Episode 58: Turning yourself into a vessel for a good marriage | With Tzipi Aharonov, M.A., who guides women toward enjoyable relationships

00:00 Speaker 1 Join me for a fascinating conversation with Tzipi Aharonov, an emotional therapist who sees couples in her clinic and helps them discover that a full, flourishing marriage is possible. And we’ll hear some fascinating things about adolescence, too. Come listen and learn. A reminder: if you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it to yourself—pass it on to your sister, your mother, a friend, a neighbor, anyone you care about. To follow me on Instagram, search for Chani Moskowitz. To follow my status or book workshops and talks on life-changing tools from Chassidus, it’s all at 050-850-5770. The intro, and then we’ll begin. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and now continuing my shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. On this podcast, we’ll meet different women who bring their shlichus into a range of fields and, through it, help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the life we were created to live is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a way of life. We’re starting right now. Hello, everyone. We’re off with another episode of Shlichus as a Way of Life, and today we’re with someone interesting. How interesting, Tzipi? I’m really curious, because I don’t know enough about what you do, and that’s a good thing. Sometimes I know and know and know, and I just pretend—like, you know, as if I already know what’s going to be said. This time I don’t. I came without notes or anything. Yes, ready for surprises. So welcome, Tzipi Aharonov.

01:38 Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. What a privilege.

01:40 Speaker 1 And it’s so nice how it came together spontaneously, and—

01:44 Speaker 2 Completely.

01:45 Speaker 1 Divine Providence and all that. So, introduce yourself.

01:49 Speaker 2 Where do I start? I’m a mother—first and foremost a mother, the most important role—to six children, boruch Hashem. I’ve been married for seventeen years. We celebrated last week—two weeks ago already. June 2017.

02:00 Speaker 1 Wait, what’s the date? One second.

02:01 Speaker 2 12 Kislev.

02:02 Speaker 1 Nice, like us. The same as us.

02:04 Speaker 2 No way, really?

02:04 Speaker 1 Ours is around 11 Menachem Av.

02:06 Speaker 2 No way! Ours too—no. So we did the 12th, 13th—

02:08 Speaker 1 Okay. Anyway—

02:10 Speaker 2 Anyway. Did it rain at your wedding too?

02:13 Speaker 1 At ours? No.

02:14 Speaker 2 Wow, what a downpour we had.

02:15 Speaker 1 Ours was pleasant.

02:16 Speaker 2 So apparently it’s not connected.

02:18 Speaker 1 Depends on the year.

02:19 Speaker 2 Wow, it was the rainiest day of the year. Oh my goodness, what a memory. Today, my shlichus in life is working with couples. I’m a couples therapist, and I run groups and workshops for women on all aspects of relationships. I—wow, where do I start? But really, over the years—I’ve been in emotional therapy for twelve years now, and all that. So I also get to run workshops for teenage girls on adolescence and personal development and so on. Basically—

02:47 Speaker 1 Everything, everything emotional.

02:49 Speaker 2 Emotions, development, and relationships.

02:51 Speaker 1 Wait, you said twelve years, and you’ve been married seventeen years. There’s a five-year gap there for me.

02:57 Speaker 2 What was I doing then?

02:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:59 Speaker 2 First of all, to get to the point where you can treat people and be there with them, I think that takes maturity. You can’t do it from the very beginning. But I started out on the usual path.

03:08 Speaker 1 Yes, no, I’m curious what you did before you got there.

03:09 Speaker 2 Right. So I started out on that path: I was a teacher, and pretty quickly I felt that I wanted to make a change. But there was a particular stage in my life, and looking back, I don’t think I realized how much it affected me. It was really as if the profession chose me. There was a period when I had my first children one after another. Three children, the oldest three and a half, and I was a teacher, with so much on my shoulders, and—

03:39 Speaker 1 And diapers.

03:40 Speaker 2 Diapers. I’m sure a lot of women listening can relate. Sometimes I work with couples and see them at that stage, and I want to pause and tell them, “Listen, it’s a stage. It’s intense, but it does eventually pass.” But I found myself feeling so, so overwhelmed. You don’t even have time to build your marriage, because very quickly I was pregnant and had a baby. I mean, I’d only just met my husband, and now I was supposed to build a marriage with him. I really didn’t know how. Let’s put it that way: I didn’t know how. Then the children came, everything was intense, and at a certain point I found myself searching for something. This actually makes me emotional, because it’s something I really haven’t shared. Yes—

04:25 Speaker 1 Like you were drowning in the sea of—

04:28 Speaker 2 I was drowning.

04:28 Speaker 1 The exhausting routine.

04:29 Speaker 2 And it took me to some very difficult places. Maybe the path I’d chosen wasn’t right, and maybe I wanted freedom. Maybe I should move to Tel Aviv and make sweeping changes, and that would give me my freedom. I was really in that place of searching, feeling that I couldn’t cope with this reality. It was hard for me. And then—I don’t know, I found the strength. One day I came to my husband and said, “Listen, I want to study therapy.” And... boruch Hashem, he was so... And think about it: three children, money—everything was about just getting by. And he said, “Go. We’ll manage. It’ll be okay.”

05:07 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:08 Speaker 1 Where did that sudden realization come from—that this might be what would help you?

05:12 Speaker 2 I—

05:13 Speaker 1 Rather than running away to Tel Aviv, for example. First of all, you’ve just given so many women permission to feel okay about—

05:19 Speaker 2 That thought.

05:20 Speaker 1 Those thoughts and—

05:21 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

05:22 Speaker 1 I’m trying to connect with what it was like for me at that time too. You’re looking for the formula. Something here isn’t working.

05:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:32 Speaker 1 Work, children, marriage, life, the house, laundry.

05:35 Speaker 2 Everything, all at once.

05:37 Speaker 1 There’s no room for it all. It’s just...

05:38 Speaker 2 And you’re one person. You want to succeed on every front.

05:42 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:42 Speaker 2 So I think—first of all, I really did think about Tel Aviv. I was also terribly afraid. It was always there: maybe you should do it. But there were also things I didn’t want. I mean, I didn’t really want that.

05:52 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:53 Speaker 2 And there was a part of me that knew the truth, deep down. Looking back now, I understand that it was somewhere I wanted to escape to—as though that was where I’d find my freedom. What freedom, right? I can say that today. But back then, I saw it as a possible solution.

06:07 Speaker 1 We got married young. It hits you all at once.

06:10 Speaker 2 We really didn’t understand—

06:12 Speaker 1 Anything.

06:12 Speaker 2 Anything about life. But I think there’s beauty in that too, because we also grow up together—well, not just us women. He and I grew up together and built ourselves together, and there’s beauty in that. But when you’re going through the journey and the difficulties, come on, sometimes it’s really challenging. So I think I found myself not liking my profession and not managing well enough, and I thought that maybe if I changed that, I could see whether things worked better for me. It was a thought that crossed my mind.

06:38 Speaker 1 Oh, I thought you wanted to study therapy for yourself—to work on yourself. I mean, to go through a process.

06:45 Speaker 2 Oh, no. I didn’t really know what it meant at all. No, I thought I’d find something I liked more—

06:52 Speaker 1 I see.

06:52 Speaker 2 Something that would feel better for me. And yes, I’d always been curious about connections between people. And I always felt that people came and shared things with me. You know how there are girls other girls come to and confide in, and they love listening—

07:04 Speaker 1 People are drawn to them.

07:05 Speaker 2 Yes, I was often that person. So I thought maybe it could suit me. I had no idea what it involved. I went, and of course my husband supported me and encouraged me. I remember telling him, “We’ll stop having someone come to clean the house so we’ll have the money for the therapy.” Because I want to pause here for a second. Sometimes women tell me, “I can’t. It costs so much money. How can I start studying something now?” I say that, in the end, if you want something, everything somehow falls into place around that desire.

07:33 Speaker 1 Absolutely. The desire leads the way.

07:34 Speaker 2 Exactly. And especially when it’s a good desire, there’s help from Heaven. So I started studying, and then after half a year—

07:42 Speaker 1 What did you study?

07:43 Speaker 2 I studied psychodrama therapy. Therapy. Overall, I completed lots of hours of training; it takes work. It’s a journey, really a journey. During the first six months, I said, “Okay, this isn’t at all what I had in mind.” I went to the person in charge and said, “I want to quit. It’s too much for me.” Because suddenly you bring everything to the surface. I had come to change careers, and suddenly there were my relationships with my parents, my relationship with myself, experiences from the past. I came home crying every day.

08:09 Speaker 1 Everything rises to the surface. Wow.

08:13 Speaker 2 And she said to me, “Listen, you’ve already paid for this year. Finish the year. [unclear]” I took her advice. I said, “Fine, another half a year, I’ll finish out this year, and that’s it.” And the rest is history. Things fell into place, and I started treating people and studying. Later I also studied couples and family therapy, and today I’m also an emotional therapist, because that’s my profession. I also expanded my qualifications to include couples therapy using the differentiation approach.

