O n the day of my wedding I went to the Kosel to daven — and also to invite my friends to my wedding. I was a frequent visitor at the Kosel having done 40 consecutive days numerous times and I was friendly with all the unfortunate women there who begged for handouts. Before each of my trips to the Kosel I would prepare a handful of change which I would distribute along with some cheery words. Sure enough all of these women attended my wedding.

They weren’t the only ones who had been the recipients of my largesse. In school I was the friend of all the girls who had no friends. I was the only one who had patience to listen to girls who were intellectually slow or socially challenged and I would nod along with them and pay rapt attention even when I couldn’t understand what they were trying to say.

At home too I was the consummate giver. My parents were American baalei teshuvah who had moved to Eretz Yisrael before it was fashionable and although they were generous people who wanted their children to have whatever they needed the reality was that they didn’t have enough money to go around. I was at the younger end of the family and by the time I reached adolescence my parents were so knee-deep in debt from my siblings’ weddings that I didn’t dare ask them for anything.

Throughout my school years I worked to pay for my own expenses. I cleaned people’s houses. I babysat. I bubby-sat too earning money for sleeping at the home of an elderly woman who needed companionship at night. At the same time I was practically running my parents’ household because home management wasn’t my mother’s strong point.

I made enough money not only to bankroll my own clothing and outings but also to buy presents for my siblings and friends and give them a good time. I threw lavish birthday parties and treated my friends to trips and restaurant outings. I loved the feeling of being generous. Whatever I earned I spent.

At the age of 18 I was redt to a young man named Yerachmiel who was significantly older than me. He’d been having a hard time in shidduchim because of his severe stutter and when we met he was barely able to get a word out of his mouth.

Who’s going to marry him? I asked myself. Who but I the friend of the downtrodden the patron of the needy.

I married Yerachmiel because he had a good heart because he was intelligent — and because he needed me. My parents married off three children the year I got married and when my turn came there was not a penny left. Not only did Yerachmiel’s parents pay for the wedding but Yerachmiel — who was already working as a sofer — actually gave me money to pay for my own bridal purchases.

Right after our wedding when he saw the purchases I had made he concluded that frugality was not my strong point. Concerned that I would overspend and put us into debt he went with me to the bank to close down my bank account and arranged for my salary from my job working in a preschool to go into his bank account. He also deposited all of our wedding money in his account.

When I needed to take a bus he would give me exact change for the bus fare. Whenever it was possible to walk he would insist that I walk rather than pay for the bus. If we were outside and I said I was thirsty he would tell me “Wait till we get home to take a drink. Bottled water is a waste of money.” If I cut a generous piece of Scotch-Brite to scour my pots he would tell me I should have used a smaller piece.

One night very early on in our marriage I turned on the hot water boiler and forgot to turn it off. The next day he lectured me about how much it costs to run the boiler. “How could you be so irresponsible?” he chided. “The boiler has to be on for no more than half an hour for a shower.” From then on I turned on the boiler for no more than half an hour even though it meant cold showers most of the time.

When I complained about the cold showers he said I just liked to complain.

Yerachmiel had grown up in a home where there was little interaction between the parents, and in his mind, marriage was a convenient arrangement whereby he got his laundry done, his meals cooked, his needs met. As a chassan, he had been taught to aspire to high levels of kedushah in marriage, which he misinterpreted as a directive to minimize interaction with me. Being young and naive, I didn’t know any better than to go along with his approach, even as I felt suffocated and demoralized by the lack of connection between us.

Any affection or warmth between us was strictly one-way: me to him, as from a mother to a child. Knowing that his stutter severely affected his self-esteem, I saw it as my job to build him. I went out of my way to compliment him, to encourage him, to try to please him, to say “I love you” — even when I didn’t mean it.

All my life, I had trained myself to give to others and not expect anything in return, so I wasn’t upset with Yerachmiel for being tightfisted; I just felt dead inside because I couldn’t give the way I was used to.

The hardest thing, for me, was not being allowed to give tzedakah. Yerachmiel forbade me to give out even a shekel without his permission, which meant that when I passed a beggar in the street, or opened the door for a pauper, or met my old friends at the Kosel, I had to turn them away emptyhanded.

In the months after my wedding, I stopped talking to my friends. Hearing them chatting excitedly about their husbands, I understood that they had some close connection with their spouses that I lacked, and I couldn’t bear to have that rubbed in my face. I had always been a socialite, but now I stopped going to weddings and social events. Instead, when I came home from work each afternoon, I headed straight to bed — and stayed there until the morning, coming out briefly to put in a load of laundry, to serve Yerachmiel supper, and to do the little cleaning our apartment required.

I had my first baby a year after the wedding, and once he was born, I felt little urge to return to work. Why should I, if I wasn’t seeing my own paycheck anyway? It wasn’t as though we needed the money, since Yerachmiel was bringing in a respectable income as a sofer.

