I didn’t know anything about the circumstances of my second husband’s divorce when I first met him.

After that first meeting I remarked to my mother half-jokingly “I’d better know the story if I’m going to marry him.”

My first marriage had ended after a year leaving no children. Menachem had been married for longer and had a three-year-old son who was living with his ex-wife.

My mother knew only the most basic details of the split. “The problems started apparently after the baby was born. His ex-wife suffered from postpartum depression and her parents decided that her husband was to blame.”

When my parents looked into the shidduch they didn’t hear any of the spiteful rumors that Menachem’s former in-laws had spread about him. All they heard was that his former in-laws were difficult people who forced their daughter to get divorced and spread nasty rumors about their former son-in-law.

The first I heard about the vicious year-long court battle that preceded Menachem’s get was when I was married for barely a few weeks and Menachem’s sister mentioned to me that there had been a terrible story prior to the get.

When I asked Menachem about this he didn’t want to tell me anything. “It’s lashon hara Perri ” he asserted. “There’s no toeles in discussing it.”

After a few days however he saw that it was bothering me that I was in the dark so he asked a sh’eilah and was told that he could tell me briefly what had happened.

The story was terrible indeed. The beis din had granted him visitation rights every other weekend plus Yamim Tovim after his son Shimmy would reach the age of seven. But his former in-laws claimed he was mentally unstable and dangerous to the child and insisted on supervised visitation only. Menachem and his parents had refused to accept this condition both for the sake of their relationship with Shimmy and in order to clear Menachem’s name.

The case dragged through beis din and then through the courts for over a year during which time Menachem did not see Shimmy at all. When Menachem insisted on being able to see his son unsupervised as a condition for giving a get his former in-laws hired goons to assault him — in front of Shimmy. It was the talk of the town and a huge embarrassment to his in-laws who subsequently acquiesced to the beis din’s custody terms.

At that time the police told Menachem that he could file for full custody. “The mother’s compliance in this violent incident shows that she is an incompetent parent ” they told him.

But Menachem hadn’t wanted to do that. He felt that his ex Gila wasn’t the problem — her parents were the problem and he didn’t think it would be good for Shimmy to be separated from his mother. So he sufficed with a weekly visit with his son communicating with Gila exclusively through an intermediary.

Then Gila remarried a man from Canada. At that point she requested that the terms of the agreement be changed so she could leave the United States with her son and her new husband. This meant that Menachem would have to give up most of his visitation rights but he was not about to deny his ex-wife the opportunity to remarry. He agreed that she could move on condition that she send Shimmy to visit him twice a year for half of Pesach and Succos from the time he turned seven.

Menachem was not planning to have me meet Shimmy for a while after our wedding to give us time to gel as a couple but I was actually excited to meet Shimmy and I told Menachem that I wanted to see him at the first opportunity. On Pesach a month after we got married we saw Shimmy a couple of times. The first time we took him to an amusement park and the second time after Yom Tov I baked cookies with him. I took an immediate liking to Shimmy and he felt comfortable with me as well — even more comfortable than he felt with Menachem who by then was basically a stranger to him.

During the next few years we saw Shimmy a couple of times a year usually over Pesach or during the summer. Then finally Shimmy turned seven. We had a couple of children by then and we were looking forward to having Shimmy spend part of Yom Tov with our family.

But Gila said no.

“What do you mean?” we asked. “We signed an agreement that from the age of seven he’d spend half of Yom Tov with us!”

Gila was too nervous the intermediary told us. Apparently it meant nothing to her that Menachem had given up his weekly visitation rights so she could move out of the country.

When Menachem contacted the askanim who had been involved in working out the agreement, they told him, “If you want contact with your child, you’re going to have to go to beis din over this.”

Beis din authorized Menachem to go to court and get a restraining order preventing Gila from leaving the country with her son. For a full year, Gila and her family fought back in court, claiming again that Menachem was mentally unstable.