08:44 Speaker 1 Right. What is this differentiation approach? It sounds like a code word when you say it, but—

08:49 Speaker 2 I’ll explain—

08:50 Speaker 1 Is it a method you study, or did you develop it?

08:56 Speaker 2 I didn’t develop it. I wish. Though I had a feeling you might think that.

09:00 Speaker 1 As far as I’m concerned, I’m giving you the—

09:03 Speaker 2 Thanks for the credit, but no, absolutely not.

09:05 Speaker 1 Okay.

09:05 Speaker 2 In the therapy world there are lots of approaches. There’s NLP, there’s CBT, and within psychotherapy itself there are even more sub-approaches and styles of working. There’s the dynamic approach—there are all sorts of approaches. One approach that I really see as a method in its own right is differentiation. I studied it, and I’ve continued studying it for years. It’s a little hard to sum up in one sentence, but this approach really shines a spotlight inward. I truly feel it connects to Chassidus, because Chassidus is always asking us to examine ourselves, to work on our character traits.

09:42 Speaker 1 Working on ourselves.

09:43 Speaker 2 Not always projecting things outward: “I’m having a hard time because my parents didn’t give me enough. I’m having a hard time because my friend just said something to me.” No, no, no. You create the reality you live in.

09:58 Speaker 1 Completely.

09:59 Speaker 2 And when I look at what I went through, the experience that changed my life, I wasn’t feeling good, and it all showed up on the outside. I wasn’t succeeding; I wasn’t fully present in my marriage or at work. Once I started asking myself more questions, my life began to fall into place accordingly, and my sense of joy changed too. So differentiation keeps asking a person to look inward, which, to me, is Chassidus.

10:25 Speaker 1 To come back to myself.

10:26 Speaker 2 To come back to myself, to my relationship with myself. That’s what lets me connect with the people around me. Take marriage for a moment. If I keep saying, if I’m obsessed with my husband changing and helping me more, then we’ll have a good marriage. If my husband comes home early and is a good father to the children, then we’ll have a good marriage. When I’m obsessed with him changing, I’m constantly fixated on that goal. Instead, I could focus for a moment on my own part in the process: where I need to let go, where I need to set a boundary, what I need to do, and so on. When I keep coming back to myself, I let go of him for a moment, and then I also meet him in a different light. I’m no longer so focused on him. I can understand what’s happening between us, what’s happening in the relationship. Did I manage to explain it?

11:16 Speaker 1 Yes. Thoughts are coming up for me because I’m very immersed in the world of Chassidus, so this feels very obvious to me. I’m trying to understand what the other methods say. Are you supposed to wait for your husband to change?

11:25 Speaker 2 No. There are—

11:26 Speaker 1 I mean, say—okay, yes.

11:29 Speaker 2 So there are many approaches. What do they say? A couple comes to therapy, and let’s say the wife wants her husband to help more around the house. She wants him to pamper her, and he has things he wants from her too. So what’s the big deal? Do it. Come on, do it. Meet her halfway.

11:45 Speaker 1 So it’s an attempt to create some kind of balance.

11:47 Speaker 2 To create balance, exactly. To create balance so that both of you feel good. You give something up, make yourself a little smaller; you do the same, so you can both be comfortable with the gap between what you want and what you actually have. Differentiation says no. There’s a gap. Now figure out how you deal with that gap.

12:03 Speaker 1 So do people come for differentiation work on their own, or do they come as a couple and each get their own personal homework?

12:09 Speaker 2 Differentiation is personal first, and that’s what creates the togetherness. Exactly as you said.

12:15 Speaker 1 Wait, so does each person come separately, or—

12:18 Speaker 2 Some couples come together. But I’ve found that this work can happen even when the woman makes a hundred percent of the change, because it isn’t fifty percent him and fifty percent her. Each person brings their own hundred percent. Now, a hundred percent means—let’s use a practical example so this makes sense. A couple comes to therapy. The wife is constantly frustrated with her husband because he comes home—like I said, these are such common examples—because he doesn’t listen to her, because he doesn’t help enough. Women have so many examples of things they’re deeply frustrated about.

12:55 Speaker 1 You’re like the stand-up comedians. They always make jokes about men and women because it’s the same for everyone.

13:00 Speaker 2 But honestly, yes, because we all feel that he isn’t enough—no, he isn’t good enough, and so on. And she really is focused on him all the time. Then, through the process she goes through, she suddenly realizes that when she asks in that way, first of all she makes him feel guilty, and then he pulls away from her. I’ll explain in a moment why this is such an issue for men, but I just want to give the example. And suddenly she realizes that she’s very, very dependent on him and projects everything that happens to her onto him. As she learns to pause and deal with her own feelings, instead of always thinking he has to be—sometimes we women become the educators or the commanders.

13:43 Speaker 1 The renovators.

13:44 Speaker 2 The renovators.

13:45 Speaker 1 Of course.

13:45 Speaker 2 What do you mean by “renovators”? Wait.

13:46 Speaker 1 We’re the best at fixing our husbands and—

13:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

13:50 Speaker 1 The children, okay, but—

13:52 Speaker 2 The husband too. And then a woman will say, “I have three children, plus one more child.”

13:57 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

13:58 Speaker 2 “I haven’t finished raising him yet.”

13:59 Speaker 1 Those are already jokes.

14:00 Speaker 2 Right. And then—

14:02 Speaker 1 Because it’s so common, really.

14:03 Speaker 2 Yes. And once she understands that she’s responsible for many of these things, she lets go of that obsessive need for him to change and starts changing herself. Then her world changes, the relationship changes. Suddenly he can come home and she smiles, and she doesn’t mind giving him ten minutes before he joins her.

14:22 Speaker 1 Are you sure this isn’t from Chassidus?

14:24 Speaker 2 That’s exactly why I—

14:25 Speaker 1 Where do you actually study this?

14:27 Speaker 2 It’s amazing, because first of all, I didn’t study it—I mean, I studied it in an open setting. Yes.

14:34 Speaker 1 Yes.

14:34 Speaker 2 But from the moment I discovered this world, I embraced it and never let go. Today, in my practice, this is how I work. I work only with this approach, though of course I use therapeutic tools and everything I’ve studied. I also studied trauma therapy and various other things along the way. But this approach of looking inward brought the whole world of therapy together for me, because that’s what Chassidus is about all the time: working on yourself. Really.

14:59 Speaker 1 Beyond working on yourself, there’s also—

15:01 Speaker 2 It spoke to me.

15:02 Speaker 1 The most basic idea of the G-dly soul and the animal soul. We understand that first about ourselves, and then about our spouse. Because if my spouse has a G-dly soul, then first and foremost, he has a G-dly soul. Hold on—let’s show him respect. And second, he also has an animal soul, so not every wrong choice he makes should bring me crashing down. I make wrong choices too.

15:21 Speaker 2 Right.

15:21 Speaker 1 That’s why he came into the world. Each of us came into the world with our own work to do. And even more so in Chassidus: those things about our spouse that we see as shortcomings, that set things off inside us—that’s my work in this world. After all, we got married through hashgachah pratis, and each of us received our own set of things to work on through our spouse.

15:42 Speaker 2 Right.

15:42 Speaker 1 The areas where they need to work on themselves.

15:44 Speaker 2 What happens is, we meet someone, we go out with a young man, and something about him lights us up. Something intrigues us, and it’s precisely what we don’t have. And then we—

15:54 Speaker 1 That sense that he completes you, which later—

15:56 Speaker 2 And then later that thing that completes you becomes, “Wow, I was so drawn to how sensitive he is,” or “I was so drawn to how he—”

16:03 Speaker 1 “So why is he so sensitive?”

16:04 Speaker 2 Yes! “He should just make a decision and do something already.”

16:08 Speaker 1 That’s great.

16:08 Speaker 2 “He should write the…” And I think—I truly believe, and I can say this about myself too—that the greatest growth can happen in a marriage. But it can be growth or it can be getting stuck.

16:20 Speaker 1 Yes, it can go either way.

16:21 Speaker 2 Because if people are constantly caught in that loop, fixated on each other changing—and husbands have their side of it too. We’re women, so I’m talking about the wife’s frustration, but he has his response as well. Then they just keep circling around those gaps between what they have and what they want.

16:41 Speaker 1 Yes.

16:41 Speaker 2 I want it this way, but it doesn’t happen. I get angry, so he pulls away from me. It’s like a cycle that never ends, and not only does it not end, it keeps growing. And once you get past that stage and I truly understand that this is my lesson and it’s not about him at all—it’s me. I need to do that homework, like you said.

17:01 Speaker 1 Yes.

17:01 Speaker 2 So I just sit down and do it. Do the homework. Sit down.

17:05 Speaker 1 Yes.

17:05 Speaker 2 Let’s make this a little more practical.

17:06 Speaker 1 That itself... Exactly. I’d be interested in an example, a really classic one that, let’s say, applies to eighty percent of the women listening, so I can understand how this process actually works.

17:19 Speaker 2 Help me understand exactly what you mean. A process of, um—

17:21 Speaker 1 I mean—

17:21 Speaker 2 Understanding.

17:21 Speaker 1 Give us something from the clinic, so to speak.

