Anyone else struggling to find happiness in their marriage?

Join Leah with Guest Speaker Sara Chana Radcliffe as they uncover common reasons for a woman’s unhappiness in marriage from negative attitudes to painful pasts and unfortunately so much more. Ladies, join us as we discover how to strengthen our marriages and strengthen ourselves to achieve a blissfully happy marriage.

What is one of the most common things you see that makes a woman unhappy in her

marriage?

A lot of people have false images of marriages. Often, we think marriage = a happy life. This is a false premise. When we’re not happy we think something is wrong with our marriage. Others put up a good pretence in public, so we think their marriage is happy and easy. Nothing is easy, we’re put in the world with packages of challenges to work through.

How can we remove these illusions?

• The first step is realizing that other people’s marriages aren’t perfect and to grow up in the sense of comparing our husband to other husbands.
• Then we need to review the menu of what others could be struggling with and reflect on how we could potentially have it much worse.
• We all have long lists of wants, so of course he’ll fail in some of those areas. How many of us are working on our own long lists?!
• Either we should look at others and think at least I don’t have that problem or we should look at others and find comfort that others are dealing with the same issues.
• Also, realizing that any challenge we have is from Hashem and He will help us deal with it, and keeping the bigger picture in mind that the difficulties we face are there to help us in our short journey of life will help.
• We need to take our eyes off what is wrong and put them on what is right.
• Also, realizing that our spouse isn’t there to make us happy. We need to make our own happiness in life and enjoy whatever our husband adds. Interestingly, if we have made our own happiness our marriage will benefit.

What would you say to people who say: “I did not sign up for this!”?

• If we compare to others and see our suffering as unfair, we are working on a fallacy.
• For the average person, marriage, parenting, parnassa etc all present challenges. We need to get over what others have, and this will make it easier to deal with what we have.
• For the things that bother us, realizing that this is why Hashem gave him to us- to work on ourselves.

How can we elevate our negative mental attitudes?

By introspecting the internal work we have to do to accept why Hashem gave us what He gave us. The work will involve an expansion of our soul.

What advice can you give women to help them heal from their past?

A therapist might be necessary.

The attitude we have towards ourselves needs to be compassionate and wise and the adult part of us will help the child part of us. Speaking to our child self and showing it empathy will help with acceptance and reduce the bitterness we feel.

How can we get to that self-mastery?

Things hurt until we climb. Once we recognize the hurt, it won’t stop; certain things will continue to disappoint us, but eventually after we’re mad and sad, we can grieve and move on. Then we can be happy and find the good in our marriage.

From looking at people who have suffered through divorce, can you give us some

pointers we can use in our marriages?

• People often think there must be someone better so they get rid of their husbands, thinking it will solve their problem, instead of being committed to the marriage and going through the stages.
• The second guy will come with his own way of being human and failing her. We’re all flawed, the relationship will be flawed.
• Sometimes women have no choice if it’s a serious issue, and this is her challenge from Hashem she needs to accept. But in general, with most marriages, we have to realize that marriage isn’t a palace of happily ever after. We have serious work to do and it’s unavoidable.
• Focus on revealing the light.

How can we strengthen our marriages and strengthen ourselves?

• Realizing that it’s not our marriage that’ll make us happy, but to have a good life, we have to have good across the board.
• We should let our husband enhance our life but he’s not the whole story.
• We should be the best wife we can be, and know we did the best we could do with the challenges that came our way.