By this time I had been married to Menachem long enough to know with certainty that the claim was baseless. A psychiatric evaluation confirmed this. Still, it was painful and infuriating for me to hear the lies that were being spread about my husband.

The legal costs were prohibitive, too. Gila’s family was wealthy and did not care how much it cost to keep bringing motions in court, but Menachem’s salary could not possibly pay the court and lawyer fees. His parents went into debt to bankroll what was turning into yet another ugly and protracted legal battle.

Eventually, the askanim involved realized that Gila was totally intractable. “She’ll go to prison sooner than she’ll give in,” one of them noted. All she had to do to have the restraining order lifted was allow Shimmy to visit us, but she obviously preferred to remain stuck in the US rather than allow us one measly visit.

“Call the police,” the askanim urged Menachem. “They’ll enforce the custody agreement.”

But Menachem wouldn’t hear of that. “I won’t have the police take my son away from his mother by force,” he said. “That would be traumatic.”

Unsure how to proceed, Menachem and his father consulted with their rebbe, an adam gadol who had guided them from the beginning of the ordeal. “Drop the whole thing,” his rebbe advised. “Stop fighting with them, and let them have their way.”

“What if I miss my son?” Menachem asked in anguish.

“Have a chocolate,” the rebbe responded.

My father-in-law was sure he hadn’t heard right. “What?” he asked.

“Have a chocolate,” the rebbe repeated.

Menachem and his father understood then that the rebbe meant he should find ways to soothe himself, because he had no other option.

“But what about all the money we put into this?” my father-in-law persisted.

“Ah kapparah oif di gelt,” was the rebbe’s reply.

Gila’s family wanted to create a new agreement, and the rebbe advised Menachem to sign it without even reading it. “The agreement is worth nothing,” the rebbe explained. “They don’t keep their word in any case. Just sign the paper so you can be over with this whole parshah and get on with your life.”

The rebbe emphasized that Menachem should not be mochel his ex-wife and her family for cutting him off from his son. He wasn’t advocating that Menachem forgive and forget, only that he be pragmatic about the situation and not destroy his life fighting for something he wasn’t going to get anyway.

It was a bitter prescription, but Menachem recognized that the alternative — endless fighting — was a lot worse.

One of the things Gila’s family requested was that Menachem go down to a government office to sign some papers so that Shimmy could become a Canadian citizen. “I should take time off work and spend a morning sitting in a government office because they need documents?” he asked the rebbe indignantly.

“Yes,” the rebbe answered. “Do whatever they want.”

Menachem signed the new agreement. In return, we were allowed to be with Shimmy for one Shabbos, for seudos only; his mother would not allow him to sleep at our house. He slept at the home of Gila’s brother, who lived in our neighborhood. At his uncle’s house, he was allowed to sleep; at his father’s house, he wasn’t.

After that, the restraining order was lifted, and Gila and Shimmy returned home.

Shimmy never spent Yom Tov with us. Gila visited her parents about once a year — sometimes less often than that — and when she was with them, she would notify the askan who acted as our intermediary, and he would arrange for us to see Shimmy.

I really looked forward to Shimmy’s visits, and made sure to have a trip or a fun activity prepared each time he came. Shimmy enjoyed spending time with us, and he told us several times that he wished he could visit more often. Once, he went as far as to say that he wanted to come stay with us.

Each time he came, however, it took a while to break the ice, and by the time he felt comfortable with us and our kids, it was time for him to leave. Never did Gila bring him to us, either. We had to drive two hours each way to her parents’ house to pick him up and return him to her, which further ate into the time we had to spend with him and translated into a full day of lost work for Menachem and me.

When Menachem and I would mail gifts with letters to Shimmy, we never received any acknowledgment or response. The only way we knew they had been received was when we’d ask Shimmy, during his infrequent visits, whether he had gotten them.

The agreement stipulated that Gila should initiate contact with us so that Shimmy should have a relationship with his father, but other than the less-than-yearly visits, that never happened. No phone calls, no letters, nothing.

