How do you build a relationship as husband and wife? You start by forming the habits of a good relationship. You make time, every day, to listen to each others’ experiences, opinions, and reactions, focusing primarily on the positive.
This process begins the morning after the chasunah. You share your memories and impressions from the simcha, e.g. your nieces are so adorable, it was so wonderful that your Alter Zaidy was able to be there.
You continue to share thoughts and feelings from the events of sheva brachos, e.g. it was so nice that my aunt remembered that I like pepper steak.
Why all the emphasis on the positive? Because becoming more aware of the positive experiences in our lives makes it easier to handle the negative ones.
For those who still write thank you notes, sitting down with your new spouse and composing them together is a good exercise in feeling and expressing hakoras hatov.
As time goes by and the days become more routine, make an effort, daily, to talk about your day. Sharing things big and small builds the bond of your relationship. How bad was traffic with all that rain this morning? How did you and your chavrusa do with that Tosfos you were struggling with yesterday? What do you think of redding a shidduch between my sister and your chavrusa’s brother?
As a young married couple, you will probably have the opportunity to have some of these conversations while driving to friends’ vorts, weddings, and sheva brachos, and on the way to your parents’ homes for Shabbos and Yom Tov.
Engaging wholeheartedly in these daily conversations would be the completion of the four faceted ideal relationship between husband and wife: ahava, v’achva, v’shalom, v’rayus. Shalom Bayis means being respectful and courteous at all times. It is essential. Friendship between husband and wife is the peak of the bracha that we doven for them to attain. Friends share their lives. They celebrate together and they support each other when things do not go the way they would like them to. They don’t criticize each other when something or someone fails. They help each other to cope with and tolerate disappointment. And sometimes they just listen because sometimes that the only thing their partner needs.
That’s very nice for young couples, Rabbi Ackerman, but once the children arrive, we don’t get to go to very many simchas together, and we certainly don’t have quiet evenings at home to sit and listen and talk. So how do we keep up this bond we worked so hard to build?
You keep up the marital bond by building a parental bond. You do things to help each other. You pick up milk on the way home, move laundry from washer to the dryer, occupy the little ones so dad can learn with the bigger ones. These are the unspoken parental bonds that are in place by the time the children come because the parents spent years learning to be in synch with each other and alert to each other’s needs.
However, it is not fair and not realistic to expect every need to be anticipated by your spouse. Part of the parental bond is the confidence that you can ask for something and your request will always be treated with respect and caring even if it cannot be met.
Okay, Rabbi Ackerman, but what about when my wife and I simply disagree on some parenting matter? How does the parental bond come into play then?
Many people think that parents have to be on the same page about everything. They believe that if one parent disagrees with the other, that parent is undermining the other parent’s authority. They think that the child will get mixed messages or won’t honor his parents properly.
That’s a fallacy. It’s unrealistic and unnecessary. When parents model respectful disagreement, children learn respect. When parents model disrespect toward one another, children learn disrespect. Parents don’t always need to agree which each other. They don’t have to be “on the same page.” Disagreement is not a cause or an excuse for disrespect. It is an opportunity for respect and tolerance.
But won’t the children get mixed messages?
No. That’s an often misapplied term. When you frown and say, “Okay, go ahead,” you are sending a mixed message. Your words say the opposite of the message conveyed by the expression on your face. Simultaneous and contradictory messages like that are mixed messages. When a mother allows a child to kneel on his chair at the table when Dad isn’t eating with them, and tells the child he has to sit on the chair when Dad is at the table, that’s not a mixed message. That is a respectful difference of opinion.
Dad knows very well that Mom allows the children to kneel on their chairs when he isn’t there, and he respects her opinion to allow that. Mom respects Dad’s preference when Dad is there. And the children know that there is a different expectation for how to be at the table when Dad is there and when Dad is not there.
When it comes to your preferences, you may not always agree. When that happens, you have the opportunity to show your children that you respect each other as different and equal, as succinctly put by the Maharal, “Husband and wife are kenegdo. This means they are equals.” (Chiddushei Aggados, Yevamos 62b)
When you and your spouse are on different pages, sit down with your child and tell her. Explain what you prefer, and let your spouse explain what she prefers, and then assure your child that she’ll be told whose rules to follow if you and your spouse are taking turns.
When it comes to a child defying the spouse or showing disrespect, each spouse should advocate for the other. If your child complains about your spouse’s rules, then say, “If Abba says this is what he wants you to do, I expect you to listen.”
But don’t we have to be consistent?
Yes, be consistently respectful toward your spouse. Consistency certainly has its place. But as Emerson put it, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Model and teach your child to respect different opinions and preferences rather than believing that when there is disagreement, only one person can be right. Make sure they see that a healthy and strong parental bond allows for each parent to be an individual.