Tylenol Or A Kind Word? Cucumbers for Dinner? When Filling the Wrong Tank

Our rabbis said that in the days of the Messiah there will be hunger—not hunger for bread and not thirst for water, but for the word of Hashem. This implies that the concept of "hunger" is not only about food but also about spiritual matters. Today, we recognize another type of hunger: emotional hunger. It's important to know that the damages of emotional hunger can be no less severe than physical hunger. But before expanding a bit, let's give a short introduction on emotional hunger.

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Gila came home after a busy and packed workday. She sat on the couch and began telling Roni, her husband, about the headache she had from the exhausting day. Roni, of course, didn't stay silent and immediately offered her a Tylenol. Gila, inside her heart, thanked her "genius" husband for the great discovery: he finally revealed to her that when you have a headache, you take Tylenol! She's 42 years old and never knew about this miraculous pill that takes away headaches… Gila continued to ponder in her heart: "Why doesn’t he realize that when I say I have a headache, I want someone to support me and say a kind word about all the hard work I put in during the day to provide for the house?".

Dear readers, Gila is not alone. Hundreds of women are with her, who encounter a husband daily who does not know how to read their map, the emotional map. So, does anyone know where you buy this map?

The answer is in this article.

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Why is the emotional need so important and necessary for a person? In the Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 111, Rabbi Yochanan explains the verse "and showing teeth is better than milk": it's better to smile at a friend (show your teeth) than to give him milk. With these few words, Rabbi Yochanan wanted to teach us the wonderful principle that the emotional need is greater than the physical need. Drinking milk is a physical need of man. Rabbi Yochanan teaches us that an emotional need is even greater. Smiling is giving an emotional need. When I smile at another, I fill him with spiritual light called joy, because the soul that Hashem created for us greatly enjoys smiles. Therefore, it is very worthwhile, before entering the house, to practice your facial muscles a little and do exercises. How? Stretch the muscles around the mouth upwards, and you get a smile. Those still struggling can stand near a Chanukah menorah and mimic it. Today, there are many new and uniquely designed Chanukah menorahs on the market. Still, the simple, familiar menorah of the past has four "smiles," and they hint at the four smiles a person should smile at others. First smile – after the Shacharit prayer, when folding the tefillin: don't forget to smile at the friend sitting next to you in prayer and the rest around you. Second smile – after the Mincha prayer: smile at the friends with you at work. Third smile – after the Arvit prayer: when you return home to your wife. And the fourth smile – for the children, after reading the Shema with them before bedtime.

So what is an emotional need? Many husbands wonder: "I clean the house, do the dishes, and even do the laundry. I can't understand why my wife never stops bothering me. But my friend doesn’t even lift a cup in the house, and his wife treats him like a king. What’s going on?".

Dear husband, it's true that helping around the house is important and valuable. But you need to pay attention, maybe you are filling the wrong tank. Your wife's tank is not always her need for help around the house, sometimes it's the attention missing from her.

A husband who comes home after a demanding day of work, and his wife serves him a big plate full of green cucumbers, will probably immediately turn to his wife and apologize and say that indeed, cucumbers as a side dish is very nice, but to be full, he asks her to make sure there's also bread on the table next time.

Dear husband, every day you come home and bring your wife "a cucumber," and then you feel like you've met her need. But you should know that your wife is too shy to tell you that cucumber doesn’t satisfy her. She is not looking for a cucumber; she wants bread. Bread means warm and loving relationship, also conveyed through kind words. So, she decides to hint to you. Thus, a signal lights up called lack of attention. In the car, there's a dashboard that signals malfunctions. Her dashboard doesn't say anything; she just bothers you all the time. And you don't understand how to interpret the dashboard, that no one has bothered to explain to you until now. So far, you've given her an important need called help at home, but that's not the need she's actually missing.

You're really not to blame, since in the past when you talked about the matter and asked her why she behaves unpleasantly towards you, she told you that you don't help at home. In response, you immediately started doing the dishes in the sink. But she still continued to bother you. And again, when you asked her why she persists in behaving unpleasantly, she told you she's missing a new kitchen like in the ads. Yet again, you didn’t stand by and saved money to buy her a new kitchen. But this also didn’t help.

And immediately the confused husband asks why she continues to bother and behave unpleasantly. The answer is: you didn't read the complex dashboard of a woman correctly. Because knowing that the car is low on gas is easy—a light turns on, even with a nice drawing demonstrating it. But on the woman's dashboard, there are different lights, and without drawings. And what are they? She starts bothering you.

So what do we do?

Do not stop helping at home, as this is also very important, but from now on you should know that this is not the tank to be filled at this time. When her light turns on and she starts to bother you, know that it's not the time to start cleaning the house, and you don't have to buy very expensive things, which in most cases do not match the financial situation of the home. Instead, it's understood that the lights are signals of distress for something else. And what is the distress? I need attention. In other words: just as you don't like eating cucumbers when you're hungry, I also don't like eating cucumbers when I'm hungry. I don't need you to wash the house now, but I need you to compliment me on the effort I put into making soup for you, but I'm just too shy to tell you this, and this feeling of lack causes me to bother.

Rabbi Simcha Cohen of blessed memory brought in his book "The Jewish Home," that in one of his lectures when he pointed out to the audience that most marriage difficulties are linked to a lack in emotions, one listener claimed that his case is different: "My wife is simply selfish, she's only interested in fulfilling her needs. She wants to travel abroad twice a year, replace the furniture in the apartment frequently, along with her entire wardrobe." The rabbi replied to that person that his wife's desires prove she has something missing that she is trying to fill. Perhaps the things she requests are actually a path to fulfill her "self." With these things, she achieves the acceptance of the environment she lives in. Therefore, said the rabbi, if you would supply her "self" by conventional means—compliments and emotions—she wouldn’t need to seek more expensive substitutes.

We must believe and internalize that the work of compliments is capable of solving almost all problems. Many people who went to a professional for counseling, claiming that the woman was wasteful, returned home with a detailed and clear program of how to manage henceforth in a straight and unextravagant manner. And yet, all the advice didn't advance anything. Why did this happen? The counselor didn’t touch the root of the problem. The unnecessary expenses didn’t stem from the woman's desires, but from a lack of praise from the husband. And once the problem was not solved from the root, it happened again and again. Because that woman, who didn’t receive husband's praise, sought to capture the need called attention by other means. Therefore, even if they go to a thousand counselors, it won’t help at all.

And I have no doubt, from experience I've accumulated over the years, that husbands who took things seriously made a revolution within their home, and many problems they had in their marriage disappeared as if they never existed.

In the next articles, with Hashem’s help, we will bring readers wonderful advice that will help us learn how to compliment.

Rabbi Avraham Peredo is a community rabbi, marital advisor, and parental guide, author of the book "Paths of Peace," and works in the Heshen department.

Heshen Department - Peace in the Home, Children's Education, Peace of Mind offers therapists nationwide. You can receive counseling via ZOOM.

The counseling involves a fee.

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