Our marriage was so broken. Could we heal the rift?

F

or two-and-a-half years, my shalom bayis was perfect. I asked myself all the time, How did I marry the best guy in the world? My husband was everything I’d dreamed of. He’d come home at the end of the day, ask how my day was, and really listen. He bought me presents and showered me with compliments.

When a friend complained to me what a hard adjustment marriage was, I pretended to commiserate. But secretly I dreaded the end of shanah rishonah, when my husband, a serious masmid, would go back to learning three sedarim a day, instead of spending his evenings with me.

Shanah rishonah eventually ended and soon after, we became parents to an adorable baby boy. Life was bliss.

Then my mother-in-law came to visit.

MY husband’s grandmother had been ill since my husband and I got married. Other than a short trip to the States for our wedding and sheva brachos, my mother-in-law stayed with her in England.

And then his grandmother passed away and my mother-in-law could come visit. I was so excited. My mother-in-law called us regularly to tell us how lonely she was. Now she would come stay with us for two months, and get to enjoy her grandchild, my adorable little boy. She would be so happy.

My husband’s rosh yeshivah suggested we rent my mother-in-law an apartment rather than having her stay with us for the entire two months of her visit, but I waved him off — why should she waste so much money when we had an empty bedroom? And she complained so much about being lonely, it would be good for her to be surrounded by company.

My sister-in-law warned me, “Be careful. When Mommy stayed with us, she tried to convince my husband to divorce me,” but I laughed and rolled my eyes. My clueless brother-in-law was a stark contrast to my wonderful, emotionally intelligent husband.

I shouldn’t have been so smug.

Nothing prepared me for my discovery that my mother-in-law was an emotionally unhealthy and manipulative person who would cry and scream until she got her way — and that my husband would do absolutely anything to keep her happy.

And nothing prepared me for the impact this would have on my shalom bayis.