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hazal tell us that a good woman has the power to transform a bad man into a good one, an ignorant am haaretz into a Rabi Akiva. In the words of the world’s wisest man: “Chachmas nashim bansah baysah” (A woman’s wisdom builds her house) (Mishlei 14:1).

But rarely do we hear much about the process and the struggles involved in building a strong husband from a weaker one.

A woman often needs every ounce of her feminine wisdom and every one of her feminine wiles to gently — or not so gently — nudge her husband toward a more perfect state. But what happens if the man you stood with under the chuppah turns out to have not just minor imperfections, but a serious psychological problem?

Many a woman in today’s instant-gratification generation simply packs out when faced with serious difficulties. “I can’t deal with this,” they say. “I was misled, and it shouldn’t be my job to fix him.” But there is the occasional giant of spirit who digs in her heels, faces the challenge squarely, and fights to build her husband and her home.

Ahuva is one such example.

Shaky Beginnings

It’s impossible not to warm immediately to Ahuva,* a friendly woman with a lively sense of humor, who answers the door in professional dress and a pair of fuzzy slippers. About fifty, only a few small lines around the hazel eyes hint at years of struggle.

As she hands a glass of water to the son who bursts through the door from camp, and sets out a cup of coffee for me, she exudes relaxed competence. The apartment, in a frum suburb of Toronto, is furnished simply but neatly, with signs of a womanly touch: needlepoints on the wall, silk flowers on the dining room table.

Having assured that her children are absorbed in various activities in another room and that a plate of cookies is on the table, she settles down to tell me her story.

“When I became a baalas teshuvah twenty years ago, there wasn’t a lot of follow-up support,” she begins meditatively. “Frum organizations, bless them, did their best to bring Torah to as many lost souls as possible. But if you didn’t work hard to maintain a connection with your teachers — and I was an independent sort who didn’t think I needed it — you could fall out of touch once you got married.”

Ahuva, originally from Chicago, discovered Yiddishkeit while in college, and was intrigued enough to spend a summer at Neve Yerushalayim in Jerusalem, a school for Jewish women interested in learning about Torah Judaism. That summer turned into two years.

Today Ahuva reflects that much of the allure Yiddishkeit held for her was its promise of a warm, stable family life. “My parents divorced when I was ten,” she says. “It wasn’t an amicable divorce, and I emotionally withdrew from both of them afterwards. I was determined that my home would be a much happier place.”

A woman in Ramat Beit Shemesh who’d often hosted Ahuva for Shabbos proposed a shidduch with Dovid, a baal teshuvah from Toronto. Dovid was tall and broad, with a philosophical bent; he’d majored in mathematics at a prestigious university before dropping out to learn Torah in Jerusalem. He had a quirky sense of humor that Ahuva enjoyed, and shared her love of books and the arts.

“He was six years older, had traveled extensively, and was far and away the most brilliant guy I’d ever met,” Ahuva says. “I was told he was one of the best learners in his yeshivah. One person hinted that he was a little eccentric, but that got passed off as a consequence of being so smart, and an older bochur.”

Everybody helped the couple pull off a simple, no-frills yeshivish wedding. They found a tiny apartment, and Ahuva, who’d studied economics and marketing, found bookkeeping work at an American yeshivah. But red flags began to unfurl even during sheva brachos.

“I picked up on a certain oddness, even at the very beginning,” Ahuva admits. “Okay, Dovid was still my brilliant, exciting new husband. But he had absolutely no inclination to get out and do anything. It went beyond being a homebody — it bordered on reclusive. It worried me, but I wanted things to be smooth, so I didn’t say anything that might rock the boat.

“One day he told me he had to go to the doctor — not the one near us, but in Tel Aviv! He realized he had to explain why he needed to schlep all the way to Tel Aviv for a regular doctor’s appointment, and after hemming and hawing, finally confessed that he took Prozac, and that doctor wrote the prescriptions.”

Ahuva bursts out laughing at the memory. “My reaction was, ‘Is that all?’ As far as I could tell, the entire world was on Prozac! I thought, what’s the big deal?”

She could live with Dovid’s Prozac-popping. The more pressing issue was parnassah: their savings were running out. They agreed that Dovid would continue learning, but also enroll in a technical training course to learn accounting.

Ahuva sighs, and stirs her coffee.