In keeping with the rebbe’s advice, Menachem made up his mind not to ask the other side for anything, only to take what they were willing to give. Having already gone through two miserable court battles, he wasn’t interested in getting into further altercations with these impossibly difficult people.

We were not invited to Shimmy’s bar mitzvah, and the gift we sent went unacknowledged, as always.

The next time we saw Shimmy was on Chol Hamoed Succos, about a year after his bar mitzvah. By then, we hadn’t seen or spoken to him in a year and a half, and when we brought him to our house for a visit there was a marked change in his demeanor. He was sullen and withdrawn, and barely spoke. When my kids tried talking to him, he answered in monosyllables, which made the atmosphere tense and awkward. I had prepared an elaborate lunch, but he refused to eat anything.

At first, we thought he was tired from traveling. But when I said, after lunch, that we were going out to the park, he announced, “I want to go home.”

“Shimmy,” I said, “your father and I left the kids with a babysitter this morning and drove four hours to pick you up and bring you here. The kids were really looking forward to seeing you, and we told them we’d go out to a park together. We can’t just leave now and drive you back.”

Shimmy’s lip trembled, and he looked as though he was about to cry. Seeing him like that, I thought to myself, He’s not a little kid anymore. We can’t keep him here against his will.

I handed Shimmy the phone and said, “If you want to leave, call your mother and ask her if you can take a bus back.”

The minute Shimmy got onto the phone, he burst into tears. “I want to go home,” he sobbed to his mother. “Can I take a bus?”

A few moments later, he handed me the phone. It was the first time I had actually spoken to Gila.

“It’s your turn to have him,” she said dully. “When are you planning to bring him back?”

“There’s no use counting the hours until he needs to leave,” I replied. “If he doesn’t want to be here, he might as well take a bus back now.”

Gila was not comfortable with the idea of Shimmy taking a bus, but she acquiesced after I told her that Menachem and I would wait with him at the bus stop until he boarded the bus. Shimmy did not want us to wait with him at the bus stop, however — he was looking around at the people waiting, and I could tell he was embarrassed to be seen with us — so we had to sit in the car at a distance until the bus arrived. My heart broke for Menachem.

After that incident, an idea began to percolate in my head. “Menachem,” I said, “there has to be a way for us to have better contact with Shimmy. I want to sit down with Gila and talk to her about it face-to-face.”

Menachem stiffened. “Don’t rock the boat,” he implored. “Just leave them alone.”

For years, I had gone along with this approach, even though it angered me to no end that Gila and her family were being so cruel and heartless. At this point, I realized that if nothing would be done, Menachem would lose his connection with Shimmy completely. Until now, Gila had been charged with maintaining contact between Shimmy and his father, and she had sabotaged that relationship at every opportunity. Now that Shimmy was getting older, he would be the one to decide whether he wanted a relationship with us. And it was clear, from his most recent visit, that he did not.

“If we don’t do anything,” I told Menachem, “Shimmy is going to be lost to us. And we already know that fighting doesn’t work. So what do we lose by trying to talk to them?”

Menachem, I knew, had been too hurt by Gila’s family to communicate directly and without antagonism. But why couldn’t I do it?

“They’re difficult people,” Menachem warned me. “You won’t get anywhere by talking to them.”

“On the contrary,” I replied. “The more difficult the people, the more important it is to talk to them gently and appeal to their human side. The more you fight such people, the more of their aggression you bring out.”

Menachem gave me the green light, despite his misgivings, and I called the askan who acted as the intermediary to request a meeting with Gila the next time she’d be in the country. The askan actually liked the idea.

When he called Gila to suggest it, she was opposed, but he told her that if she would refuse to meet me, she would look very bad. She agreed, reluctantly, on condition that her brother — the one who lived near us — be present.

And so it happened that Gila and I sat down together in a room. Looking at Gila, I understood what it means when they say that someone’s eyes were shooting daggers. She sat ramrod straight, her arms crossed and her jaw set. In return, I flashed her a big smile.

“I think we have the same goal in mind,” I began. “We both want the best for Shimmy, and I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s crucial for him to have a good relationship with his father. How can we work together to make this happen?”

