I returned home from Eretz Yisrael after seminary some twenty-odd years ago to a perfect storm. My family lived in a small out-of-the-way community where there were no jobs available and no suitable career-training programs. It didn’t help that I had never been a good student. My teachers didn’t think very highly of me and neither did my own parents.

I was the odd man out in my family because I was highly emotive and passionate while my parents and siblings were reserved and restrained. My father’s motto was “If someone spits on you tell yourself it’s raining.” This impassive attitude did not dovetail with my sensitive demonstrative nature and without any school or job to head out to each morning I found myself around my family all the time which was very difficult for me.

I had dreams of marrying a serious ben Torah but my parents did not think I was cut out for a kollel life. Besides my father was very cynical about and biased against people who were too frum or yeshivish. “The frummer a person becomes the less of a mensch he becomes ” he often declared. He and my mother were insistent that I date only boys who were already working.

Having nothing to do and feeling out of place in my own family I spent my days sitting and waiting for The Phone Call to come. I said Perek Shirah and Shir Hashirim every day and I did every other shidduch segulah in the book. I had to get married. It was the only way out.

My parents felt the pressure oozing from me and they quickly got to work. They weren’t looking for anyone special for me; they didn’t think a quality boy would be willing to marry me. When a shadchan called them with a yes they made some perfunctory inquiries and hurried to inform the shadchan that they were interested. It was a matter of days before I met the boy Yedidya Fuhrberg and after a few weeks of dating we were engaged.

As the cakes for the l’chayim were being arranged I thought to myself I’m signing up for life with this person and I have no idea who he is! Yedidya seemed nice enough but what did I really know about him?

The thought was fleeting though to be quickly supplanted by the euphoria of being a kallah. Throughout my engagement I was on a high. Several of my friends were engaged at the same time I was and when they confided to me that they were nervous or jittery I totally could not relate.

The only blip during my engagement was the Shabbos I spent with my chassan’s family. Until then I hadn’t noticed anything amiss with the Fuhrbergs but when I was around them for an entire Shabbos things seemed off. Yedidya’s brother came to pick me up from the airport — by himself. When he tried striking up a conversation with me in the car I found myself freezing up and feeling very uncomfortable which rarely happens to me.

The talk at the Fuhrberg Shabbos table was full of putdowns of various people and groups of frum society. At some point on Shabbos I committed a faux pas by mentioning the name of Yedidya’s uncle who was related to my brother-in-law. I didn’t realize then that Yedidya’s parents were not on speaking terms with that uncle and I couldn’t understand why there was dead silence when I mentioned his name.

At the end of that Shabbos I thought to myself We will not be having much to do with Yedidya’s family that’s for sure.

Our wedding was beautiful and I enjoyed it thoroughly. At one point the band began playing a song that I thought was very wild. When I asked about it I was told that the other side had requested it. I wasn’t sure whether to say anything so I just let it go. Toward the end of the wedding I was standing beside Yedidya as he was saying goodbye to his friends. His friends looked like a rough bunch and I remember thinking I’m going to make sure Yedidya dumps these friends.

The next morning Yedidya turned on a tape that sounded very similar to the wild song that had disturbed me at the wedding.

“Can we listen to something else?” I asked.

Yedidya chuckled. “I’ll teach you to like my music” he said. And he turned up the volume on the tape deck.

Later in the day he offered me a candy bar that looked unfamiliar. “Are you sure that’s kosher?” I asked.

“Sure” he said pointing to some tiny “K” symbol in a corner. “Whose hechsher is that?” I wondered.

He folded his arms looking very offended. “When you get married” he said “you eat whatever hechsher your husband says is okay.”

The day passed quickly too quickly for me to really think about what was going on. It was only that night at our first sheva brachos that I had time to process the events of the 24 hours since the wedding. We were sitting at a table with Yedidya’s family and they kept on quibbling among themselves. Yedidya became absorbed in a conversation with his sister-in-law and he and his family ignored me totally. As I watched them interacting with each other I thought to myself I really don’t like this family. How did I get myself into this?

Since no one was talking to me I was able to review in my mind all that had gone on between us since the wedding. And I realized much to my dismay that I had not enjoyed one moment with Yedidya. Was this the same person I had gone out with and been engaged to? He seemed so… different.

Then, another thought popped into my mind, unbidden. If you don’t like him, you can always get divorced.

I felt so horribly guilty for having this thought that I began fighting it with all my might. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and nauseated, and my head began to throb. No, no! It’s just the first day! I can’t judge Yedidya so harshly. Everything is going to be okay.

But the next day was no better. When I suggested we go out to a certain pizza shop for lunch, he nixed the idea immediately, using an expletive to describe the pizza in that particular establishment. I was shocked, and I tried to convince myself that I had heard wrong. A few minutes later, however, he used another curse word in casual conversation. That really shook me up.

