It’s not his fault, it’s his character trait- well, I don’t buy that!

Join Leah as she continues Marriage Secrets with pages 299-303, and helps us to accept our husband wholeheartedly, for better or worse! It’s time to get practical and learn some mindset shifts to finally accept- and even love- our husband with all his quirks and irks!

Leah’s Points To Ponder:

• Listen in at timecode 00:44 to hear a story which will get your tears and insights flowing.
• A husband’s faults were designed to bring out the best of his wife’s character traits. (Yes ladies, this works the other way round too!)
• What we perceive as his shortcomings have a crucial purpose in this world. There are spiritual components to our marriage which we can’t understand. We need to trust that the way Hashem made our husband is exactly how is he supposed to be.
• A married couple is one neshama(soul) split into two. It’s not his test or my test, it is our test.

Viewer Questions:

Suri: Saying our husband’s faults are to help us grow kind of gets him off the hook from working on his middos (character traits). He doesn’t view my faults in this way. Is there a way to get him to feel this about me too?

Leah: This is a deep internal view of reality. If you make shifts in yourself, it will shift the dynamic. Over time you may see the results of this.

Chani: It’s alright for Miriam in your story, but our husband never had such visions. In the moment when our husband makes us angry or upset, how can we practically and wholeheartedly accept this?

Leah: They may not have had a vision, but we know that we are two halves of a soul. If you stood under the chuppa (wedding canopy); he is the right man despite his traits which may upset you. Internalizing this is crucial. When we get upset and want to push our husbands away, we need to refocus that whatever closeness we can achieve with our husband in our lifetime is the closeness we’ll have for eternity. This should help motivate us.

Chasya: My husband always tells me that this is the way Hashem (God) made him and I agreed to marry him, so I live with it. This always bothered me that he doesn’t want to work on himself. Are you saying that this is true, and I should accept it?

Leah: Two things need to happen: you need to accept him, and he needs to work on himself. But he doesn’t need to work on himself because you don’t accept him. Yes, we are in this world to perfect our middos (character traits) and grow, but a wife shouldn’t be demanding this to her husband. If necessary, it may need a Rov or third party to encourage him. Timecode 18:32 shows you how to get him on the bandwagon of growth, but only after you’ve intensely showered him with love and respect. But, often, the underlying problem is expectations of who we want our husband to be, so the best step would first be loving him as he is.

Try This At Home:

One time this week, think of one of your husband’s traits which bothers you and reflect on how you’d want him to act towards you if you had that negative trait.