This Frumpter blog used to be my source of comfort to throw around what I thought were anonymous ideas. I was deeply saddened to learn that having a blog identity did not keep my identity private, and eventually I felt as if I was the laughing stock of the community to those who knew who I was. Thus, I stopped writing in horror.
It has been too many years, and I do not remember the things about myself I "changed" to preserve my privacy. Today, with the Google login forwarding to my real e-mail address and my real phone number, there is no longer privacy. So with this in mind, I wanted to share a few marriage-level experiences with you about secrecy.
I always thought that there was a private self, and a public self -- even in a marriage. There were thoughts I kept to myself, and things I did before I was married which deserved to belong in the dustbin of history.
Women do not think that way; well, at least my wife does not think that way. She ascribes to the "open and honest" philosophy. I ascribed to the "be the best person you can be given current circumstances and leave the past in the past" philosophy. These philosophies clashed last week.
RULES:
- LYING. Obviously an omission is a form of lying. Leaving out relevant details which remove the choice from the person you are speaking to is lying.
- FOLLOWING A RABBI'S ADVICE TO OMIT INFORMATION is also lying. Even if years later you have not thought about the topic.
- VIRGINITY or the lack thereof is a very bad topic to lie about.
- PAST GIRLFRIENDS is another very bad topic to lie about.
I think you are starting to understand what happened...
BACKGROUND: It occurred to me recently that my wife thought I was a virgin when we got married. I wanted to correct that misconception [after 15+ years of marriage], especially because I was pretty sure she knew that I dated girls and was a regular non-religious guy who went clubbing, was a member of a fraternity, and did a whole bunch of things I no longer do as a religious man before we met.
I tried to speak to her about my past multiple times since this happened, but our communication has not been that good lately, and each time I tried to breach the topic of sex before marriage, boyfriends, or what we did when, she was not interested in speaking to me about these topics.
I asked a friend for guidance on whether I should correct her misconception. She answered, "if it is not something that you need to 'get off of your chest' (which is was not), then there is no need to speak to her about this topic." My friend then turned around and blabbed to her that I was not a virgin when I got married and that I had girlfriends before her.
In tears, my wife confronted me immediately after this. I answered every uncomfortable question honestly and without hesitation, but these topics were topics I was told while I was shidduch dating that YOU DO NOT DISCUSS.
For the next week, she was deeply betrayed by my lie of OMISSION. When we were shidduch dating, we started discussing the topic of our pasts. I told her that my rabbi suggested that we do not speak about our pasts because past girlfriends do not belong in a marriage relationship; they belong in the past. I thought all these years that she knew there were girlfriends, but unknown to me, I learned that her kallah teacher lied to her and told her I was a virgin.
I never met her kallah teacher, and I assume that the kallah teacher either got confused (she wasn't young), or that my rabbi lied to her (possible), or perhaps that his wife (the rebbitsen) didn't know about my past, and she spoke to the kallah teacher on my behalf. Either way, intentional or not, my wife was told I was a virgin -- a lie.
I tried to explain to her that 1) I did not know she did not know, 2) I did not create the lie, I wasn't involved in the lie, and I never knew the kallah teacher told her I was a virgin, and 3) I was just following the instructions (one of MANY) that I was given when I was shidduch dating.
During our marriage, I thought begrudgingly about the topic of past girlfriends and how I was not supposed to speak about them, and over the years, I tried to share all of the stories with her that she would need to know, but I left the girl out of the stories. In my recent marriage-level fight with my wife, she screamed that this was lying by ommission (and it WAS), but I thought I was still following the rule of "don't bring your past girlfriends into your marriage." I thought I was being open and expressive, and that I was sharing stories of my past with her when really I was just lying over and over by hiding relevant information about the girlfriends who were part those stories.
THE LESSON that I learned from this (and the lesson that I need to share with you) is... DON'T LISTEN BLINDLY when a rabbi or authority figure tells you to do something that is against your ethics. THINK FOR YOURSELF for each of your belief systems. And, LYING IS WRONG!
If you are a baal teshuva, then you likely changed your belief system to fit the belief system of the rabbis and your yeshiva peers. "Make your thoughts G-d's thoughts, and then you will by G-dly yourself," I used to be told over and over in yeshiva. "Align your thoughts and values with Torah, and you will live a good and happy life."
This is all true, but Rabbis telling you to lie about your past (sorry, "not talk about your past") is not "aligning your thoughts and values with G-d's thoughts and his Torah." Really, the discussion of my past girlfriends and what I did with them was really a discussion I should have had with my shidduch date to LET HER make the decision whether I am the kind of guy she is willing to marry. By LYING BY OMISSION about my past, I took that decision away from her. I also violated her trust all of these years by CONTINUING TO LIE about that topic -- not actively, not even thoughtfully (I thought 15 years later that I was still following the rules of what is appropriate and inappropriate topics to discuss), but good intentions or not, it was still a LIE.
UPDATE. You should know that my wife has since forgiven me for being an idiot all of these years. She faults me for not thinking for myself and for allowing me to get brainwashed into thinking that it was okay to deceive her all of these years. Personally, I am pretty disgusted with myself for hurting her, and for not revisiting that topic, and I wonder whether there are other "it's not nice, it's not appropriate to discuss this" topics there are that I have not yet thought for myself about what is right or wrong, and that I still haven't discussed with my wife.
She wants an "open and honest relationship," and since our fight, there have been things that we discussed, and within the topics of past girlfriends, conclusions she made that for 30 seconds or so I was quiet about -- that I did not want to speak about -- but then I decided to interject and apologize for not immediately correcting her on the topic. Then I would speak about it, whatever it was, uncomfortable or not.
Honestly, with so many years of marriage communication (and often the lack of communication), I wonder what things I *should* speak about, and what things I should keep to myself. I probably still have many "believe this" beliefs that were given to me from my rabbi and my yeshiva that I have not thought about lately, if ever. I probably am following many rules without even thinking of them as to why they are there and whether they are right or wrong.
I guess the lesson I wanted to convey is that I never meant to hurt my wife, but not speaking about something because you were told it is inappropriate or not tznius is not a reason not to speak about it. In every circumstance, I need to ask myself, "is this something that my wife would want to know about," and if yes, she deserves the truth over and over.
UNTOLD STORY: There is so much more to this story -- secrets I thought she was keeping FROM ME which have been causing me to mistrust her all these years... I feel like such an idiot that I have had the opportunity to ask her so many questions since this fight happened (we have established a new understanding of each other as a result of this fight, and hopefully we are building each other's trust). To my confusion, those so-called "secrets" I have been harping on all these years are turning out to be me projecting my own secrets onto her past, the stories of which FOR HER never happened.
As a result, now I am seeing my wife as a woman who is a different person from the woman I thought I was married to for the past 15 years. She is a different person simply because the stories I thought were there [that I suspected were hidden from me] never happened. This changes things, and it changes her. It also explains so much that has confused me all these years.
MY CONFUSION: For her privacy, I will abstain from going into those details, but I am feeling a cascade of changes in my understanding of arguments I have had with her. Can a person just be a kind person who in her youth liked to party with her friends, work hard in school, and never fraternize with boys as boys fraternize with girls (touch, seduction, hookups) and keep from getting into relationships prior to marriage? Are there such people in the world who are able to maintain their innocence in such a horrible morally corrupted world? I am having such a hard time rethinking all of this.
*NOTE: The last time I wrote in this blog was 2017. Now it is 2021, and I still do not check e-mails. I might not see your message, but I still appreciate your feedback.
