By: Rachel Rubenstein, LCSW

Growing up in the frum community, with the halachos of tznius of both dress and the mindfulness of behavior so firmly entrenched in our every day lives, I believe we are allowed a respect and an awareness of ourselves as individuals who need to create safe spaces and boundaries that the secular world is sorely lacking. It is actually always interesting to me, being out in the world, and being given the opportunity to hear the stereotypes of people's assumptions of the purpose behind the beauty of the many laws of tznius that they believe is an act of conformity. I usually explain that the laws of modesty, family purity, becomes an act of individuality, because we are freed from our outside expectations, biases, roles, fears, and have an opportunity to express the most intimate aspects of ourselves, with our partners/spouses or the ones we are closest with, rather than expose those pieces of ourselves to the whole world. However, I have been giving a lot of thought to the distinction between the beauty of privacy, and the dysfunctions of secrets. What happens when we, either as a community, or individually, are missing pieces in how we implement the spirit of these concepts? And instead of leaving us as whole individuals , with firm, clear boundaries and sense of self, we grow up with little understanding of ourselves physically, sexually, and emotionally.

Physical, emotional, and sexual development begin at infancy but I believe that it is in the areas of physical and sexual development that we lose some of our courage and where "privacy" often becomes secrets. Being a therapist, working with sex addicts and their spouses, I am constantly confronted by the results of these secrets. Many of the male sex addicts I have worked with remember the shame and humiliation, some as young as nine, when they were found touching themselves and were told they were going to gehonim. It is usually at this point, or soon after, that masturbation became a form of self medication that escalated into other forms of addiction into adulthood. I witness these secrets even more tragically in the wives of the addicts. Women who come from frum homes, often with issues of low self esteem, unaware of their own bodies, and their emotional, and physical rights, and needs, and so despite being tormented by the addict, stay, in the abusive marriage, because they don't know they have a voice. These women, after their wedding nights, in their first few months, or year of marriage are too ashamed to ask their mothers, sisters, kallah teachers if what is happening is normal, because ultimately, they believe that sex is not something we talk about. So they suffer.

These secrets also present themselves in a different kind of client, the older frum single girl in her late twenties or thirties. All of her friends' are married with children, she is serial dating, putting in her hishtadlus, davening every day, but she is also a healthy adult, and she has emotional and physical needs that need an outlet. But she is frum, and wants to stay frum. And she feels that even thinking and feeling this way means that she has violated her faith in Hashem, so she stays quiet, and ashamed, and becomes depressed.

Recently, a client in her mid twenties came to me after she had gone to her first gynecologist appointment in her life. She was highly anxious and depressed because it was the first time she had ever been touched privately and it woke her body up. Since that time she had been having feelings and desires to explore her physical self and was convinced that she too was going to gehonim. She said "It was like my body was a secret to me my whole life." As a clinician, treating so many men and women whose secrets end up revealing themselves painfully, and often, after so much damage has already been done to themselves and others, I feel that our community needs to begin looking at alternative ways to combine the beauty of the halachos that continue to keep us safe, with the education and openess that will get us through some of the new challenges our community is facing. In my practice, when a couple with sex addiction has reached a point where there is awareness, and honest and open dialogue for the individual and the couple, they are able to reach a level of emotional and physical intimacy that I believe is a driving purpose behind the Family Purity Laws. Where as individuals we are aware of and appreciate all aspects of ourselves, and devote them to our lives, our families, and our relationships with Hashem.

Rachel Rubenstein is an LCSW, a Liscenced Clinical Social Worker with a Private Practice in Brooklyn and Monsey. She specializes in Addiction and in Trauma in addition to working with adolescents and marital therapy. She can be reached at [email protected], 917-607-1315.