“Dovid was kind of pushed into this by a friend who sincerely wanted to help; he paid for the classes. But Dovid is simply not the accounting type. His friend also had no clue that by then ...” She shakes her head, closes her eyes for a second. “By then both of us were coming apart at the seams.”

The Twilight Zone

A tiny apartment, counting out change for bread and milk, wearing stockings until they frayed into shreds was hard enough for a young woman used to, if not luxury, at least a middle-class American lifestyle. But Ahuva was soon the mother of an infant, with barely a shekel to buy diapers and no family support beyond a strained, one-week visit from her mother, who loved the baby, but disapproved of Ahuva’s religious “fanaticism.”

Preoccupied with the early stages of new motherhood, and trying to survive their hand-to-mouth existence, Ahuva admits to slacking her monitoring of her husband. “It was all I could do to keep myself and the baby minimally cared for,” she says. “But then Dovid began having these horrible, intense anxiety attacks. He’d wake up from a dead sleep, in the middle of the night, choking and gasping for breath. I’d try to talk him through it. He’d say he felt anxious that he wasn’t learning enough, that he wouldn’t be able to finish the accounting program. Crazy ideas with no basis. I’d try to allay his anxieties with intensive reality-testing-type sessions. A few times, we stayed up the entire night in these back-and-forth discussions.”

Ahuva grimaces. “It finally came out that, in a sudden élan of independence, Dovid had decided he wanted to be medication-free, so he’d stopped the Prozac. I insisted he get back on immediately. He did, but it only made him only marginally better.”

Seeing no progress and desperate for guidance, Ahuva sought out daas Torah. With hindsight, however, she acknowledges she went about it in the wrong way. “I was still in the honeymoon stage of frumkeit,” she says. “I hadn’t learned that sometimes you have to search for the rav best equipped to understand your particular situation.”

She went to the menahel of Dovid’s yeshivah, who knew him only as a bright learner and was hard-pressed to accept that the complaints of Dovid’s still-new wife might be based in a darker reality. “All he could surmise, when I tried to communicate my husband’s anxiety and depression, was that I must not be a good enough wife,” she says.

“Do you know what he told me?” Her eyes narrow, and her voice rises in anger as she remembers. “He told me I should iron my husband’s shirts better, and start wearing lipstick!” She’s still fuming, close to twenty years later. “Believe me, if your husband is suffering from bipolar disorder, no amount of laundry starch and no amount of lipstick is going to help the tiniest bit!”

After that disastrous encounter, Ahuva decided she’d simply have to trust her own instincts. “I figured I’d just have to take things into my own hands,” she says. “I knew we’d never get through it if I waited for a miracle.”

Moving Onward and Downward

Hoping to change their luck, or at least alleviate their financial situation, Ahuva and Dovid moved to Toronto. Dovid had finished his course, and managed to find a job; Ahuva also found work in her field, though it required an hour’s commute. By now, she was expecting their second child.

Thanks to a loan from Ahuva’s father, they set themselves up with the bare minimum. Ahuva’s job was often stressful, and the commute was exhausting, but her salary helped cover the basic necessities. An acquaintance put them in contact with a pediatrician who, as a chesed, wrote Dovid’s Prozac prescriptions. “It was the wrong medication,” Ahuva says, “but it took years to figure that out.”

“Dovid’s job was an absolute disaster. His mental illness left him incapable of thinking normally. He was in another reality. He had zero self-confidence; he was unable to accomplish even simple tasks. Needless to say, before long he was summarily thrown out of his job.”

Thus began what Ahuva now thinks of as “the nightmare phase,” as her husband sunk deeper into full-fledged depression. She was pregnant, supporting the family, often working ten-hour shifts, and taking care of a one-year-old when home. Dovid, on the other hand, spent most of his days “lying on his bed half-dressed, staring at the ceiling, unable to move, and wallowing in depression.”

Ahuva was fast losing patience with a husband who, in her eyes, contributed nothing to the family except aggravation. When he got worn down by her lengthy, angry harangues, he’d make a few token efforts to look for work. “But it was a lost cause,” she says. “Who’d want him? He’d go days without bathing. He looked completely unkempt. He took my disgust as rejection and that led to even more bitterness and fighting.”