17:24 Speaker 2 Okay, so—

17:25 Speaker 1 Something common.

17:26 Speaker 2 I always say that... Well, not always. It’s not just me who says this, but there’s a process a couple needs to go through to really reach a good relationship, and the foundation of it is actually boundaries. Wait, did something happen?

17:45 Speaker 1 No, no, no.

17:46 Speaker 2 Why? Oh, okay.

17:47 Speaker 1 Maybe turn up the...

17:48 Speaker 2 No, suddenly I couldn’t hear you.

17:49 Speaker 1 One second. There.

17:56 Speaker 2 So it’s actually boundaries. Which might sound strange. Why boundaries in a relationship?

18:02 Speaker 1 Yes, we usually learn about that in connection with raising children.

18:04 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. Why boundaries? But let me explain what I mean. When a man and woman get married, they’re very, very close to each other, and often their lives become very intertwined. So at the first stage, you need—not to separate them so they’ll be apart—but to give each person a moment to know where their own boundaries are. Because what often happens? Frustration. A woman, for example, takes on a great deal, puts a lot on herself, really wants to do everything right. She doesn’t set a limit for herself, and then she gets frustrated. Why aren’t you helping me? Why aren’t you doing anything? Or her husband does things that hurt her. Say, the way he speaks hurts her, and she stays quiet.

18:51 Speaker 1 So it’s the other person’s lack of boundaries that’s the problem that gets us, in a way.

18:58 Speaker 2 Yes, but the other person doesn’t know he’s crossed a boundary. Just as a woman might not notice that she’s crossing her own boundaries. She does and does and does, without stopping, or her husband keeps acting the same way. For example, he wants a meal ready when he gets home. Okay. She wants to be a good wife, but she can’t manage it because she’s been with the children all day. Then he comes home expecting it. From his point of view, why not? And she feels bad and gets angry with him. Don’t you understand me? Don’t you realize I’ve been running around the whole time? How can you even expect that of me?

19:40 Speaker 1 And where’s the missing boundary here?

19:41 Speaker 2 The missing boundary is saying: “I’m sorry. I’ve been working all afternoon. I can’t do it. It puts me under pressure.” Take a moment and listen to yourself. Say it. Say it. Because he can’t guess. As women, we sometimes have this expectation: “I wanted him to buy me that piece of jewelry.” No, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t kn—

20:00 Speaker 1 So the boundary is really about making it clear.

20:04 Speaker 2 Putting myself forward, showing who I am. Where is my boundary?

20:07 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

20:08 Speaker 2 At what point do I start getting hurt?

20:10 Speaker 1 So first I need to understand that for myself.

20:13 Speaker 2 Yes, and then—

20:14 Speaker 1 Know how to communicate it.

20:15 Speaker 2 To make it clear. Now, I’m not setting a boundary for him. I’m not telling him, “Don’t ask me.” I’m not his educator. But I am saying what’s true for me. What is a boundary? A boundary is revealing who I am. I say that something doesn’t work for me; I make that known. Now, if a woman stays quiet, she keeps it inside. She does feel where her boundaries are—she’ll be upset, or if she’s very eager to please, she’ll keep taking on more and more. Eventually it will blow up. That frustration has to go somewhere; it weighs on her.

20:51 Speaker 1 Of course, we keep score. What else?

20:53 Speaker 2 Exactly, and it gets recorded again and again and again. So then it blows up, and that’s a whole other thing. It’s hard. But if she says from the outset, “Wait, there’s something here I can’t manage,” then she can say it. She’s constantly busy with the children, without a moment’s rest. Stop for a second and say, “I need a short break. I can get a babysitter.” We have this tendency to feel sorry for ourselves over how much we’ve done and done.

21:22 Speaker 1 Absolutely. It’s our sport.

21:24 Speaker 2 It gives us a sort of drive. Who can manage to—

21:27 Speaker 1 Who has it worse.

21:28 Speaker 2 Who has it worse.

21:28 Speaker 1 Who works harder, who does more, who gets the least sleep at night.

21:33 Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. I say, let’s have a different competition: who allowed herself to rest?

21:37 Speaker 1 Oh my.

21:38 Speaker 2 Who allowed herself to feel that she doesn’t have to push herself to those extremes? Now, that’s in the context of a couple. But often it can go as far as actual disrespect. If a woman’s husband belittles her or speaks to her unkindly, and she doesn’t stop it, it will happen again. So boundaries give us security. Why? Boundaries in general give us security. And a woman who doesn’t know how to set them... I recently set up a sort of WhatsApp group where I send out videos and exercises every day. One of the topics was boundaries and people-pleasing. Listen, that topic got the strongest response of any of them, and it surprised me. It showed me how hard this issue is for us.

22:25 Speaker 1 What’s hard for us, really, is setting boundaries.

22:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

22:28 Speaker 1 Both with regard to what others do to us and with regard to what we—

22:32 Speaker 2 Do to ourselves. Yes.

22:33 Speaker 1 For example, it’s hard for me to limit my working hours. It’s hard for me to set limits on how others treat me.

22:38 Speaker 2 Exactly.

22:40 Speaker 1 So it’s really a matter of—I’m trying to understand the term “boundary.” To me, it sounds like it’s about moderation. Though how people speak to me really is a boundary. Meaning, you don’t speak to me that way.

22:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

22:50 Speaker 1 That’s the line. But work and things like that are more about moderation, aren’t they? And priorities.

22:55 Speaker 2 That calls for more careful listening to yourself. But I’ll give an example here too—well, wait, you can decide afterward whether it fits.

23:04 Speaker 1 I’ll give an example.

23:05 Speaker 2 An example.

23:06 Speaker 1 Sounds interesting.

23:08 Speaker 2 A woman who came for treatment said that once, in a fit of anger, her husband threatened her in a way that frightened her. She said, “I’m not staying,” got up and left. She said it never happened again. But when he belittled her and spoke to her unkindly, she didn’t stop it. Because that’s a more subtle boundary, and she didn’t feel secure enough to say, “Absolutely not. That’s not happening. I’m not staying here.” If it had been just as clear to her that he couldn’t speak to her disrespectfully, unkindly or hurtfully, that would have stopped too.

23:50 Speaker 1 You’re saying that when the boundary is clear to us—

23:52 Speaker 2 It comes across to the other person. Sometimes I don’t even need to say it. Just as it was clear to her that he couldn’t threaten her or raise a hand against her, it should also be clear that no one speaks to me disrespectfully. Now, why is it hard for us to set boundaries? Because we have certain tendencies. Two things. First, we want to be good. We want people to love us, to do the right thing, to avoid conflict, not to make a fuss. What does a mother—

24:17 Speaker 1 Everything’s fine.

24:18 Speaker 2 Everything’s fine. What does a mother say at the end of the day? “The kids were calm, everything was fine, everything went smoothly.” Where do we come alive? In conflicts. Incidentally, those conflicts also give us energy.

24:30 Speaker 1 They create stress.

24:32 Speaker 2 No kidding. Otherwise everything’s boring. Where’s the action? So there’s the part of us that wants everything to be okay, and there’s also the part that’s afraid of being left alone, because if I set a boundary, maybe people will leave me.

24:47 Speaker 1 Maybe they won’t accept it.

24:48 Speaker 2 Maybe they won’t accept it.

24:50 Speaker 1 I wanted to ask where you draw a distinction for cases where a boundary doesn’t help, or didn’t help, or wasn’t set in time. I mean, I tend to believe there are cases of abuse where it won’t matter how many times a woman says, “You don’t speak to me that way.” It won’t actually help her.

25:08 Speaker 2 I—

25:08 Speaker 1 And why am I saying that? Because it sounds to me as though this could, in a way, lead a woman to blame herself: “I don’t set boundaries, and that’s why I’m experiencing abuse.” Where’s the line, you know, between “I can change this; it’s in my hands,” and recognizing that the situation isn’t okay and needs a different kind of intervention?

25:30 Speaker 2 So first of all, I really don’t—this isn’t about blame. We’re never to blame, right? We just want to see where we can do better. But there really are extreme cases where a person has no boundaries. No matter what you say, even if you call the police when necessary or do everything you can, it still won’t change. And sometimes, in an extreme case like that, what do you do when someone won’t respect a boundary? You have to leave. But, you know, in most cases, when a woman... Most people fall within a reasonable range. You can work with them; they want to do good, and they share some desire to make the marriage work. That’s the vast majority of people. And there, a woman really does have a lot of room to stand up for herself and say something. And by the way, a husband does too, when it comes to the things that she...

26:30 Speaker 1 I think this is a podcast husbands should hear too.

26:32 Speaker 2 Absolutely. It’s really the same—

26:33 Speaker 1 We’re all for that.

26:35 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s really the same for him. He’s allowed to say, “Listen, I don’t—I don’t want you to... When I come home, don’t yell at me. I need a moment to...” That’s okay. He has his boundaries too. But there really are cases where there’s nothing you can do. Still, I do find that women are more afraid to set boundaries. I see it as early as adolescence. I mentioned that I run workshops, and already there—

27:01 Speaker 1 Interesting.

