Everyone wants a great marriage. However, it seems that many people have a misunderstanding what a marriage means for them and how to get what they want out of the marriage.
No matter how old you are and/or how many years you were already married, you can always start building the loving and supportive relationship you want and deserve.
There are two types of marriages:
A friendship – which is a oneness and closeness, a special bond with your spouse.
A partnership – where spouses are opposites and each one has specific jobs / roles in the marriage, like a business partnership.
In this article, we will discuss the second type, the partnership marriage. For the Friendship marriage please click and read here.
What is a partnership?
When a person is looking for a business partner, he/or she is looks for someone who has expertise and knowledge in areas they are lacking. This way, each of them uses their expertise to make the business a great success and bring something to the table.
However, the only way to be successful, is when each of them stays in their position and does not step into the roles of the other.
If the person doing the accounting will try to step in and run the sales part of the businesses, he may mess things up and cause friction between the two.
Each partner in the business partnership has a very clear and defined role in the business and cannot step into the role of the other or the business and partnership will not work well.
If they have concerns about the other’s work performance, they need to be very careful how this is discussed in order not to cause hard feelings or friction in the business. Personal emotions or hardships can never come into play in partnerships, it is strictly business and each partner must preform at their best for the business to thrive and produce as expected.
The business partners will have weekly or monthly scheduled meetings to discuss issues that need the other’s assistance or to bounce off ideas.
The same is in marriage. If you are in a partnership marriage, there has to be specific and clear roles for each spouse and they have to stick to those roles without crossing into the other partner’s roles.
If you are in a friendship marriage, in which each spouse has their role, then each partner will flow easily into every chore that needs to be done in and out of the home.
There are women, who see their kitchen as “their domain” and will not allow their husband to “come in and take over.” These women (maybe without realizing it) are in partnership marriages.
They defined the roles in the home and they don’t want the other to “cross over” into their roles.
Couples in a partnership marriage will have specific roles. In many cases the man will be solely responsible for the income and paying bills while the woman is solely responsible for raising their children and cooking.
In many of these marriages, one does not want to hear about the other’s struggles just like in business. I heard from women who say that they asked their husbands not to share their financial struggles with them as they cannot handle the stress of it.
These women are usually not very financially responsible and they don’t usually think twice before swiping their husband’s credit card when shopping.
At the same time, if a child is struggling, the husband will put the blame on the wife because child-raring was the woman’s clearly defined role.
She is the mother and caretaker of the children while the husband is the financial partner.
For these couples, blurring the lines physically or emotionally will cause friction between them as they are in a partnership rather than a marriage.
In partnership marriages one or both spouses usually feel very lonely as they cannot share emotions, feelings or struggles with their partner.
These couples only share beds for the sole need to create children together.
Each spouse needs to find outside support and a network of friends or family they can rely on for emotional support. You see many of these partnership couples having regular outings with their own group of friends and support system.
These women usually go out for lunch with their friends while the men go out (usually Thursday night) with their friends. Once or twice a month, these couples will go out of a scheduled “date night” just like business partners do, to discuss any issue that pertains to both such as buying or remodeling a home, or to bounce off ideas on how to handle a certain issues in their lives, or to discuss when it is time to create another baby.
We see with the shidduch crises, especially in the Yeshivish world, where people are looking for partnership marriages in which a woman can be the partner to provide the financial part of the marriage, (whether by her working or through her father providing the income, so the husband can be the learning partner and sometimes to help out with the children as she works.
Since so many Yeshivish men are looking for partnership marriages, a woman who cannot provide the money, no matter how great her personality and middos are, she cannot qualify for the “job.”
This leads to a shidduch cirses and even worse marriage crises and “off the derech” crises. See here
What does the Torah say about a partnership marriage?
In Parshat Beraishis Chater 2 Pasuk 23 it says:
עַל כֵּן יַעֲזָב אִישׁ אֶת אָבִיו וְאֶת אִמּוֹ וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ וְהָיוּ לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד
Hence, a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.
A couple has to leave their parents home and become one. They need to be so close that they act and feel like one flesh.
Hashem is commanding us to leave everyone behind even those closest to us, such as our parents who were part of creating us and provided for us until now, and become one with a spouse. The husband now must become the number one in our lives above our parents and children.
In a partnership marriage, one is not likely to achieve this level of oneness.
If you find yourself in a partnership marriage, see here, to discover if you can work on your marriage so it can become a friendship Torah style marriage otherwise: you may need to preform the Mitzvah in Parshas Ki Tsisa.
In Parshas Devorim 24 Pask 1 and 2 it says:
כִּֽי־יִקַּ֥ח אִ֛ישׁ אִשָּׁ֖ה וּבְעָלָ֑הּ וְהָיָ֞ה אִם־לֹ֧א תִמְצָא־חֵ֣ן בְּעֵינָ֗יו כִּי־מָ֤צָא בָהּ֙ עֶרְוַ֣ת דָּבָ֔ר וְכָ֨תַב לָ֜הּ סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙ וְנָתַ֣ן בְּיָדָ֔הּ וְשִׁלְּחָ֖הּ מִבֵּיתֽוֹ׃
A man takes a wife and is intimate with her. She fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, and he writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house.
וְיָצְאָ֖ה מִבֵּית֑וֹ וְהָלְכָ֖ה וְהָיְתָ֥ה לְאִישׁ־אַחֵֽר׃
she leaves his household and becomes the wife of another man.
This is Mitzvah just like any other commandment, a man whose wife does not find favor in his eyes, if he does not love her for any reason, he is obligated to give her a divorce and send her away, so she can marry another man who loves her.
We see here that Hashem does not want a partnership marriage, but rather He wants a couple to become closer with one another than they are with anyone else in the world. A married couple must put their spouse first and in the number 1 spot in their lives to be closer with each other more than with even your own parents.
A woman who puts her children before her husband is entering a partnership marriage zone rather than a Torah marriage. See here for more on this topic here.
When a couple puts each other first, they create a loving and peaceful home environment in which children feel safe and secure. They want to be in the home and feel confident to bring friends over. These children also look forward to getting married where they can build the same loving, respectful and peaceful relationship with their spouse.
However, in a home where there is tension or the children are put ahead of the husband and his needs, the children will be the first to suffer from the lack of having their father around (as he will find reasons to stay out of the home whenever possible), the same lack of respect for their father as their mother displays to him, leading the children to be afraid of marriage and/or not knowing how to have a good relationship with their own spouse. Many of these children have a hard time trusting people as they did not see trust between the two closest people in their lives.
Putting your spouse first in your life is the Torah way and it is the best gift you can give your children for their own happiness, security, success and their emotional health.
In Parshas Beraishis Chapter 2 Passik 18 it says
וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֔ים לֹא־ט֛וֹב הֱי֥וֹת הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדּ֑וֹ אֶֽעֱשֶׂה־לּ֥וֹ עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ׃
The LORD God said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.”
In a Torah marriage, a couple has to be there for one another to help each other grow spiritually with love and understanding and without judging one another. Each spouse has to be able to listen and discuss their character traits with the other and see how they can help each other grow. Encourage each other for every effort, even small change and accomplishments they achieve.
Living together while leading separate lives is not the Torah way.