Besides, it was obvious to me that my main job was to take care of Yerachmiel. Since he stuttered, he had difficulty speaking on the phone, so I made all his phone calls. I also went with him to the bank to speak to the tellers — even though I had no access to the account — and accompanied him to any place where he required a spokesperson. Anything he needed, I jumped to do.

The rest of the time, I was horizontal. I spent my days on the couch and in bed, nursing my baby for hours, and sleeping, reading, crying, spacing out. In middle of the night, I would get up and go to the kitchen to eat. By the time my second baby was born, I had gained so much weight that I decided to see a dietician, using some money my parents had given me.

“We need to create a menu for you,” the dietician pronounced. “Let’s start with breakfast. What time do you wake up?”

“Three o’clock in the afternoon,” I mumbled.

Her eyebrows shot up. “That’s not a good sign,” she said. “You must be depressed.”

I never went back to her. I knew she was right about the depression, but I was terrified of anyone else finding out. The last thing I wanted was for people to think I was a nebach. I was the patron of the needy — I couldn’t be needy myself!

When I went out of the house, which wasn’t too often, I made sure to look happy and put-together. During my first visits to the Tipat Chalav well-baby clinic after birth, the nurse would ask me a few standard questions to determine whether I was suffering from postpartum depression: Do you cry a lot? Do you often feel hopeless? Is your husband supportive? I smiled my way through the questions and assured the nurse that everything was just fine. Even to my parents and siblings I pretended that everything was okay.

At home, however, I completely neglected myself. I didn’t get dressed unless I needed to go out. I didn’t brush my teeth. I didn’t look in the mirror.

At times, I thought about going for marriage counseling, but I had no way to pay for it. Once, in desperation, I called the head of the local tzedakah organization and described my situation. “We’ll get back to you,” he said. But he never did. And I was too embarrassed to call back.

When I went to the hospital to have my fourth baby, Yerachmiel refused to accompany me. “Call your sister to go with you,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do for you, anyway.”

“You’re the father!” I wailed. “You need to be there!”

“Why?” he retorted. “To watch you suffer?”

In the end, I went by myself. It was a long and complicated birth, and somewhere along the way, I started to think about what would happen if I were to die right now. The nurses would find me dead — and who would they tell? What would they do with me? Would anyone come to my levayah?

I needed serious physical therapy after that birth, and for six months, I was a real mess. But Yerachmiel didn’t realize that there was anything wrong with me; he thought I was just a crybaby. By this point, I realized that there was something seriously wrong with him.

I called the head of the local tzedakah organization again. “I don’t need your help anymore,” I said calmly. “I’m getting divorced.”

That shook him up. The next thing I knew, I had money from the community coffers to pay for marriage counseling. But I wasn’t interested in working on my marriage. I wanted therapy to strengthen myself so I could get divorced, which I knew was not going to be easy.

After making some inquiries, I found my way to the office of a therapist named Flora, who came highly recommended. I gave her a rundown of the dynamics in my marriage, detailing the relationship between Yerachmiel and myself and the way he had treated me all these years. “I need to build myself up so that I can get out of my marriage,” I said.

Flora nodded. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll work on empowering you.”

What she said next surprised me. “A woman’s strength is primarily in receiving,” she explained. “ . Once you’re able to receive, you’ll feel much stronger and happier. And then you’ll be able to take the steps you need to take.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, nor was I interested in working on my marriage, but I was so determined to empower myself that I was willing to do whatever she recommended, just so that I could extricate myself from Yerachmiel.

“You’re going to practice feeling needy and helpless,” she instructed. “Not in front of your husband, but by yourself.”

Flora’s approach was based on the principle that 95 percent of brain activity occurs beneath the conscious or cognitive level, and that the most effective behavioral change and emotional healing comes about not cognitively, but through accessing the subconscious via movement, massage, and visualization.

And so I — the former friend of the downtrodden and patron of the needy — practiced role-playing, in mind and body, the part of a pauper begging at the Kosel.

“Before Hashem, we are all paupers,” Flora reminded me. “When we sense how powerless we really are, we open the gateways for Hashem to provide us with what we lack. You need strength? Feel with all your being that you are helpless.”

That feeling of powerlessness was terrifying to me at first. Each time I took on a helpless pose and a needy expression on my face, I felt a desperate urge to dive into bed and shut myself off to the world. But I knew I had to build up my strength, so I followed Flora’s instructions faithfully, even as I argued with her that I am not helpless and not needy.

“We’re working on the level of the subconscious,” she reminded me. “Because you have been in giving mode for so long, you need to go to the opposite extreme and visualize yourself as completely helpless in order to achieve a healthy equilibrium, in which you can receive and give simultaneously.”

Around this time, I took the kids on a trip, and while we were out, my two-and-a-half-year-old son dehydrated. I hadn’t known he was thirsty, because unlike the other kids, he hasn’t asked for a drink. After this incident, I realized that he had difficulty expressing himself, so I took him for speech therapy.

