Welcome back, everyone, to the iTorah Marriage Series with Rav Eli Cohen. I am a marriage counselor in New Jersey. That means I do marriage counseling. I speak to individuals one-on-one and to couples by phone, Zoom, or in my office, whatever works for you. There’s no shame in making it work if you’re looking for help in your marriage. 917-837-0102. Whether it’s me or someone else, there’s no reason to hold back. On the contrary, there’s no reason to hold back from asking for help and reaching out. I just have to repeat that and say that.
I was away for Shabbat, giving lectures on marriage. You see that people hold back from asking, and they come privately and ask. Just getting clarity, without a session, is unbelievable. “What do I do when this keeps happening?” People say, “Oh, I’ve been worrying about this for years, and I just want to know and ask you.” I mean, you had to wait for someone to come in from miles and miles away to ask something that actually gave you clarity on your marriage. I’m not putting anyone down in a negative way; there’s no reason for that. I’m coming from a caring place. Why would you hold back if there are people who are professional and knowledgeable in this area, like every other area? It’s something that you need in your marriage, something that you need for your life to be successful and thriving. So please reach out to me or somebody else, whoever it is.
Whose job is it to take out the garbage? This is a question that was asked over the weekend, and it’s a question I’ve heard before. People ask, “Whose job is it? Whose job is it?” This shouldn’t be exclusive to the garbage. The garbage is not unique in this sense of “Whose job is it?” It’s a question people ask very often: “Whose job is this? Whose job is that?” It happened that I mentioned it in passing over the weekend, on one of the shiurim (lectures), and everyone just lit up about garbage. They started talking to each other, and it was like, “I get it, okay.” I mean, it wasn’t new to me, but it was like, “Yeah, every time you talk about the garbage, it becomes a hot topic.” Is that a make-or-break issue in the relationship? No. But just because something isn’t make-or-break doesn’t mean you can’t get clarity on that subject, gain clarity, and connect that much more with each other, so you finally understand each other and have something cleared up.
So the question many people ask is, “Whose job is it?” I mentioned this in my podcast and spoke about it during the weekend. It’s an important idea for all marriage topics, including bank accounts and all these things people ask about: Whose job is it? Should we have two joint accounts? Should we have one? Can people ask me these things? The first thing I want to say—and I have many ideas; I’m not going to stop at this one point—is: Who determines whose job it is? When you’re asking this question, when people are asking these questions, “Whose job is it?” who are they asking? Meaning, you’re asking me, but where am I going to get information about whose job it is? It’s not my opinion. That’s an opinion, right? If I tell you it’s the man’s job to take out the garbage, that’s an opinion. What does that mean, “It’s your job”? It means that I decided. So what? Someone else will decide that it’s a woman’s job. The determining factor—this is not an opinion. This is a fact. The determining factor for everything, anything and everything, any job, what you must do and what you must not do, is Hashem. It’s the Torah and the rabbis. That’s it. There’s only one source: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. It’s all the same. One source for jobs: who must do this, who can—Hashem is the one who decides if there is a job to do or not to do. Nobody on this planet can say that it’s a specific gender’s role—the man’s or woman’s—to take out the garbage. Nobody can tell you that, and if they do, they’re wrong. They might tell you an opinion: “I feel like this is more appropriate,” or “I feel like this works better.” Okay, that’s a different question. That wasn’t the question. The question people ask me is, “Whose job is it?” And the answer to that question is nobody’s. It has to get done. It’s something in the house that has to get done. So I feel like let’s shift away to another question and take the stress off of that, because if you’re asking a certain question and the question is off base, you’re going to get off answers or no answers. To my knowledge, there is no Torah or anything on that assigning an official job. People have this idea from certain groups that they promote: “You must have a joint account. It has to be like that.” Where is there a Torah? Someone tell me, please enlighten me. Call me. I’m really not being sarcastic. I really mean it. If someone shows me Torah that says whether to have joint or separate bank accounts, I’ll be enlightened. I’ll retract. I’ll delete this entire podcast, this entire class. I’ll delete it. Really, I will. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m wrong. But I don’t believe there is such a thing.
So the question should shift to: What’s correct, what’s proper, and what works for us? Or, what do I do? Let’s word it like that: What do I do? Forget about the world when there’s no official Torah direction on it. The question is not, “What do people do?” The question should be, “How—what do I do?” We argue about the garbage all the time. What do I do? How do we navigate? What do we do? How do we take care of this? I think once you ask the question like that, you’re more inclined to get the answers on your own.