27:02 Speaker 2 For teenage girls too, it’s an issue. How do I tell my friend, when she asks me for something, that I know it doesn’t suit me and I don’t want to do it, but I feel uncomfortable saying no? I don’t want to stand out. I don’t want to be left out. I want to be part of... So I’ll do it, even when it doesn’t suit me, even when she’s taking advantage of me or I’m just trying to please her. I had a conversation about exactly this, and all the girls said, “But what do I do if I’m afraid?” I met with a group of teenage girls today, and the subject of boundaries came up. One of them said, “But what do I do if I’m afraid? I know I need to do it, but I’m afraid.” So I told her that what she’s afraid of is how it will actually go. Just think for a moment about how you’ll feel—

27:48 Speaker 1 Imagining it is worse—

27:49 Speaker 2 Exactly. Usually, people will really respect it if we do it pleasantly and without blaming them. I don’t come at them with, “Don’t come near me, don’t...” I talk about myself, about where I’m coming from, and it’s almost always accepted. And if we look at the people around us, who do we respect more? People with opinions and boundaries. Not people who go overboard about everything, of course, but people who know how to handle this.

28:18 Speaker 1 Yes, people who are able to say, “I think differently. I do things differently.”

28:22 Speaker 2 Exactly.

28:23 Speaker 1 Yes, but now that you’re talking about adolescence and I’m thinking of that example, I suddenly understand why it really is hard. First of all, it’s a group, not a couple.

28:30 Speaker 2 Of course.

28:31 Speaker 1 A girl who doesn’t go along with the social rules, so to speak, can be rejected. And I’m realizing how important these conversations really are, because once the whole class hears it, maybe it suddenly becomes okay to do it.

28:46 Speaker 2 Absolutely. And I go further than that. I tell them, “Listen, you have to know how to handle it. There are things you don’t need to insist on.” Say they want to go somewhere and you don’t mind, or they’re choosing a color for the sweater. Okay, they chose a color I didn’t want.

29:07 Speaker 1 Though in eighth grade, choosing a color for the sweater is about as big as choosing a spouse.

29:13 Speaker 2 A spouse.

29:14 Speaker 1 No, seriously. And what color the print will be.

29:17 Speaker 2 What shape it will be and what it will say. So I tell them that there are two situations I want them to consider: things where not setting a boundary will hurt you, and things where you can just let it go. It’s okay that your opinion didn’t win out. You said what you thought. Don’t hide it; don’t stay silent.

29:33 Speaker 1 I don’t think you’re born with it. It’s a bit of tact, a bit of social skill. You see people who have it.

29:41 Speaker 2 Right.

29:42 Speaker 1 But like anything else, even if I wasn’t born with it, I can learn it.

29:46 Speaker 2 Yes. It’s confidence. I think it’s very connected to self-confidence. A woman who has resilience and confidence isn’t afraid, because okay, she might be left on her own for a moment. Let’s take it to the extreme for a second.

29:59 Speaker 1 It won’t crush her, because she still has herself.

30:01 Speaker 2 Exactly. So she’s okay. So the other person doesn’t accept her opinion. What happens?

30:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

30:07 Speaker 2 So she can take a breath and live with that.

30:08 Speaker 1 When you don’t have that solid sense of self-worth, and all you think about is, “What do they think of me? What are they saying about me?”

30:13 Speaker 2 You’re preoccupied with it all the time.

30:14 Speaker 1 If that’s what defines me, then it really is everything.

30:16 Speaker 2 Exactly. And then I’m dependent on it all the time. I’ll feel right here that I want to say something. I don’t know if you can see me pointing to my stomach.

30:26 Speaker 1 That’s okay, let them see.

30:29 Speaker 2 So I feel that urge to speak in my stomach. I feel something here. It means I have something to say or do—or maybe something is stopping me. It can work the other way too. But I’ll stay quiet and tell myself I’m being accepting, and I’ll... No, you’re not really being accepting. Don’t pretend. Eventually it will explode, it will distance you from the other person, and it will hurt you. It will simply hurt.

30:50 Speaker 1 Now I’m bringing this back to marriage, and I’m saying that the first step is to make sure I have a solid sense of self-worth.

30:59 Speaker 2 That’s the second step. Well, okay, it’s really the same step.

31:02 Speaker 1 In other words, if I had a solid sense of self-worth, maybe I wouldn’t have problems in the first place. If all of us had a solid sense of self-worth...

31:08 Speaker 2 Let’s say that’s already the end of the road.

31:11 Speaker 1 Yes.

31:11 Speaker 2 Along the way, we build it, work with it, and keep asking ourselves these questions. Am I constantly preoccupied with what my husband will think of me, what he’ll say to me or do to me? Or am I calm enough, and do I trust myself enough, to know I’m okay? Let’s go back for a moment to that woman who didn’t prepare dinner. If she feels guilty, like she did something wrong by not making food for her husband, she’ll carry that feeling and say nothing. But if she can say to herself, with confidence, “I did a lot. I was a mother today. You know what? I didn’t make dinner. But that’s okay. I don’t have to put myself under that pressure all the time,” and she’s at peace with it, then she can calmly, just calmly, say she didn’t have time. It’s all okay; there’s no need to panic. And even if he’s upset right now, that’s okay too. But it really is a process. It’s not...

32:10 Speaker 1 Right. I’m trying to picture this happening at the front door. The woman says, “I didn’t have time. I was with the children. It’s all okay.” And he’s hungry, hungry, hungry. Is he even hearing her? Do you see what I mean?

32:21 Speaker 2 Maybe not. Maybe not. But I can promise you that if she stays calm and doesn’t let his anger drive her reaction, she’ll quickly be able to be there with him too. If he’s hungry and she cares, then okay, let’s put something together quickly. When I’m calm, I can be much more effective. If he didn’t hear me, I don’t need to... That’s also part of recognizing that we’re separate people. He’s angry right now, but I know what I did. I know I tried and didn’t manage to get it done. Okay. And if he’s angry, is that mine to carry? No. He’s angry. That’s his. Of course I’d like my husband to come home in a good mood, but if I take responsibility for his mood right now, I’ll automatically react to it. Believe me, if I react to it now, we could spend the whole evening fighting about his anger. But if I don’t, it’ll be five minutes, ten minutes; he’ll calm down, eat something, and everything will be fine. And I won’t... Why should I take it too much to heart? I understand: okay, he was angry. Next. Now, if he starts yelling at me, that’s different. I can say, “Enough. No, you don’t yell at me.” But I just mean that he’s naturally upset and irritable. Okay. That isn’t always about me. I don’t need to turn it into a drama.

33:45 Speaker 1 Yes.

33:46 Speaker 2 That takes a lot.

33:47 Speaker 1 Good.

33:49 Speaker 2 Because that’s the first step.

33:50 Speaker 1 Oh, only the first step. Dinner still isn’t ready. We haven’t solved that yet.

33:55 Speaker 2 We haven’t solved it. This is the foundation.

33:58 Speaker 1 Just understanding where the work begins. In other words...

34:02 Speaker 2 This is the beginning of the work. First, I need to take a moment to feel what’s going on inside me, because, as we said, boundaries take confidence. After that, I can move on to the next steps, as they’re called—seeing myself, and so on. But in terms of time, how much... Tell me. Sorry to put you on the spot.

34:21 Speaker 1 You have time, you have time.

34:22 Speaker 2 Yes. About how much time?

34:24 Speaker 1 As much as you need.

34:25 Speaker 2 Ah, okay.

34:27 Speaker 1 I have five hours. So far, the longest podcast was almost three hours. Let’s try to beat that.

34:34 Speaker 2 Three hours.

34:35 Speaker 1 I’m here.

34:37 Speaker 2 Oh wow, that’s patience.

34:38 Speaker 1 Talk. Talk. Yes.

34:40 Speaker 2 Okay, so, so let’s move on to... One second. So now, wait. Oh. I’m taking this off.

34:45 Speaker 1 Straighten it out.

34:46 Speaker 2 Let’s straighten things out for a second. There are dishes in the back too.

34:50 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s part of it.

34:51 Speaker 2 Tasty. Okay. Well, nice to meet all the viewers.

34:56 Speaker 1 Get yourself together.

34:57 Speaker 2 So, we said that the first stage really is this whole subject of boundaries. Then, after that stage, there’s the matter of really getting to know myself and building my confidence, which is closely connected to boundaries too. Because a woman who has confidence will also know how to set a boundary. And then there’s this matter of being a distinct person, which we touched on a little. But I do want to expand on it for a moment. It means constantly asking myself: My surroundings are always telling me things, or wanting things from me, or pushing me in a certain direction, expecting something from me. It’s easiest for the people around us to see us in a particular mold. Like, you have children. If you were to give each child their role at home—think about it for a second, and you’ll see that each child has their own slot.

35:54 Speaker 1 Yes.

35:54 Speaker 2 There’s the good child.

35:56 Speaker 1 Roles like that.

35:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:58 Speaker 1 The people-pleaser.

35:59 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:00 Speaker 1 The rebel.