Gila shrugged. “What can I do?” she said. “Shimmy doesn’t want to see his father anymore. He doesn’t even want to come with me to visit my family if it means he has to see you.”

“You’re right,” I said. “If he doesn’t want to see us, you shouldn’t force it.”

As soon as I said that, Gila relaxed visibly. So I wasn’t an enemy, after all. Now, she began to share her perspective on the situation. “I did everything I could to make sure Shimmy had a relationship with his father,” she said. “I called the intermediary every single time I came to visit, and I let you come get him any day you wanted!”

My jaw dropped open. It was clear that from Gila’s point of view, she had been very generous and accommodating about visitation.

“Shimmy has your phone number,” she added. “Had he wanted to call, he could have.”

Gila’s brother had stayed quiet until now, but at this point he spoke up. “You’re making a mistake,” he told Gila quietly. “A young child would not make such a phone call without a parent’s encouragement.”

Gila shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t think — I didn’t realize it was my job to force him to call you.”

“Not force,” I corrected her gently. “Encourage.”

Gila sat quietly, processing the information. At that moment, it dawned on me — she had been so busy fighting Menachem and protecting her territory that she had never even thought about how important it was for Shimmy to have a connection with his father! She had thought she was doing us a favor by allowing us to see him.

“Shimmy used to love coming to us,” I remarked. “He even told me once that he wanted to come stay with us.”

Now it was Gila’s turn to be stunned. “I… I didn’t know that,” she stammered.

I forged onward. “The question right now is why Shimmy doesn’t want to visit us. How could he want to come, if he hasn’t seen us often enough to have any real relationship?”

“Shimmy just wants to feel normal,” Gila countered. “He doesn’t want his friends to know that his stepfather isn’t his real father.”

I nodded. “He’s a teenager now,” I said. “He cares more about what his friends think than about a father and half siblings he barely knows. And we have to respect that.”

A look of alarm crossed Gila’s face. Now, she finally understood that wresting full custody had been a pyrrhic victory — and that Shimmy had been the big loser.

By the time the meeting ended, Gila and I agreed that she would do whatever she could to encourage a relationship between Shimmy and Menachem, but would not force him to have contact with us against his will.

The meeting was an eye-opener not only for Gila, but for me as well. Until then, I had thought of Gila as a horrible, shrewish, crooked woman who was trying to destroy Menachem’s relationship with Shimmy. When I met her, I saw that she was a normal and even nice person, except that she had problematic coping mechanisms — probably inherited from her parents. Just as her parents had tried to protect her by keeping her away from Menachem, she was trying to protect Shimmy by doing the same.

Fighting with her and her family in court had only reinforced the perception that Menachem was a threat. And working through intermediaries did nothing to change that perception, because it never compelled Gila to consider our side of the matter. Only when we sat down face-to-face, in a non-confrontational atmosphere, were we finally able to focus on the child without all the hurt feelings getting in the way.

Unfortunately, my meeting with Gila happened too late for anything to change significantly. Shimmy had already made up his mind that he wanted nothing to do with us, and in the few years that have passed since his last visit, we have not seen or heard from him.

Once again, we’ve been advised to lay low. Both Menachem’s rebbe and another adam gadol we’ve consulted have predicted that the day will come when Shimmy will decide, of his own accord, to seek out a relationship with us. Until then, the experts say, it is counterproductive for us to initiate any contact with him, even to send him gifts. During the sensitive adolescent years, when Shimmy’s greatest desire is to just be like his friends, the biggest gift we can give him is the illusion of normalcy that he so craves.

Menachem does not allow himself to dwell on the pain; whenever thoughts of Shimmy cross his mind, he distracts himself, as the rebbe advised. We have a beautiful family, baruch Hashem, and all we can do to make Shimmy part of that family is to daven.

I only wish I had sat down with Gila, mother to mother, years earlier, when our mutual concern for Shimmy could actually have made a difference.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 659)