One of the first things the speech therapist worked on with him was how to say “I want.” She took him to a toy store and practiced pointing at things and saying, “I want that.”

Watching this, I realized something — I didn’t know how to say “I want,” either! When was the last time I had asked for something for myself? Did I even know what I wanted?

From the time I was a young child, I had always wanted to be the benefactor, not the recipient. And since I knew Yerachmiel wasn’t interested in giving to me, I made sure not to ask him for anything. Oh, I would argue with him that he didn’t give me enough money, I would complain that he demanded too much of me, but when did I ever make an honest-to-goodness request?

I had always thought of Yerachmiel as hopelessly stingy. But, as Flora said, giving is a two-way street. In order to give, there has to be someone with a lack who is ready to receive. I practiced and practiced being needy and pathetic, wondering if I would see any difference in Yerachmiel — and how long it would take for me to feel strong enough to leave him.

In that regard, I was putting my best foot forward, quite literally: I started taking brisk walks around the neighborhood for an hour a day. Between the therapy and the exercise, I found myself spending less time horizontal. I also started looking more presentable and taking better care of the children and the house.

Flora explained that, actually, the time I’d spent modeling neediness and helplessness now enabled me to choose to do the opposite when appropriate. “Before you didn’t have that bechirah,” she noted. “Now you can choose when to be needy, and when to take charge.”

One day, Yerachmiel came home with a bunch of kids’ books — a present for the children. I almost fell off my chair. When had Yerachmiel ever bought a present for anyone?

And then, another day, he asked if I’d want to take a walk with him. A few days later, he offered to take me out to eat.

We had gone out to eat in the past, but the experience had invariably devolved into some sort of argument. We’d sit in the restaurant struggling to keep our voices down, our food forgotten as we hurled accusations at each other. This time, we were actually talking to other, and he even asked for my opinion a few times. “You know, you’re really smart,” he said.

I almost fainted. What had happened to him?

“Nothing happened to him,” Flora said when I recounted the conversation to her. “Something happened to you. You are more receptive, more vulnerable, more feminine. So he is able to access his ability to give, to be a man.”

“I’m not doing anything different!” I protested.

“But you are different.”

Was I?

I got my answer not long afterward.

Once, when I was heading out to my weekly appointment with Flora, I asked Yerachmiel for money for bus fare. He handed me a 20-shekel bill, as usual.

“Thank you,” I said. “And from now on, I would like to have my own money. That means I need access to our bank account, and a checkbook, and a credit card.”

I said this firmly, but gently, with the image of myself as the helpless beggar woman before my eyes.

Yerachmiel’s eyes widened, but only momentarily. “I guess we could arrange that,” he said. “But not the credit card,” he added quickly.

“The credit card can wait,” I replied. “I don’t need it right away. But I will need it sooner rather than later.” Divorce doesn’t come cheap, I thought.

The next week, I made another request. “It’s uncomfortable for me that the community is paying for my therapy,” I said. Especially since I’m getting divorced anyway. My voice softened. “I would feel better if you would pay for it.”

Once again, in my mind’s eye I was the beggar woman holding out her hand, even as my voice was confident and unwavering. Once again, Yerachmiel’s response was surprisingly positive. “I can definitely pay for part of it,” he offered.

But the biggest breakthrough was yet to come. “I need you to do something for me,” I told Yerachmiel one day.

“What is it?” he said. I think he expected me to ask him to change a lightbulb or put up a new shelf.

“I want you to go for help.”

“No way,” he said sharply. “I’m not crazy, and I don’t need help.”

I took a deep breath, and imagined myself as needy and helpless as a newborn baby. “I need you to go for help,” I said.

I had been in therapy for over a year at that point, and Yerachmiel had never shown any interest in what I was doing there. But now I thought it was important that he know.

“Do you know why I went for therapy?” I asked. “It was because I wanted to strengthen myself so that I could get divorced.”

His face went white. “W-w-what?”

“Now I feel strong enough to get divorced,” I continued. “But you know what? I also feel strong enough to stay married. But in order to do that, I need you to be the person I know you’re capable of becoming.”

I wasn’t threatening; I was beseeching. But beneath the kind words and gentle tone was the thunderous ultimatum: you get help, or I leave. I didn’t have to say it. As Flora would have said, the message was in the reception.

Yerachmiel went for help. First, he reached out to a rav in our community who helped people with shalom bayis. The rav set him straight on basic Torah hashkafah on marriage, explaining to him that a husband’s role, as defined in the kesubah, is to provide for his wife’s needs and make her happy. It was a complete paradigm shift for Yerachmiel, but he took the rav’s words seriously and implemented his specific recommendations, which made a huge difference. And when the rav referred him to a therapist, he actually agreed to go.

So much has changed in our relationship that I no longer have any reason to divorce. Looking back, I realize that on a soul level, Yerachmiel and I were actually a perfect match: he didn’t know how to give, and I didn’t know how to receive. Working on ourselves, together, we are beginning to experience the wholeness of marriage.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 666)