36:01 Speaker 2 Exactly.

36:02 Speaker 1 Let’s bring them in and see.

36:05 Speaker 2 There can be several roles, too. The smart one, the funny one.

36:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

36:09 Speaker 2 I can say about myself that at many stages in my life, when everyone gets together, I feel like I have to provide the action.

36:15 Speaker 1 Make sure.

36:16 Speaker 2 Make sure. Until I finally said, “Enough, I’m tired of this role.”

36:19 Speaker 1 Go and rest.

36:20 Speaker 2 Exactly. And then I’m like, “Why?” I come out like, “Why?” with my arms crossed? Honestly, I feel like it. Listen, I don’t have the energy.

36:26 Speaker 1 Interesting. I studied group facilitation, and the teacher really talked about how, if you’re in a different group, you might get a different role.

36:34 Speaker 2 Totally.

36:35 Speaker 1 It’s a completely natural process that happens in every classroom, every home.

36:37 Speaker 2 Right.

36:38 Speaker 1 Everywhere. Roles get assigned.

36:40 Speaker 2 Right.

36:40 Speaker 1 That’s what develops.

36:41 Speaker 2 Right. That’s why, so often, people make a change, and then when they come home—to their own home—say they’ve gone through rehab for alcohol, or for whatever it may be, and then they finish rehab and go back home. You know what happens? They go right back to where they were.

37:00 Speaker 1 They have to fill their role.

37:02 Speaker 2 Exactly, because their role there hasn’t changed. And the most meaningful healing and repair happens when I return to that same environment. That’s the hardest part, because the environment hasn’t changed, and I’m the one who has to change. It’s like women who grew up in homes where they had all kinds of traumatic experiences. They still have to be around their families, but they need to change, and the people around them don’t like it. They think people will applaud them, but no. The people around them—

37:35 Speaker 1 Come on, be the person we know.

37:37 Speaker 2 Exactly. We’re used to you setting the table whenever everyone comes over. What happened? You don’t want to set the table now? Where did this come from all of a sudden?

37:44 Speaker 1 It’s a difficulty that comes up a lot for women who really make changes in their lives and then suddenly have a class reunion. They meet the friends who were in first grade with them, or eighth grade, or twelfth grade.

37:56 Speaker 2 Right.

37:57 Speaker 1 And I’m in my thirties now, and I’ve done this and that and the other thing, and suddenly they take me back to being Dina from ninth grade. Maybe I was the wallflower in class, maybe I was the annoying one, maybe I was the... Okay, I was in eighth grade.

38:12 Speaker 2 Wow, exactly. And then you go back to...

38:13 Speaker 1 That contrast. That’s why a lot of people don’t particularly like those events, because they take them back to places that are really, really dark. We go through processes; we grow.

38:24 Speaker 2 If your memories of it weren’t so good.

38:26 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes.

38:27 Speaker 2 Definitely. Because they put you right back in that same slot.

38:31 Speaker 1 There’s a story about a singer in the United States who was a very withdrawn girl at school. I don’t remember her name. The teacher gave this example in my group-facilitation course too. She became very successful—she was filling auditoriums and everything—and then she had a class reunion. The next day, she took her own life.

38:50 Speaker 2 Wow.

38:51 Speaker 1 They brought her back to that very, very dark place, and...

38:55 Speaker 2 It was too much for her.

38:57 Speaker 1 Yes. So this whole subject of...

39:00 Speaker 2 Roles.

39:00 Speaker 1 Roles. Yes.

39:02 Speaker 2 Very much so.

39:02 Speaker 1 And how careful we need to be when we make those roles too fixed and really assign each person their own role. With a child at home, it can be nice to know their role if it’s a positive one, yes, but as you’re saying, even being the funny, entertaining one isn’t always...

39:19 Speaker 2 Exactly. I can move between roles.

39:21 Speaker 1 Let it go, let it...

39:22 Speaker 2 Totally. I’ll tell you how it comes up in marriage too. For example, it’s not only roles; maybe it’s behaviors as well. Say I realized that at home, when I don’t get what I want, what do I do? I use a kind of manipulation. I start shouting, I get angry. We often do that even as little children. A child wants something, and if you don’t give it to him, he’ll start screaming or asking in all sorts of ways. It gets stronger in adolescence.

39:52 Speaker 1 And then it’s supposed to disappear.

39:54 Speaker 2 But the thing is, it doesn’t. Because we absorb so much at home about relationships, about how we behave within a relationship.

40:05 Speaker 1 Yes.

40:05 Speaker 2 And then I enter my own marriage, and I’ve learned that if I use manipulation and start shouting, I get what I want. So when I enter marriage, I do the same—

40:19 Speaker 1 You use those tools.

40:19 Speaker 2 That tool. My husband didn’t give me what I wanted. I want to get his attention. Well, then I’ll shout.

40:24 Speaker 1 And then you find yourself saying all the things your mother used to say.

40:27 Speaker 2 Exactly. Or when I, when I was—

40:29 Speaker 1 The things she said she’d never say in her life.

40:30 Speaker 2 Yes, and I use that, and I’m sure it’s what will work. I can say about myself that I used to use manipulations a lot—really use them. My husband doesn’t want to do something, so I start trying to persuade him, or I get angry with him or upset with him. Any way I can, I’m trying to get what I want. I wanted to go out; he didn’t want to. I couldn’t accept it. I—

40:53 Speaker 1 We really grew up with that. I mean, that’s the picture we know.

40:57 Speaker 2 Yes, and these things aren’t even conscious. We absorb so much in childhood and reenact so much of it in our marriage. But because we’re adults now, we can take responsibility for it. And then I can tell myself, “Come on, enough.”

41:12 Speaker 1 We have to.

41:12 Speaker 2 We have to. Yes, and it’s good—good for us to understand that.

41:16 Speaker 1 Yes.

41:16 Speaker 2 Because in the end, it really helps us mature. One of the things I’ve worked on a lot—it comes more naturally to me today, but it was something I really had to work on—is that manipulation. Accepting that my husband wants something different from me, and letting go. I want to go on an outing with the children. He doesn’t want to. Enough, leave him alone. He doesn’t feel like it. Let go. Just being able to accept that.

41:47 Speaker 1 Letting go of control in general over...

41:49 Speaker 2 Yes. He likes different things. We have to internalize the fact that we’re two different people. Period. We won’t always be in sync like we were at the beginning. We just won’t. He likes different things; I like different things.

42:10 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. Understanding that this is his and this is mine.

42:13 Speaker 2 I have values. I had a fascinating conversation about this with a couple yesterday. Suddenly we realized that she has a particular value that’s very important to her, and he has a different value that’s very important to him. He dreams of developing in a certain field, and she has something else that’s a major value in her life. So do I need to force the other person to share my value? No, it’s my value. Of course there’s mutual support, and if one spouse has a dream, I’ll help. I’ll be there. I’ll support it, because I’ll be happy for them. But I’m not part of it. It’s their dream.

42:47 Speaker 1 No, absolutely. Some things are shared. There’s no getting around that.

42:49 Speaker 2 Of course.

42:50 Speaker 1 For example, there’s a couple I know who had a really serious dilemma about where to live. He’d been offered a very significant promotion, something in the army, and to take it he had to live in a very specific place. For her, it was the opposite—something in medicine. They simply had to decide, in a sense, which of them would give something up. I remember they shared it with us, and I thought, “Wow, I wouldn’t want to be in that position.” It’s hard.

43:17 Speaker 2 Very hard. Right.

43:19 Speaker 1 I mean, in the end we have to understand that we’re separate people, but ultimately there’s also a place where we’re one unit.

43:25 Speaker 2 There is. Right, there are things... Those are the conflicts. There are situations where you have to decide.

43:31 Speaker 1 Education—raising children.

43:33 Speaker 2 Right.

43:34 Speaker 1 There are certain rules about—just to throw out an example—the wife thinks they need a television at home. It’s important to her. And the husband thinks it will ruin the children’s education. So in the end, they have to come to one decision.

43:46 Speaker 2 Right. So I—this is where we need to pause and look at a conflict. On the one hand, if a couple sits down now and decides—

43:53 Speaker 1 I wish you luck.

43:55 Speaker 2 It’s wonderful. If a couple sits down and ultimately has to come to a decision, they can approach that argument, that conflict, from a place of control: I’ll decide, and you need to make yourself smaller. Or the other way around. And each one tries to get the other on board, usually through manipulation. Manipulation can take all sorts of forms: anger, irritation, pulling away, playing the victim. It has so many sides—

44:23 Speaker 1 All our less-than-good character traits.

44:26 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, because there’s also a nice kind of manipulation, when you do something kind to draw someone in a good direction. There’s a good side to that too. But I’m talking about the not-so-nice sides. Then I’m essentially trying to make the other person smaller. Or, in another kind of relationship, one spouse is more afraid to express an opinion. So let’s say she wants to live somewhere in particular, but she stays quiet because her husband wants something else. Then she’s making herself smaller too. But in a mature relationship where each person has a sense of self, she sees conflicts as one of the most meaningful, revealing points of encounter. Because everything is fine when we agree, things flow, and all is well. But where—maybe we said this earlier; I don’t know if it was at the beginning—the conflict is the—

45:14 Speaker 1 That’s where we’re tested.

