Guest post wanted on topic: "We were very happily married for 20 years - and then she insisted on a divorce - turned the kids against me and left me penniless - I still don't know why."

update Friday: Bshch  published a strong warning from a beis din in Beitar. - against a therapist for allegedly promoting divorce  Have no personal knowledge about this but it was sent to me by a number readers as reflecting the ideas in this post

update Thursday - see The Ort Family tragedy

I would like a guest posts dealing with first person stories of  the commonly expressed lament I hear of husbands describing a happy marriage of many years, good relations with the children and then they woke up one morning with their wife requesting a divorce. The husband typically could not get the wife to explain what happened or why she wanted a divorce. After the request for divorce there are attempts to mediate by rabbis, friends and therapists - but they fail and the wife left - often taking the kids with her.  - often going to secular court without permission of beis din.

None of these mediators are able to get the wife to express to the husband what happened other than that the wives had a profound feeling of unhappiness that had been growing recently and a feeling that life was passing her by. At some point little attempt is made to reconcile and the husband is deliberately kept in the dark by the therapist and wife. Often the initial neutrality of the therapist is replaced by a decided bias in favor of  the wife's side and they form a coalition against the husband. In addition the therapist has no problem providing confidential information about the husband with the wife's mother or friends. Separate therapy sessions become the norm - rather than joint sessions. The sessions with the wife often revolve around how terrible the husband is or at least how incapable he is of truly being a good husband because of flimsily diagnoses of various psychological deficits or syndromes. Sessions with the husband are to prepare him for the fact that he is inadequate and incapable of making his wife happy. These therapy sessions often combined with feedback from "experts" who are good friends or relatives or lawyers - create an irresistible momentum for divorce at all costs including slandering the husband with charges of wife beating or sexually abusing the children.

Often these wives receive "advice" from friends and relatives to the fact that contrary to their feelings - they were very unhappy and their husband was taking advantage of them and clearly did not respect or value her as an equal. These "advisers" claimed that their husband's viewed them as a type of slave or servant providing various services because he viewed her as inherently inferior. The wife learned that what she had viewed as willing sacrifices for the husband's learning or for him to have a solid relationship with the children - were in fact proof that there was no value to her existence except as a facilitator for his needs. At some point the wife started viewing the husband as "the other" and stopped trusting him and refused to confide in him or even share experiences. 

The husband is often very inarticulate in expressing his feelings to his "new born wife". That is because for years they have shared a language and values that were viewed positively by both of them - and now the wife has a different negative understanding. Every time her husband opens his mouth - it just makes the barriers between them more impenetrable. Typically he doesn't realize this and keeps trying harder to push the buttons and say the words that used to work - but he ends up totally frustrated and angry as well as irritating her. The wife takes this additional proof that he is damaged goods. 

If this sounds familiar please submit your own story - with names and identifying statements removed. Also I am not interested in nasty things said about your ex-wife - just the facts. Also interested in those who deny that this pattern exists.

update====Just received the following response  from a prominent frum therapist ====

Rabbi Eidensohn:

Having worked with couples for many years, I have observed many situations, prior to my intervention, during, and after. There is probably no one with enough data to cite statistics.  But the experience I have, plus many of my colleagues does not point to either gender as the chief perpetrator of divorces. Let us establish a few matters that are not negotiable.

1. Humans were meant to marry and be happy A marriage that dissolves is abnormal, and it is tragic.

2. An old saying is that marriage is grand – divorce a hundred grand.

3. The peaceful divorce is possible, but it is a relatively uncommon experience. It is said, “People marry out of love; they divorce out of hate.”

4. Marriage is a gamble. If one does not “win”, it becomes necessary to face loss. No one wants to do that. It is seen as easier to shift the blame to the other. If not just the blame, then the outcome of the division of assets and resources (including the children) becomes ripe for declaring victory.

5. The systems of lawyers for court and toanim for batei din are ripe for exploitation. Cases are often prolonged, and settlements difficult to reach because of these outside sources of interference.

6. The complexities of the interplay of halacha and secular law provide enough fodder to gum up the works. This includes the use of court prior to beis din, the orders of protection that prevent conduct of the family, and the easy manipulation of the courts to provide emergency orders of custody, visitation, etc.

7. There are “professionals” of many persuasions that lend their incompetence and poor judgment to the mix. There are rabbonim, dayanim, toanim, and choson/kallah teachers, as well as “shalom bayis machers” who reach conclusions as per their preferences, independent of the facts. Many are poorly informed. The ignorance that allows one to fall for the tears of the borderline personalities, and the beliefs that men always perpetrate abuse while women are always the victims, the willingness to paint the facts into the foregone conclusions to rationalize them, and the disregard for the midoh of emes are legendary. Mental health professionals of all disciplines have been faulted for the negative roles they sometimes take.

8. Lastly, there are evil men and women out there, who will twist and turn everything they can to “win”. The craving of victory, as noted by the Chofetz Chaim, is the root of machlokes. This does not stop after separation, or even after divorce. With the observation of my colleagues and myself as the context, I hesitate to give any credence to the oft posted comments about all divorces being perpetrated by evil women or by evil men. With systems as they exist, including courts, batei din, public opinion, and media, there are tendencies to make generalizations that are unfounded. Each case needs to be examined on its own merit.

I have worked with true cases of domestic violence, and I have also worked with fabricated ones.  Who is the real victim?  Generalizations help no one.

One issue that was not reported in the recent guest post was the role of social influences. There are groups of women in the frum community, many who meet online, others face-to-face, that advise each other and conspire how to cause their husbands or ex-husbands the most damage, “using the system”. Without restricting free speech, one cannot successfully eliminate these social environments.  I have succeeded in getting some of my clients to abandon these groups, and to seek support from sources that help build them instead of destroying others.
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