“It doesn’t matter what you say. I can’t un-hear everything he told me"

Reuven called me as soon as he dropped Leah off after their fifth date. “I just want you to know,” he said, “that I told Leah a lot of stuff. I wanted to be honest with her.”

I cringed. Reuven had gone through a rough patch during high school — he’d had a tough time with his parents and bounced around between yeshivahs, trying to find his place. It had been many years since then, and he was settled and happy; if you met him now, you’d never know. Which was why he decided to tell her.

“I understand,” I told him. “Of course, you need to tell her.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s important to start off with complete honesty. I told her how terrible it was, how my parents didn’t understand me, how the system was killing me. I told her how angry and frustrated I was and how depressed I got. It was like drowning in a black hole of despair.”

I cringed again. “You told her that?”

“Yeah, I told her everything.”

Leah called me a few minutes later.

“This is way too much for me,” she said, a tinge of hysteria in her tone. “I feel terrible that Reuven went through all that, but he really freaked me out. I want to marry someone I can have confidence in, someone who can be there for me. Is Reuven up to that?”

“I—”

She interrupted me. “It doesn’t matter what you say. I can’t un-hear everything he told me. I don’t know if I can move ahead anymore. I need to think about it for a few days.” She hung up abruptly, upset and confused.

I called her the next evening. She sounded calmer, but just as confused. “What did you tell Reuven?”

“The truth,” I said. “That you want some time and space to think about everything he told you.”

Leah said nothing.