There seemed no way to stop the downward spiral. “I was in a cloud of fury twenty-four hours a day,” Ahuva says, “consumed with resentment that I had to shoulder everything — parnassah, kids, the house — while Dovid lay in bed all day. I felt I’d been duped into this marriage, that our ‘friends’ in Israel had knowingly dumped a problem bochur into my lap because I was a naive baalas teshuvah who wouldn’t ask too many questions.”

For years, she says, many people were convinced she was the one with the problem, because she always seemed so brooding and explosive. She kept what little sanity she had by confiding in a couple of close friends. They didn’t have solutions, but served as sympathetic sounding boards. Sometimes just feeling listened to was enough to calm Ahuva enough to continue dealing a little bit longer.

Turning Point

The fights and bitter atmosphere in the home became so unbearable as the years passed that Ahuva’s conversations with her friends began to center more and more around whether she should simply get a divorce. “I was so resentful; I’d think, ‘What do I need this for? He doesn’t contribute anything to this marriage; all he does is drag me down.’ Then I’d remember my own parents’ divorce, and how much it hurt me as a child, and I’d think, ‘I can’t do that to my children.’ Also, as my friends pointed out, I might not gain much —who’d want to marry a divorced baalas teshuvah with kids? All I’d be doing would be stigmatizing my kids and depriving them of a father and an intact home, as dysfunctional as it might be.”

So single motherhood wasn’t an option, but Ahuva had two others: 1) maintain the status quo, and remain miserable, or 2) do whatever it took to make the situation more bearable.

“The solution didn’t hit like a bolt of lightning,” she says, “but resulted from hours of thinking and discussion with friends.”

In retrospect, Ahuva says, the biggest leap forward, and surely the hardest, was letting go of the anger that had been her closest companion for years. Instead of focusing on her husband’s deficiencies, and wallowing in “poor-me” mode, she completely changed gears. Now she’d focus only on solutions. She chose an afternoon when she and Dovid were specifically not fighting to sit him down for a talk. Then she told him firmly:

“We have a big problem. You’re not well. Your illness is ruining our marriage. If you want to stay in this marriage, and continue to see your children, you absolutely must fulfill the following conditions.

“One: You’ll take your medication faithfully. I’ll be watching — I’ll be counting your pills. If you don’t follow through, it’s over.

“Two: You must be in therapy. I’ll go with you if you like, in fact, I prefer to be involved — I don’t need you telling a therapist everything is fine while you’re spending your days in bed.

“Next, you must do something with your time during the day. I don’t care if you volunteer at a soup kitchen, sell pencils on street corners, or sit and learn. But you must get up in the morning, bathe, get dressed, and go out and do something reasonably constructive.”

Ahuva gets up and makes us another cup of coffee, then explains what happened after her ultimatum.

“It succeeded — largely because he sensed I was desperate enough to actually leave him if he didn’t follow through,” she says. “He was terrorized into compliance. As for me, it took an iron will to be on top of his issues and juggle the family and work at the same time.”

Dovid agreed to let her help him get into therapy. “I’d be in touch with his therapist on my own, to make sure the therapist had a clear picture of everything going on at home,” she says. “I also got therapy for myself. I needed the support and the insights.”

For a while, Dovid saw a therapist several times a week, who helped identify childhood traumas that contributed to his depression. His father had abandoned the family early on, and his mother died of cancer when he was ten, leaving him to be raised by an aunt and uncle. But while gaining insight into possible sources of his depression, he wasn’t changing much. The biggest marker of progress was that he realized Prozac wasn’t working.

“We consulted a psychiatrist to evaluate medication options,” Ahava relates. “He immediately determined that Dovid had been misdiagnosed. Dovid didn’t have a simple case of depression, he said, but a form of bipolar disorder, what people used to call manic-depression. His particular form didn’t present as mania, but yoyo-ed between depression and a less-depressed state.”

The doctor started Dovid on lithium and Zoloft, gradually finding the proper dosage. The results weren’t instantaneous, but the funk began to lift. As Dovid felt more functional, he decided to pursue a different career, a sophisticated form of computer programming. “Accounting was never for him,” Ahuva says. “Computer programming was a better outlet for his mathematical and creative talents.”

They borrowed enough for a year in a fast-track professional program, from which Dovid graduated with honors. But a job wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Dovid’s low self-esteem made him a poor interviewee, and many jobs were with non-Jewish companies who looked askance at his beard and yarmulke.