It wasn’t just the foul language that disturbed me. Yedidya kept bringing up topics of conversation that made me uncomfortable, and he shared information about his family that I thought was completely out of place.

“I hate my mother,” he informed me. “I needed to get married just to get out of her house.”

Well, we had at least one thing in common: we had both gotten married to escape a miserable situation.

At sheva brachos that night, I was completely spaced out. “A typical kallah,” I overheard one of my friends telling another. “She’s way up in the clouds.”

But I was hardly a typical kallah. By the fourth day of sheva brachos, I felt so tense and anxious that I thought I was going to explode. I desperately needed to talk to someone, but how could I? We were in middle of sheva brachos, and Yedidya was always around!

My opportunity came that afternoon. Yedidya and I were both tired, so we decided to take a nap. He fell into a deep sleep right away, but I was way too agitated to fall asleep. Instead, I tiptoed out of the room, took the phone into the bathroom, and called my mother.

“Mommy,” I said, “I can’t handle this!”

“What’s the matter?” she asked in alarm.

I took a deep breath. “I can’t see myself building a Yiddishe home with this person,” I said. I described some of what had transpired between us, until my mother got the picture.

“I’m going to speak to our rav,” she said, “and we’ll see what to do about this.”

A few minutes later, while Yedidya was still sleeping, she called me back. “It’s going to be fine,” she assured me. “He just needs some hadrachah, that’s all.”

I desperately wanted to believe her, but by this point, I was so turned off by my husband that I could not imagine ever connecting with him.

When the rav called Yedidya and asked him what was going on, his response was, “Oh, Batsheva just has to loosen up. She’ll come around soon enough.”

After hearing about this exchange, my parents decided that they wanted me out of the marriage. By now, they had seen Yedidya’s family in action, and they were not impressed. They had also made more inquiries about Yedidya — too late, unfortunately — and what they heard was not very flattering.

“You just have to make it through sheva brachos, and then we’ll arrange a get,” they told me. I felt tremendously relieved.

Things weren’t quite so simple, however. My parents wanted me out of the marriage ASAP, but the rabbanim they spoke to urged them not to act hastily. A chashuve rav by the name of Rav Sternbaum was involved in the saga, and he told me, “As long as you’re in the marriage, you can always get divorced, but once you divorce, you can’t turn back.”

He advised me to stay married for six months. “I heard that your husband is a kal rosh” — that was his way of describing Yedidya — “but a person can do teshuvah, and he can turn around just as Rabi Akiva did.”

After receiving this guidance, I tried hard to settle into the marriage and give it a serious shot. Frightened by the prospect of divorce, Yedidya attempted to be on his best behavior. But his best behavior was far from good.

A favorite line of Yedidya’s was, “I’m in charge.” Any time we had a disagreement, he ended it by asserting his authority as the man of the house. I had thought that I was going to be able to change the things I hadn’t liked about Yedidya — such as who his friends were and the type of music he favored — but it turned out that he was even more determined to change the things about me that he didn’t like.

One Shabbos, Yedidya said he wanted to go for a walk. I wasn’t feeling well, so I suggested that we go a different time. “It’s good for you to walk,” he said. “Don’t be so lazy.”

When I insisted that I did not feel up to a walk, Yedidya stalked out by himself, slamming the door behind him.

Yedidya had no patience for children. He would describe his seven-year-old brother — who I thought was a cute kid — as a “dumb, dirty boy.” Not surprisingly, the boy stiffened any time Yedidya walked into the room.

A relative had given us a gift certificate to a housewares store, and we decided to use it to buy a vase for flowers. When I came home from the store with a simple glass vase, Yedidya exploded in rage. “You idiot!” he roared. “What kind of vase is that for a Shabbos table? I told you to buy a nice vase!”

When he said that, I remembered that when we had discussed the vase, I had said that I wanted to buy a plain vase, and he had said that he preferred a more elaborate one. “I forgot,” I whispered. “It was a mistake.”

Yedidya went on ranting about the vase for much of the day. At some point, I started to cry. “You sound like a little baby,” he told me.

The next day, when I told him that I was upset about how he had spoken to me, he answered, “You have no right to be upset. You’re the one who goofed.”

Is this how I’m going to be treated every time I make a mistake? I wondered.

Confused, I decided to call up Rav Sternbaum. I told him about this incident and several similar ones, and described how poorly I was being treated.

“So we’re not dealing with Rabi Akiva material,” he said. “Rabi Akiva had potential, because he had good middos. If your husband doesn’t have good middos, there’s no reason to wait the six months. You can get divorced now.”