45:15 Speaker 2 That’s where we’re tested, and that’s where we truly encounter the other person, because what they want is simply the opposite of what I want, the complete opposite. Now, if I come in wanting to make my opinion heard and win you over, I won’t see the other person. But if I understand that conflict is a place where I encounter my husband, even in the finest, most beautiful nuances—then instead of... Let me pause and say that this sounds lovely, but it’s also very practical. Instead of only stating my opinion and making myself heard, I want to take a moment to understand why he wants what he wants. What was the example you gave? He got a promotion?

45:54 Speaker 1 In the army.

45:55 Speaker 2 In the army. So he wants to move to a particular place. Why? And I really take a moment to look at that and think about it with an open mind. I want to encounter him. When you encounter a person, you’re not trying to impose your opinion. Imagine two people talking, but I’m not listening at all; I just want to make my point. That’s no fun, right? When is a conversation enjoyable? When we listen. I listen to you, you listen to me, and I listen. Okay, then I’ll also say why I feel as I do, and he’ll listen to me too, and we’ll meet there. When there’s room for each person, it’s much easier for us to make a decision in the end. Sometimes you do have to make a decision. With most things, you don’t, because there’s room for both. I want to go out, you want to go out, I want this. Life is broad; we work things out. But when we really do need to make a decision, we’ll make one. We’ll find—every couple finds its own way. The point isn’t that a conflict has to have a solution. It’s that we need to see it as a real place of encounter, even an intimate one. Exactly that. And when you look at it that way, you approach it with curiosity. Okay, let’s hear it. Let’s understand where you’re coming from. For example, my husband and I came from very different places when it came to money. That’s a source of conflict for so many couples, by the way. Money—are you wasting it? Are you spending too much? Anyway, or the other way around.

47:26 Speaker 1 Even just the whole way you look at it.

47:28 Speaker 2 Exactly. Who’s responsible for the money? That’s one of the really big conflicts couples have. I remember when we got married, each of us brought a different approach. I’m more emotional about it. My husband makes purchases from a place of more careful judgment about when to buy. Even with big things: there are little children, so we’ll buy it later. Really different ideas about how to handle money. Oh, at first I would just explode. Enough already—why? I’d get really angry with him.

48:00 Speaker 1 Loosen up.

48:01 Speaker 2 Yes, like, let’s buy it. Why? Because what’s all this about? We’re living now; let’s buy it now. And when I opened my mind to it, I said, “Wow, how lucky I am that he’s like that,” because it inspired me. If I had just gone my own way—not that I’m oblivious or a spendthrift—but it’s wonderful that he exercises judgment and thinks things through more. In the end, we complement each other: my part and his part. And it doesn’t annoy me. I accept it. There are things I really do let go of: no, we’re not buying that. And there are things where we somehow come together and find our way. But it’s not... “Well, you think this way and I think that way.” It’s all good. It’s wonderful.

48:43 Speaker 1 At the end of the day, the bottom line is—again—this is really Chassidus. Put my ego aside, and then everything works out.

48:51 Speaker 2 Right.

48:51 Speaker 1 The ego ruins everything for us. It obscures everything and keeps us from... After all, in Chassidus, the G-dly soul and the animal soul are also about ego versus the other person, and about disconnection versus connection. When I step outside myself and put my ego aside, it allows me to connect with those around me. And the opposite is true: when I’m caught up in my ego, even in subtle ways—because it often comes in disguise. Say I tell myself, “What do you mean? This is in the interests of the home.” But in the end, if I peel back layer after layer—

49:24 Speaker 2 It’s about me.

49:24 Speaker 1 I discover that “me” inside. And when I’m wrapped up in myself, in my ego, I don’t see other people. Even if I can do this and act like I’m listening and understanding. It’s amazing how it all comes back to this point of—

49:38 Speaker 2 I don’t see him. I simply see myself and what I want, and... I take control there too. That really connects for me with another subject: when we go to those places, we also move away from our own essence, because we’re women. Speaking of women, of the feminine, our essence is to—

50:02 Speaker 1 Receive.

50:03 Speaker 2 Receive, exactly. And when we start controlling, we move away from that; we’re in a prison. Because we start managing the home. That isn’t our role. Our role is to receive from him.

50:14 Speaker 1 It used to be more obvious, because the woman was at home raising the children, so she was naturally in that softer place, waiting for her husband with a hot meal.

50:23 Speaker 2 Right.

50:24 Speaker 1 And today it’s become so accepted—and also a necessity in the world we live in, where you can hardly support a family on one salary—that the woman goes out to work too. So that also, in a sense, strengthens those supposedly masculine parts of her—

50:42 Speaker 2 Right.

50:43 Speaker 1 “I’m earning a living, and I have control over all sorts of things.”

50:45 Speaker 2 She’s career-driven, and...

50:47 Speaker 1 Suddenly she’s supposed to be soft and womanly. That’s a sharp transition.

50:51 Speaker 2 Right, right, right. But—first of all, you’re right. It really is a transition.

50:57 Speaker 1 That’s just how it is.

50:58 Speaker 2 It really is hard for us to make that—

51:01 Speaker 1 That’s why it’s so important to remember that when I’m with him, this is a marriage. It’s something different.

51:08 Speaker 2 It’s different. There I’m allowed to take off the—

51:13 Speaker 1 The bag from my back.

51:14 Speaker 2 That bag of being the one who has to get ahead and do things and manage things, and let him—let him give to me.

51:23 Speaker 1 Yes.

51:23 Speaker 2 Just like that.

51:24 Speaker 1 Agree to depend on him a little.

51:25 Speaker 2 Yes, agree to receive. Yes, exactly. Because we really can give when we’re full. But if we start managing him, he feels guilty, he feels bad, and he doesn’t want to give to us. It’s like forcing someone—or someone forcing you—to do something. Enough. No, it won’t happen. It won’t happen. That’s what we do to our husbands without even noticing. We make demands of them. We want them to come closer, and they do the exact opposite. They pull away. They don’t want to. It’s as though they’re saying, “Don’t take from me. Don’t drain me. Stop managing me.” They don’t even say it in words. They can’t always put it into words, and they feel guilty too. They want to be good husbands, just as we want to be good wives. So if I’m constantly criticizing and constantly coming with demands and showing my frustration, his experience is: “I can’t make her happy. I can’t give, so I’d better give up, and I...”

52:21 Speaker 1 Give up on the whole thing, really.

52:23 Speaker 2 “And that’s it. Just leave me alone.”

52:25 Speaker 1 Yes.

52:25 Speaker 2 That just makes the cycle of frustration grow. But if I can connect to a place of letting go, too... And here I want to give the women listening to us a tool. There are a lot of things we haven’t really talked about, but I want to expand a little on this: we come to marriage with a kind of contract about what our husband is supposed to do. Even the things I didn’t get from my parents as a child—they didn’t give me enough attention—now he’ll give me. Now he’ll listen to me. No one listened to me my whole life.

52:55 Speaker 1 An unwritten contract, you mean.

52:56 Speaker 2 An unwritten contract. It’s not in the kesubah; I didn’t even tell him about it. I wrote it up for myself. And then I say to women, “Who said he has to listen to you all the time?” “What do you mean?” They’re stunned. How dare I say that? “What do you mean, does he have to? He has to listen!” But it doesn’t work like that.

53:17 Speaker 1 They come with a whole sack of expectations.

53:19 Speaker 2 A sack of expectations.

53:20 Speaker 1 That haven’t been discussed.

53:21 Speaker 2 That haven’t been discussed and don’t fit the husband they married. Then they’re frustrated when those expectations aren’t met. Our husband isn’t our father. Your husband isn’t your father, and you aren’t his mother. You’re partners growing together, and that’s something entirely different. I ask people: Why did you get married? A basic question: What is a relationship? Is it each person giving the other what they want, and that’s it? Is that a relationship? What does a relationship mean to you?

53:50 Speaker 1 Wow, a relationship. I’m interested in going back for a moment to what I actually thought before the wedding versus what I think now, because it all gets mixed together. But looking at it from a more mature perspective, a relationship is, first of all, really becoming one unit in a very, very tricky way, because we’re two opposites. And really helping each other discover who we are while putting ourselves aside. But again, I’m saying that after many years.

54:20 Speaker 2 Of course.

54:21 Speaker 1 Eleven, eleven years of marriage.

54:23 Speaker 2 That’s a respectable stretch.

54:24 Speaker 1 Yes. And ultimately, if we go all the way back, two halves of a soul that...

54:33 Speaker 2 Come together.

54:34 Speaker 1 Come together. So it was meant to be from the outset. And we have work to do here, and we’re also building a home together. It’s beautiful; it’s amazing. I do see it that way: we come together and build something huge, huge, huge together. And along the way, we have to figure out how to do it in the best possible way.

54:51 Speaker 2 To understand the...