To his credit, Dovid acknowledged his responsibility to contribute to the family income. He accepted low-skilled, low-paying jobs simply to ease back into the groove of a work schedule and bring in some income. At the same time, with Ahuva’s help and encouragement, he persevered in looking for a good job.

After almost a year, following an interview with a frum company, Dovid landed a real job, with a respectable salary and benefits. “When he called to tell me, he actually cried from happiness,” Ahuva says. She pauses; she still gets a lump in her throat thinking about it. “He’s held that job for many years, and the company loves him.”

As Dovid slowly climbed out of depression, the downward spiral reversed. Each baby step toward progress reinforced the next. Seeing that he was at last making a real effort to save their marriage, Ahuva relaxed and was able to be a nicer, more supportive spouse — “or at least not a shrew,” she grins. The children — by now there were four —sensed less tension in the home, and were less high-strung and combative. The more milestones Dovid achieved — completing a training course, holding down low-level jobs, then a high-level job — the better he felt about himself. “As much as psychologists talk about self-esteem and the importance of building it up in people,” Ahuva observes, ‘it was actually achieving things and overcoming one small personal challenge after another that really built up my husband’s self-esteem.”

Breathing Easy

The last ten years have been a paradise compared to their rocky beginning. “We have wonderful shalom bayis, and my husband has become the most supportive, remarkable spouse,” Ahuva says. “When I changed careers a few years ago, he took on tremendous responsibility in the home to allow me to get the training I needed. We moved, and our neighbors have no idea we were ever anything but a model frum couple. A couple of times I went to conferences, and Dovid stayed home with all the kids [there are seven now, bli ayin hara]. I came home to happy kids and a house in one piece. Even the laundry was done!”

As if to celebrate, she takes another cookie. “In the end, sticking it out was the best thing I ever did,” she declares. “I look at my life and think, ‘What would have become of me if I’d given up on my marriage and left? What would have become of my kids? Would I have even remained frum?

“I once heard somebody say, ‘Non-Jews get married and hope it’ll work out; Yidden get married and they make it work out.’ Today I look at young couples who throw in the towel after a few months, and I think, ‘Did they really give it every single ounce of hishtadlus they could muster? Did both parties take a good hard look at themselves to ask how they were contributing to the problem, and how they might contribute to the solution?’

“Yes, not everyone living with mental illness has a positive outcome; sometimes divorce is necessary, especially if a spouse’s behavior is outlandish or puts the family in danger. But in many cases, a mental illness can be treated.”

Ahuva admits that she was helped in hanging on during the rough spots through the conviction that her husband wasn’t a bad person, nor one who didn’t love his wife. The qualities that had drawn her to him in the first place were always there, even when buried under gloom. Once the illness was under control, the gloom lifted to reveal the diamond she’d glimpsed during their courtship: a kind, brilliant man with a love for Torah, who shared Ahuva’s dream of a fulfilling marriage and a joyful family life.

* Name has been changed

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Bipolar Defined

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. Symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe, and are different from the normal ups and downs that everyone experiences. Bipolar disorder symptoms can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. But bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives.

People with bipolar disorder experience unusually intense emotional states that occur in distinct periods called “mood episodes.” An overly joyful or overexcited state is called a manic episode, and an extremely sad or hopeless state is called a depressive episode. Sometimes, a mood episode includes symptoms of both mania and depression. This is called a mixed state. People with bipolar disorder also may be explosive and irritable during a mood episode. In some forms of this disease, the manic phase may not be pronounced. Bipolar disorder usually emerges first in young people between the ages of 15-25.

Bipolar disorder is not easy to spot. Some people suffer for years before they are properly diagnosed and treated. Like diabetes or heart disease, bipolar disorder is a long-term illness that must be carefully managed throughout a person’s life.

Mood-altering medications are usually used to control bipolar disorder; of these, lithium is the most consistently effective. In a study conducted by NIMH, a combination of medication and therapy was found to be most successful in stabilizing patients with bipolar disorder and maintaining their gains.

“This is a medical condition, in the same way that a thyroid condition or diabetes is a medical condition,” Ahuva emphasizes. “I wish we were at a place in the frum community where bipolar disorder could be discussed in the same way we discuss other medical issues, without shame or paranoia about shidduchim. After all, if the condition carried less of a stigma, maybe I or another friend would have recognized the symptoms earlier. And maybe — just maybe — I could have even told this story under my real name.”

Source: The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 209)

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