouldered a big pekel alone all the years, going to doctors and complying with his medical regimen while trying to make sure his condition didn’t affect me. All along, he had been a good husband and father, and now, he had shared his secret with me, hoping for understanding and support.

These were things I could give him. If only I was able to let go of my injured pride.

I can let myself be happy, I realized. Taking a deep breath, I held out my hand to take the candies.

“Thank you,” I said, and I smiled — for the first time in a week.

At precisely that second, the phone rang. It was the rebbetzin’s secretary. “I just got a cancellation for tomorrow,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”

At that moment, I felt Hashem’s presence palpably, right there in the room.

When I told the rebbetzin the whole story the next day, I was laughing at how desperate I had felt just a day earlier. Nothing had changed, but everything was different. Yes, Aharon and I had issues to work through, but our overall relationship was still good, and I was confident now that it would become even better.

“It’s normal to have these ups and downs after your trust has been shaken,” the Rebbetzin assured me. “Some days are like this, some days are like that. But don’t worry, eventually the pendulum will stop swinging so wildly. As the Rav told you, it takes time.

“The pain is not for nothing,” she added. “It’s what’s going to make you, and your marriage, grow. Any time you start getting upset over what happened, replace the question of lamah, why, with lemah — for what purpose. You will see, Hashem had a reason for making things happen this way.”

The Rebbetzin recommended that I go to a holistic massage therapist for a few sessions, to help me release the tension in my body and restore my emotional equilibrium.

“You need balance, Devora,” the massage therapist noted. “You try too hard to make things good. Just let yourself be, and let other people be. If you have balance, you’ll be able to ride out your husband’s ups and downs — and your own — without needing to fix everything or feeling disconnected when you can’t fix it.”

At first, I had no idea what she meant, and I thought the sessions were just some expensive quackery. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how right she was. I was so consumed with Aharon’s problem that I was no longer living my own life. Half the time, I was determined to wave his issues away with my magic wand, while half the time I was stewing in the unfairness of the situation.

In the two years since the disclosure, I have learned to be supportive, understanding, and loving no matter how Aharon is acting. If I don’t like a particular behavior, I consider it a temporary consequence of his illness and not the real him, and I resolve to raise the issue with him when his mood stabilizes (which I then do). Instead of being upset, I recognize his hardship, and I do whatever I need to do to keep myself happy, which might even be to say, “I feel hurt now and I need an hour to myself.”

This is different from the past, when I disconnected from Aharon emotionally when I felt sad or hurt and didn’t know how to crawl out of that shell. Today, I can feel connected to him even when he is down and even when I don’t get what I want, because I recognize that none of this is personal, and that our relationship transcends whatever circumstances we happen to be in.

For Aharon’s part, he has learned that mood regulation isn’t as simple as popping a pill — it requires being in touch with your emotions, being able to share those emotions, and being prepared to talk through issues rather than covering them up or quickly apologizing and moving on.

Betrayal was a hard pill to swallow. Yet it was precisely the searing pain of betrayal that forced Aharon and me to face ourselves, and each other, on a whole different plane.

Back in the days when there was no serious conflict between Aharon and me, we thought we had good marriage. Turns out, those years before the storm were only a prelude to the real work of building a deep, genuine connection born of understanding and acceptance.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 658)