54:52 Speaker 1 Yes, but I really think most girls, teenagers, young women, come to marriage simply thinking, “I’ve reached the age, let’s get married,” without understanding...

55:05 Speaker 2 What it really means.

55:06 Speaker 1 And why I want it. What it’s going to bring with it, for example. Well...

55:10 Speaker 2 But that’s brilliant.

55:11 Speaker 1 If we knew what life would bring, we probably wouldn’t...

55:14 Speaker 2 Exactly.

55:14 Speaker 1 We’d stop somewhere along the way. But then, really, define it more precisely.

55:20 Speaker 2 First of all, I loved that you said “self-discovery,” because I write, and sometimes in my emails and things like that, I write: “A relationship is a space for discovering yourself and discovering the other person.”

55:29 Speaker 1 Yes.

55:30 Speaker 2 It really is a place of discovery, where each person sets their ego aside and makes that discovery possible.

55:35 Speaker 1 Only then can it work.

55:36 Speaker 2 That’s what really makes it one complete unit, where each person is whole in their own right and they’re whole together.

55:43 Speaker 1 Yes.

55:44 Speaker 2 In short, it’s being separate and being together—the delicate interplay between them.

55:48 Speaker 1 Exactly, all the time.

55:49 Speaker 2 Between having my own space, without dumping everything on you, and our togetherness, because I want to give—because that’s what ultimately creates love and connection. But the desire to give comes from me, not because someone demanded it of me. We give because we want to. When someone demands something, I don’t want to give. I might do it to please them or to keep the peace. So women really do come into a relationship with these expectations, and then they’re frustrated. They need to understand that a relationship isn’t about getting your needs met. It’s about building something greater than the two of us. It’s just—wow, it’s incredible. You can’t even take it all in. I think that in Judaism, the connection between a man and a woman is given the holiest place, because it really is the greatest thing there is in nature. If it means creating life, it means creating a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There’s nothing greater than that. And precisely because it’s so great, sometimes you really have to go through things. When a woman first understands that her husband isn’t supposed to provide her with everything, and takes more responsibility for her own needs... Say she wants him to listen to her. That’s fine; she’s allowed to want that. He can listen to you, certainly, and gladly. But you can also ask him. You don’t have to dump it on him and be frustrated if he doesn’t listen at the exact moment you want him to. [unclear] Women I meet tell me, “Wow, if I’d known all this at the beginning, just think how much heartache I could have avoided.”

57:22 Speaker 3 Okay, we took a little break. Someone burst in here. We won’t say who. Someone under the age of ten. Anyway, help me refocus for a second, from the beginning. Where are we in the process?

57:35 Speaker 2 There are boundaries. After that comes building my inner confidence, knowing who I am—not constantly depending on approval from the people around me. Knowing how to give myself that inner validation and not be obsessed with what everyone else thinks, as we discussed. The third stage is feeling—wait a second: boundaries, differentiation, worthiness. It’s feeling worthy. Feeling that I deserve good things, that we both do, that there’s room for both of us. That’s what you were talking about: creating something together, the togetherness. I do things because I want to, because we enjoy it, because we’re good friends, because we simply enjoy being together, without that pressure. My husband and I really, really love being together. Today, if I had to choose someone to go out for coffee with, I’d choose him over a friend. Why? Because I enjoy his company. I don’t have to give him up, and he doesn’t have to give me up. I can be completely free when I’m with him. When I look back, it used to feel as though one of us always needed something to happen, then the other needed something, needed to talk... There wasn’t really room to just be. And now it’s enjoyable.

58:44 Speaker 3 Friendship.

58:45 Speaker 2 It really is friendship. Even more than friendship, because even with a friend you have certain expectations. Here you’re truly free. You simply bring your whole self—complete self-discovery. I come as I am, with everything I am, and each of us tries to do things for the other. Of course, yes. But there’s something very free and very, very enjoyable about it. And that leads to the final stage, companionship: really being friends, enjoying each other, with that goodness and freedom too.

59:13 Speaker 3 That’s companionship to me.

59:14 Speaker 2 Companionship, yes, friendship. But I wanted to say something else for a second, and I’ve lost it. Oh, it’s gone. Never mind.

59:22 Speaker 3 You’ll remember.

59:23 Speaker 2 Yes. Maybe it was that this really is the higher place. Now, it’s not as though I clear a path and reach a destination. No. Sometimes I go back to working on boundaries, and sometimes I suddenly lose myself, including during certain periods, and...

59:36 Speaker 3 Right, it’s not...

59:38 Speaker 2 It goes in cycles.

59:39 Speaker 3 In Chassidus in general, there’s no such thing as point A to point B. We’re constantly doing the work. We need to understand what that work is and stay with it all the time.

59:45 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a spiral, all the time. But obviously, if I’ve already learned to recognize my boundaries, then even when I run into that issue again, it’ll be easier for me to deal with. And if I’ve built my confidence, then even if something shakes it, and I fail and feel like a failure over something, it won’t bring me down completely. It’ll still feel unpleasant—that’s an emotion, and it isn’t fun—but I’ll be able to pull myself together much faster and tell myself, “Come on, I’m moving forward.” But someone who’s very, very dependent on others and is still stuck in those gaps won’t even take the step. She’ll simply remain stuck there out of fear. So these are stages I keep returning to, but at different levels. It’s like in therapy, when someone says, “Wow, I feel as though I’m back in the same place again.” And I say, “Yes. Until we finish our work of self-refinement, we’re always working.” We came here to do the work. That’s who we are; that’s Chassidus; that’s life.

1:00:38 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:00:39 Speaker 2 So I just wanted to offer a little tool to finish with: how to ask. You want to ask your husband for something? First of all—

1:00:48 Speaker 4 Wait, give an example of a request.

1:00:49 Speaker 2 Even if I want him to talk to me—I mean, listen to me, sorry—or help me with something around the house. First, start with an assumption. I call it “assume and let go.” First, really take in the idea that he doesn’t—he isn’t obligated. Yes, I know a lot of women will question that right now, but I’ll say it again: he isn’t obligated. He isn’t there to meet all my needs. I’m not his manager.

1:01:19 Speaker 4 Meaning, the answer could be no.

1:01:20 Speaker 2 It could be no, too. Yes, you have to be emotionally prepared for that.

1:01:23 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:01:24 Speaker 2 Now, I do want it to happen in the end. Yes, and I’m allowed to ask. It’s even better if I ask and say what I want. So I want to give a few guidelines for making the request in a pleasant way, one that makes him feel good. Because, as we said, a man who feels I’m blaming him will pull away. If he feels I’m taking from him, he’ll pull away. So first of all, I talk about myself: “I want to share something with you.” Instead of the opposite: “You have to listen to me,” or “I need...” No.

1:01:56 Speaker 4 “I need ten minutes of your time.”

1:01:58 Speaker 2 “Need.” Yes, “I need.” What do you mean, you need? You’re taking from me. Well, I don’t have time for you; I’d rather be on my phone. If I come to him and talk about myself, it isn’t a command. I’m not ordering him. I’m asking. I also ask when would work for him. I want him to really listen to me. So if I spring it on him while he’s on his phone or has just come home from work, I probably won’t get that. I’ll be hurt because he isn’t... it won’t really be listening. So I’ll ask him when works for him, and even if it’s tomorrow, that’s okay. I can hold on to it for a bit. Usually it won’t disappear. Yes, you’ll definitely find time. So I’ll ask when works for him, and I’ll really remember not to blame him, to give him his space and not dismiss his needs either. If he says, “Wow, I’m really tired. Let’s talk later, in an hour or so,” I don’t want to take offense. Okay, I respect that. Just as I need to talk to him, he needs a moment to collect himself. And when I let go and give him that space, the chances of getting his cooperation are infinitely greater. He’ll want to. Because, as we said, at heart he wants to give to me. He wants to see me happy. He wants to feel like a man, like a husband who matters. And when he succeeds, and afterward I tell him, “Wow, talking with you felt really good. It opened my mind, helped me sort out my thoughts,” or whatever—wow. How likely is he to want to listen to me again? For that to happen again? Men remember what they know makes a difference. That’s the point.

1:03:39 Speaker 2 But you really have to remember to come from a place of respect, not a place of making demands. That’s it. So let’s do it. I’m telling you and all the women listening to try it.

1:03:49 Speaker 4 “Please, I need to talk to you about something”—that sort of thing.

1:03:52 Speaker 2 Well, that also builds...

1:03:54 Speaker 4 What does she want to talk about? What is it—I didn’t wash the dishes, I didn’t do this or that? So he already comes in with all that... Oh, okay, it’s just this.

1:04:02 Speaker 2 Yes, but no, it could also just be something that happened to me, a dilemma in the business, something at work that frustrated me, something with the kids, or something I think we should do differently. Whatever it is. And this applies to everything. Even if I want to ask him to come home so I’ll have time to make lunch for the kids. I wrote to him yesterday—was it yesterday? I sent him a message: “I’m having such a busy day. Is there any chance you could come home a little earlier?” I don’t usually do that, but I felt like I was really at my limit. He told me, “No, I’m in a meeting. I won’t be able to today.” Okay, I... that’s fine. I didn’t take it personally. I forgot about it right then. He can’t, he can’t. I believe that if he could have, he would have come. That’s obvious to me.

