Suppose you’re in the market for a house. You have a mental picture of the kind of place you want, along with a list of preferred features. Day after day, you trudge around behind a Realtor, checking out the options.
There are so many different parts to a house. So much that can be right… and so much that can be just plain wrong. How do you weigh one against the other? Suppose you find a house that’s mostly what you want, but is lacking in some ways. How do you judge whether or not it’s a good buy?
To help you figure it out, you bring an inspector on board. The inspector’s job is to check the place out from top to bottom, with the aim of ascertaining its overall “health.” He doesn’t concern himself with things that can easily be remedied, such as torn window screens or an aging boiler. His job is to discover, and to share with you, the potential buyer, the pluses and minuses of the house’s condition where it counts.
It would be the height of folly to reject an otherwise fine prospect because you don’t like the color of the living room walls. Obviously, that’s something you can change without too much trouble. However, if the inspector tells you that the place needs a new roof, requires an overhaul of its entire HVAC system, and has a problem with termites in the basement, that’s definitely food for thought. These are serious problems which call for serious repairs and a serious outlay of money.
If, however, the inspector declares the house fundamentally sound, you’ve got something to work with. All the smaller details which aren’t precisely to your liking can be either dealt with or put up with. If the basic picture is healthy, you’re good to go.
A person’s physical health follows a similar rule. He may be plagued by such trivial annoyances as dandruff, ingrown toenails and a tendency toward acne. She may deplore her frizzy hair or suffer from occasional heartburn. But if the doctor pronounces their vital organs to be in good shape, they can, with good justification, call themselves healthy.
To follow the analogy: When engaged in the search for a life partner, it’s useful to set ourselves up as house inspectors rather than buyers. Doctors rather than patients.
A buyer can be fickle, and a patient can be irritated by trivial complaints. But the question we should ask ourselves is whether or not a particular candidate for marriage is fundamentally
sound. Our focus ought to be on the condition at the basic level, rather than the fixable or can-be-lived-with details on the perimeter.
I’ll never forget a girl I knew long ago, who declared that she would never marry a boy who wore brown suits. Sometime later, a mutual friend informed me that she’d just run into that girl, now happily engaged and walking with her chosson who was wearing… a brown suit! That long-ago kallah was smart enough to separate the vital from the trivial. She chose a husband who had the important qualities that she was looking for, and she was willing to either put up with, or work on changing, the kind of clothes he chose to wear.
On the Same Team
They say you should never marry someone in the hope that they’ll change. That doesn’t mean that they’ll never change. It does mean that you can’t depend on it happening.
Many years ago, I knew someone who was not enjoying her marriage to a difficult man. She went to speak to a rov, who told her flatly that she couldn’t expect her husband to change. The choice lay before her: either to divorce him, or to undertake to change herself. By finding new inner strengths and different ways of coping with the things that bothered her about his personality, she could recreate their relationship to make it both more functional and more satisfying.
She decided to stay in the marriage and do the necessary personal work to help smooth away the rough edges. And she’s still there all these years later, with a healthier if not perfect marriage, enjoying plenty of nachas from their children and grandchildren.
It’s not always easy for an outsider to take a couple’s “temperature” to see if the marriage is healthy. That’s because what you see is not the whole picture. You sometimes run into couples who enjoy mock bickering in public as a way of being entertaining. Regardless of whether you approve of this mode of social behavior, what matters much more is how they treat each other when they’re out of the public eye. How they behave in private is the true barometer of the relationship.
The reverse is true, too. A couple who acts friendly and even affectionate in front of others but rips off the mask to treat each other nastily in private, is a couple that’s in trouble. It’s not the outer charade that defines the health of the relationship, but the inner reality. And only the two of them are privy to that knowledge.
Over the course of their years together, it’s only natural for the first, dazzling impression to fray around the edges. Where you once believed your partner to be a pattern of perfection, you gradually become aware of the human imperfections which he, like everyone else, contends with. Over time, he also discovers the areas where you’re lacking. These discoveries can be disillusioning, but they don’t have to be devastating. What’s called for when that happens is to separate the basics from the trivial.
If the middos are there, and the goodwill is there, you’ve got something to work with. Minor faults can be overlooked or smoothed away. Major ones require more effort. But as long as the foundations of the building are solid, your home will endure.
Someone wise once told me that a critical ingredient in a good marriage is for husband and wife to be “for” each other. They need to both be playing on the same team. They have to have each other’s backs. Then, when a disagreement crops up or a major argument erupts, on a basic level they’re still for each other.
There’s no worse feeling than approaching your own front door knowing that you’re about to enter enemy territory. Unfortunately, in marriages where the foundational level is flawed and left to flounder, this can happen. Let enough negative water flow under the bridge of the relationship, and it will start to crumble.
Your spouse, for all his shortcomings, must be on your side, and vice versa. That’s basic. So is principle that both of your middos must be kept in good shape. Like a house or car, maintenance is crucial. Even good middos can deteriorate if allowed to slide through lethargy or lack of focus. And problematic middos must certainly be noticed and weeded out.
Nobody is perfect down to every last detail. You’ll each have things to work on and areas that can stand some improvement. But at bottom, a marriage thrives when both parties, like a good house, are fundamentally sound. Then, even if there are things to be worked on (and there always are), there’s a solid basis for success.