Before going ahead with the get, we spoke to another adam gadol. He told me that when it comes to Yiddishkeit, a person can change and become a baal teshuvah, but menschlichkeit is a lot harder to acquire. If a person is coarse and vulgar — “prust” was the term he used — changing can involve many years of hard work. “It’s not fair to subject a young woman like you to so many years of suffering, on the chance that your husband might one day improve,” he said.

A month after my wedding, I had a get in hand. The word on the street was that I had gotten divorced because my husband wasn’t frum enough for me. Yet the few people who were privy to what had happened knew that the real reason for the divorce was Yedidya’s poor middos.

After the divorce, I decided to go for therapy. Not realizing how inappropriate it is for a woman to see a male therapist, I chose a top psychologist with excellent credentials and a sterling reputation. The therapy was completely ineffective, because I didn’t feel comfortable opening up to the therapist. He did not have the professionalism or sensitivity to suggest that I see a woman, and at that point, I didn’t know any better.

Living at home had been difficult before I got married; kal v’chomer after I got married. The only difference was that now I realized that marriage was not an escape valve. I would have to build a life for myself.

Since there were still no jobs available in my hometown, I began commuting two hours every day to New York, where I found a position shadowing a disabled child in a school. It was hardly an ideal job for me, but it kept me busy and gave me a social life.

If before my first, ill-fated shidduch I had embraced every segulah out there, this time I decided to forego segulos, and let the Ribbono shel Olam lead the way. I was working on being settled, not being married.

So determined was I to create a life for myself that even after a promising shidduch came up, I continued to pursue better job prospects. While I was dating this fellow, Asher — also a divorcé — I took a new job, because I did not want my future to hinge on this particular shidduch.

The first time around, I had harbored no doubts about the person I was dating. The second time, I was a nervous wreck. I enjoyed Asher’s company whenever I was with him, but after each date, I was beset with doubt and anxiety.

I went back to Rav Sternbaum, and presented him with my hesitations. Despite his impossibly busy schedule, he made it seem as though he had all the time in the world for me, and I felt that his advice was backed with a deep sense of responsibility for my well-being. The rav correctly sensed that my hesitations had no substance to them — they were purely nerves — and he encouraged me to go ahead with the shidduch.

This time, after we drank l’chayim, I felt a tremendous happiness — but it was a very different kind of happiness than I had experienced the first time. Then, I was excited just to be getting married. Now, I was happy that I was going to be marrying someone with yiras Shamayim and good middos — qualities that I hadn’t even known to look for the first time around.

One thing that I found very reassuring about Asher was that children were drawn to him. When I met his family before our engagement, his two-year-old niece toddled into the room and walked straight into his arms. This was someone I could see myself raising children with.

Still, I had no way of knowing what it would be like to live with Asher, and I was concerned that the person I would meet the day after the wedding would not be the same person I had been engaged to.

The day after the wedding, Asher kept speaking kindly to me and giving me compliments. I was not used to being complimented, because my parents had always been sparing with their praise, and I hadn’t performed well enough in school to earn any accolades from my teachers. Asher’s warm words felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and I didn’t know where to put myself. I began to experience the same physical symptoms I had felt after my first wedding. I was dizzy and nauseated, and my head was throbbing.

That afternoon, we were exhausted, and we decided to lie down. Asher fell asleep right away, while I tossed and turned, my heart racing. It was déjà vu all over again. I’m going to get divorced, I thought.

Once again, the thought terrified me. It’s going to be fine, I reassured myself. Give it more time.

Yeah, right, another voice said. That’s what you said the first time around.

My body felt so paralyzed at that point that I could barely breathe.

But then, a curious thing happened. Asher woke up and began talking to me again, and I started to relax. This was different. This was normal. There was nothing problematic about anything Asher was saying or doing — I just had to learn to appreciate him.

By the next day, all of my doubts and anxieties were gone, forever. In their place came a feeling of peace and relaxation the likes of which I had never experienced before.

One evening, a couple of weeks after the wedding, Asher said that he wanted to go for a walk. “I’m not feeling that great,” I said. “Can we go a different time?”

“Sure,” he replied. “Do you mind if I go by myself? You go lie down and rest.”

Suddenly, I wanted to join Asher. “You know what?” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

This is what marriage is supposed to be like, I thought. Two people caring about each other and wanting to do for each other.

Ironically, Asher was frummer and more yeshivish than I was; the first time around, neither my parents nor I would have considered such a shidduch. Yet his middos were so impeccable that he never imposed his chumros on me or made me feel inferior in any way. So much for frumkeit and middos being inversely proportional.

Today, I am busy marrying off my children, and my first, brief marriage is but a distant memory — one that is just close enough to remind me that the most important ingredients in a shidduch are yiras Shamayim and good middos.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 634)