1:04:47 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:04:47 Speaker 2 Because there’s that mutual give-and-take. So it’s all good.

1:04:51 Speaker 4 Yes. I’ve really noticed that when you make more time during the week to talk in general—if I look at the week as a whole—

1:05:01 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:01 Speaker 4 Then you’re much less likely to reach those moments of “We have to talk about something” and need to set aside time for it. It happens more naturally from the start—

1:05:08 Speaker 2 Right, right, right.

1:05:10 Speaker 4 Absolutely. In busy weeks, sometimes I get to the end of the day and say, “Oh my goodness, we haven’t talked.”

1:05:14 Speaker 2 Right, right.

1:05:15 Speaker 4 We haven’t talked, and things keep getting put off and put off and put off. Suddenly they become urgent, and then it’s harder to lay something out, really analyze it and think it through properly, and—

1:05:24 Speaker 2 Exactly. We have a set time when we—

1:05:27 Speaker 4 You have to. That’s it, it’s...

1:05:29 Speaker 2 It’s a decision we made, and we really stick to it. We have coffee on Fridays. Now we’ve added coffee—so we go for a walk and then have coffee. But you know what? Just setting aside time together makes the next time more likely to happen. Why? Because we enjoy it. We realize it’s fun. So if we suddenly have a free hour in our schedule, it’s, “Come on, let’s sit down together for a bit.” Even half an hour. And it just leads to more of that. It didn’t used to be like this.

1:05:55 Speaker 4 It’s enjoyable, and it helps you move forward.

1:05:56 Speaker 2 Very much.

1:05:57 Speaker 4 Because at the end of the day, we’re running an entire operation here. Oh!

1:05:59 Speaker 2 You have no idea.

1:06:00 Speaker 4 Every—I don’t know. I do a lot of things together with my husband, in our shlichus and so on, but there’s no couple whose lives are completely separate. At the end of the day, you have a home, you have—

1:06:11 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:11 Speaker 4 A family. You have—it’s a huge undertaking to keep it all going.

1:06:14 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:15 Speaker 4 And the more in sync you are, the more you suddenly talk about things like, “Wow, maybe we need to change something here. Maybe we hadn’t thought of that. Maybe...” You know, just as we take care of a business.

1:06:26 Speaker 2 And talk about ourselves, too.

1:06:28 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:06:29 Speaker 2 About our relationship, about everything. So we don’t end up—what happens? A lot of couples reach their forties, the children leave home, and it’s, “Hello? I’ve lived with you all these years, but I don’t know you.”

1:06:39 Speaker 4 Who are you?

1:06:39 Speaker 2 Who are you? Why did we get married? What do we have to do with each other? That’s what happens if we don’t build the relationship over the years. We’ll reach that age and not know each other. So we need to keep building it all the time. And even when you work together, at the end of the day, where are the two of you? You’re working—

1:06:58 Speaker 4 You need it even more.

1:06:59 Speaker 2 You need it even more. Precisely because you work together, you have to find time as a couple that isn’t about business. Because otherwise, we’d meet and talk about the business. No, right now we’re not talking about the business.

1:07:08 Speaker 4 We need to remember that because, as you said—and I’m returning to the point I started with—there’s the wear and tear of life and routine, and our natural tendency is to put what’s urgent first, because I have—

1:07:18 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:18 Speaker 4 This to do at work and that to do elsewhere. “It’s okay, we’ll get to our relationship.”

1:07:22 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:22 Speaker 4 But in the end, it affects everything so much, and—

1:07:25 Speaker 2 Absolutely, you—I—

1:07:26 Speaker 4 It’s the most important thing.

1:07:27 Speaker 2 The relationship is—I see it in therapy too. So often, people want to send a child to therapy, but what’s going on is something in the home. When a couple works on themselves and reshapes how they relate to each other, it affects the whole home. Because a child living where the parents are in serious conflict, with discomfort and tension, is deeply affected by it—in their emotional well-being and their future relationships. But a child who sees parents learning to talk—yes, they argue, but they learn to talk, make time for each other and work together, and they’re happy together as parents—how much security that gives the child, how much calm and peace of mind. And how deeply the child absorbs it. When they go into their own relationship later, they’ll know from somewhere inside them. It isn’t even—

1:08:14 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:08:14 Speaker 2 It isn’t something they consciously know.

1:08:15 Speaker 4 As we said, we imitate the models we see, so—

1:08:16 Speaker 2 Exactly, the good things. Taking exactly what I saw in my parents and carrying it with me.

1:08:21 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:08:22 Speaker 2 So that’s it.

1:08:23 Speaker 4 Beautiful. Wow, Tzipi Aharonov.

1:08:25 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:08:25 Speaker 4 Thank you. How do you—what’s your title? Give us that to close.

1:08:29 Speaker 2 Um, emotional therapist. I mean, that’s the title in the end. Yes, it’s such a broad term.

1:08:33 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:34 Speaker 2 But, um, I’m an emotional and couples therapist using differentiation-based psychodrama.

1:08:38 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:08:39 Speaker 2 Yes. But I also give quite a lot of lectures and workshops for women, and I’m opening—my groups are really about building differentiation. Speaking of which, after Chanukah, a group will be starting in which I really teach it step by step—

1:08:53 Speaker 4 Is it in person? Meaning, do people come to you, or is it a WhatsApp group?

1:08:56 Speaker 2 I wish. I did it in person, and then I saw that women really prefer Zoom in the end.

1:09:01 Speaker 4 Seriously, what’s going on?

1:09:02 Speaker 2 Because there’s nothing—people don’t want to make the trip. Nothing beats meeting in person. Looking into each other’s eyes.

1:09:06 Speaker 4 When you can open your computer and save yourself an hour’s drive, it’s...

1:09:10 Speaker 2 But what about the value of meeting in person?

1:09:11 Speaker 4 Nothing beats it.

1:09:11 Speaker 2 I meet you, I see your eyes. Something happens between us.

1:09:16 Speaker 4 Something completely different.

1:09:16 Speaker 2 It happens here with this, yes, but then I’m also doing that, and doing— But for now it’ll be on Zoom. Each week I teach one topic, really focused on building this ability to differentiate, because, if we give it another name, it’s the psychology of relationships. So we really analyze cases, and there’s an active group and Zoom meetings, all to give every woman—

1:09:39 Speaker 4 It sounds like it’s really something more... Oh, sorry, I interrupted you.

1:09:43 Speaker 2 No, no, it’s okay. Go on.

1:09:43 Speaker 4 Something you come to in order to grow, not necessarily because you have a problem, not necessarily because of some—

1:09:48 Speaker 2 Right. Actually—

1:09:49 Speaker 4 Therapy. I mean, to go through a process of—

1:09:52 Speaker 2 You don’t need to be going through some difficulty—

1:09:55 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:09:56 Speaker 2 To come. You can come from a good place and make it even—

1:10:00 Speaker 4 There’s always good. Even better.

1:10:04 Speaker 2 That reminds me of when my husband and I once went for counseling. We came in, and he said, “So, what’s your problem?” We told him, “No, there’s no problem. We want to—we know things can be better. Teach us how to make them better.”

1:10:14 Speaker 4 But that’s so important. It’s so important, because with how busy we are, as long as things seem to be holding together, we’re constantly putting out fires. There’s a health issue, so that’s what we focus on. There’s an issue with a child’s education—

1:10:25 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:25 Speaker 4 So that’s what we focus on, and we neglect what seems to be holding up on its own. But that’s not really how it works.

1:10:30 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:31 Speaker 4 It’s always going backward.

1:10:32 Speaker 2 The health issue—what happens to it if we strengthen the foundation?

1:10:35 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:10:36 Speaker 2 Then even with the health issue—

1:10:37 Speaker 4 We’ll have more strength to deal with it, and...

1:10:39 Speaker 2 Exactly. So it’s for someone who feels pain and difficulty, but also for someone who wants to grow. For me, ever since this connected with Chassidus, it’s been a path of growth—it brought light into my world, and I see how it affects others too. Whoever encounters it falls in love with it. It opens things up.

1:10:59 Speaker 4 An incredible ability. Wow.

1:11:01 Speaker 2 I try.

1:11:03 Speaker 4 At the end of the day, these are our homes, our future.

1:11:05 Speaker 2 Right, the Jewish home.

1:11:06 Speaker 4 Amazing! Thank you, Tzipi. Thank you so, so much.

1:11:09 Speaker 2 My pleasure. Thank you for the privilege of being here and getting to know you and your project. It’s a great privilege, and I hope it reaches every woman and strengthens her.

1:11:18 Speaker 4 Amen. Amen.

1:11:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:18 Speaker 4 And to everyone who listened to this episode: if you got something valuable from it, pass it on to another friend, to another—

1:11:23 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:11:24 Speaker 4 Spread the light together with us. Thank you.

1:11:26 Speaker 2 Amen.