So the first step is, if this is a source of tension for one year, two years, three years, even for a week, and you’ve been arguing about this—let’s say specifically the garbage, who takes it out—everyone has their deep insights: “It’s a man’s job because it’s heavy. The man does heavy things.” “No, it’s the woman’s job, even though it’s heavy, but it’s something that’s part of the kitchen and part of the household.” And the man will say, “No.” The woman will say, “It’s not really part of the kitchen. It’s post-kitchen cooking and cleaning. Cooking is really mine. Cleaning the house is mine. Cleaning up after the cooking is really not part of the kitchen.” I mean, I’ve heard these things. What are you saying? What are you saying? You’re all saying the same thing: Garbage smells, and I don’t want to do it. Admit it. Garbage. Let’s do it together. I’m like a support group here. Take your husband or wife and say, “Hey, garbage smells. Repeat it: Garbage smells. I don’t want to take it out. What do we do?”
I think that was hilarious, by the way. The next step would be to have a conversation about it. Again, this isn’t exclusive to garbage; it’s any issue. Go for a walk. I like to tell people this because a walk is relaxing. You’re in front of people; you can’t fight too much. Walk and tell your spouse, “Okay, listen, we’ve been arguing about the garbage for a long time. We clearly have a hard time with this. What can we do?” Come up with a plan. It shouldn’t be, “So you’re going to do this already? So you’re going to give in to it?” No, that’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. That might be an indication that your relationship has other issues. If you can’t have a conversation about something so minuscule—garbage—okay, maybe, maybe not. But “What can we do?” means, “What should we do about this?” We both don’t want to, and let’s come up with a compromise. We both don’t want to do this. So we both don’t want to. But that can’t happen. So what do we do? The first step would be a compromise. Let’s say it’s twice a week. I’m just giving examples. Twice a week: Monday, Thursday. Again, you can use this for so many examples that go on. If you have cleaning help, so you have cleaning help. But you do Monday and I’ll do Thursday. Just compromise and finish. All right, you take it out of the house and I’ll take it down and bring it back up to the house, whatever it is. It’s so easy. You make a compromise and finish. It’s with almost everything. If you’re both not seeing eye to eye, you’ve got to give somewhere, got to give somewhere.
Now, on a side note, don’t get stuck making a compromise and then seeing your spouse not fulfill their part. Then you say, “Okay, what are you doing? How am I doing this? What’s happening? You didn’t fulfill your part.” That just means it’s not working. And that’s not the right—that’s just not the right compromise. It doesn’t mean they’re neglecting you and not caring about the compromise. It means it doesn’t work. People get stuck with this, too: “You’re not upholding your part of the deal, so the whole thing is out.” No, it just means this was really hard for your spouse to do. “I really—I know they don’t love me. If they love me, they would do it.” Okay, what if you tell your spouse, “Jump off the bridge,” and they don’t? Does that mean they don’t love you? “No, that’s extreme.” No, it’s not. It means they love you. They love you, they love themselves, and they have a hard time with things. That’s what it means. People get stuck with this: “If you love me, you would.” I think. That’s manipulative. No, they love you. They love you. And if they love you, they’ll do anything for you. No, not true. They’re not going to jump off the bridge and I could eat, not kosher (ritually permissible) for you. So what happens in those areas? Why, why those areas? If you would tell your spouse, “I want you to eat, not kosher. And I want you to do aveirot (transgressions).” And they say, “No,” it means they don’t love you. Why doesn’t it mean? “Oh, that’s because Hashem said, ‘Don’t do it.’” Oh, so it’s not, it’s not a proof that if they love you, they’ll do anything for you. No, it just means they love you. And some things are hard. Well, why is that such a hard concept? “I love you. And this is hard for me.” So I just believe it’s not illogical. I believe it’s a manipulating tactic. Maybe it’s subconsciously. Most likely it is. But in any event, don’t get stuck with that. Like everything else, compromise, revisit it. Yes, take your marriage seriously. Many people are very haphazard and just like, “I don’t know, whatever.” It’s ridiculous. Don’t be haphazard. Compromise, revisit it, come up with something else. And if it’s not working, it might be time to accept the way that it is and just move on. And that’s already another class in itself.
So think about this. Pray to Hashem. Try to have a wonderful relationship.