Preparing for Life's Greatest Challenge

Reflecting back, I spent the greatest portion of my youth learning empirical facts, few of which relate to my life now. School never taught me how to be a good father or pitch a sale. It certainly did not teach me how to be moral, honest or file my income tax. In fact nobody ever showed me how to raise kids or be a decent loving spouse, unless you count the modeling of my parents.

Our culture places an inverse emphasis on utilitarian skills and trivia.  We learn lots of things that we will never use and less about critical aspects of personal growth.    “That is true,” you will say, “but kids are not ready to learn about how to raise children.”   So why not teach how to treat one another with dignity?  Remember Hillel’s axiom, “Do not do to others what is hateful to you?”  How to we impart this valuable lesson to the next generation?

Here is a dividend from our present educational system: Our children know how to communicate with and through machines but not directly with each other.  So nu?  When do we get our “real life” education?  It is on the job training.  The trouble is, it is usually a pass/fail course.

For some people it works while for others such learning is a dismal failure.  One of the most regrettable results of our inability to live happily is rooted in unsatisfying relationships. Too many marriages go sour for lack of preparation. Too many unsolvable fights occur for lack of having proper tools to disagree productively.

Listen: Chava came to me crying.  He was a monster. And she had it with him. It was all over. I sat with Chava, as she rolled back the years, tracing the roots of her pain. “If only I knew what he was like to begin with! He was so thoughtful and kind of the beginning. Even romantic. Now, all he does is sit around, scream at the kids and stare at the television. Do you know the last time you held me? Just held me?  With nothing else to follow??”

Could the marriage be saved, I wondered. Can it be saved? I grew angry when I thought this could all could have been prevented with a little inoculation before the marriage ceremony. If a fraction of their education had been directed towards relationships maybe they would know Shalom.

In a letter on sexuality written by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, he wrote:

Marriage is the most profound relationship we enter and therefore one of our most demanding undertakings. It touches on our deepest human longings for love, trust and intimacy, and therefore brings out the very best and very worst of who we are as individuals. Moreover, everyone grows and changes over time, and marital relationships have to adjust to such changes.  For these reasons and more, sustaining us assess for marriage is indeed hard work, and people contemplating marriage oh it to themselves and to the future spouses and children to prepare for that task. We spend years preparing for our careers.  Eight or ten sessions of a marriage preparation course, where available, is a superbly good investment of time.  Alternatively, the couple should consider a series of counseling sessions with the Rabbi and/or marriage counselor.

The goal of marriage preparation, whether in a course or in premarital counseling is to encourage the couple to talk to each other about the important aspects of their relationship. Adequate preparation might include issues of sexuality, children, parents, friends, jobs, money and communal commitments.  It might also teach people to fight and healthy and loving ways so that they emerge stronger as a couple and more generally, it should help people learn how to communicate better. A couple should also discuss how they are going to express the Jewish commitments in the new home and how Judaism and can help them with some or all of the issues that arise.

Clearly, none of these issues is ever fully resolved forever.  This is a life-long project.  Moreover, one can and probably will change one’s mind on these issues as time progresses and one cannot plan all of life’s future contingencies at the time of marriage. But to enter into marriage in this era without deeply exploring areas of concern is to close eyes to reality.