Love & Judaism

Is your relationship in trouble? This article reveals five warning signs that could help you turn things around while you still can.

Thanking our spouses often might not feel genuine at first, but we usually have no problem thanking cashiers, postal workers and strangers. Surely, we should aim to extend this kindness to our own partners in life.

Subconsciously I had thought that marriage would fix any feelings of loneliness I previously had. This was a sore misconception.

Love fills space. Respect creates space.

I had to make sure I was understanding this. “Are you serious? You mean even when the couple is married, they purposely aren’t together or even hug, kiss or anything for weeks?”

When we unveil our inner dimensions, our behavior is no longer such a mystery to us.

Try following these rules and the honeymoon need never end.

We have the ability to perceive any person and any situation in a positive way, if we choose to do so.

My husband proposed to me on our third date. That’s pretty unusual, even for a Chassidic girl and boy.

Without true intimacy, we can’t experience our full capacity to love or be loved. When we ride along the surface, we not only fail to achieve our relationship potential, we fall short of realizing our own.

Many years we walked to the parade, but today, I cannot walk that far. Today, I am home alone with my memories.

By the time I got to college, I realized that the threshold for a guy to express his feelings was absurdly low. A text saying, “Hey, what’s up?” was the equivalent of a bouquet of roses.

All my deeply ingrained fears and doubts smirked at the glorious opportunity to rule over my mind in a moment of weakness.

When you get used to something, after a while you take it for granted. You don’t see the blessing in it or value it as much. It becomes less endearing

Nearly eight years ago, when Rachel began to lose her balance, she was diagnosed with atypical Parkinson’s disease . . .

Sage advice that you’ve heard time and time again and that you’d be much better off disregarding.

I notice a man begging in the shadowed netherworld, sitting low down on his blanket stoop. My date strides past without hesitation.

Who hasn’t been thrown off balance by a difficult person? The perpetrator could be virtually anyone—a spouse, relative, friend, coworker or boss.

Strange things happen when we get hurt . . .

Part of building successful marriages depends on learning to hear what our husbands are really trying to say. So here are eight things men say and what they say they really mean.

It is such a gift to have someone who believes in you, in your integrity and capacity to do good things in the world.

When spouses unknowingly communicate with each other less than positively, they create distance in their relationship.

I see how my friends’ husbands treat them. They practically trip over their feet trying to take care of their wives. You can see the love in their eyes.

“I’m not Jewish,” Frank said to me. “Does that mean you wouldn’t marry me?”

People treat you the way they subconsciously perceive you expect to be treated.

G-d makes a very precise calculation, titrating our spouse’s flaws to our unique vulnerabilities.

While we want, and may even feel entitled to, everything good in life, having it all will stunt our growth.

Whether you’re ready to throw in the towel or just want to improve your marriage, here are four practical perspectives that can help your marriage survive and thrive.

The Rebbe’s perspective on love teaches us how to experience true love.

Praising our spouse reminds us that the person we share life with is wonderful in his or her own way.

Blind spots keep us from achieving happiness and fulfillment in ourselves and in relationships. They also create negative patterns with the kind of person we attract. While frustrating, these patterns can clue you in to changes you need to make; if you’re the only constant in the equation, you’re what needs to change!

As my learning intensified and expanded, I began to teach the meaning behind the Torah stories. This approach also failed miserably since, as any woman knows, you should never give a man instructions on how to drive around the corner- let alone how to live his entire life...

When we look more deeply into the Ten Commandments, we will find not only spiritual advice for enhancing our marriages, but very practical and essential guidelines as well.

We recognize that we are marrying what we see, but we are also marrying what we don’t see.

I felt completely inadequate. Me? Help the Jewish people? When I didn't even identify as a Jew?

Are you searching for love in the present, or in your past? Are you looking for your soulmate or are you looking for yourself?

With the union of the halves, independently whole at the outset, the groom utters the most romantic, most beautiful of sentiments: With this ring, I separate you, I liberate you from the work of your half, and sanctify our souls into one whole, to journey, to labor, to struggle for the completion of our whole and our world, together...

As in a marriage, when the wedding-party is over, the couple's true intimate life begins. Shemini Atzeret is described as the "time of intimacy with the Divine." At this time, we ask for rain - the symbol of intimacy between heaven and earth.

Does everyone have a soulmate? If yes, why is it so difficult to find one's mate, and why do many never succeed? Is a soulmate an inevitable absolute, or are there exceptions? To what extent a role does human effort and decision making play in the process?

If insisting that you will only date Jews makes you racist, does insisting that you will only date men make you sexist?

To be intimate means to go into a place that is private, that is sacred, that is set aside. It means one person entering into the private, sacred part of another human being's existence...

One day, Sara tried a different approach. "Honey," she said to her husband. "I know you this isn't the way you see it. But please, do it just for me!"

"I want someone who's kind but not the too-kind type that lets himself be walked on, smart but not haughty, assertive but not overbearing, handsome but not vain.." The Rebbe laughed. "It sounds like you want to marry more than one person"

Is the mystique and the romance, the music and the moonlight, just nature's way of hoodwinking men and women to reproduce?

Masculine and feminine modes of communication reflect our respective arenas of spiritual expertise. Unfortunately, the differences can sometimes result in unintended discord

Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other, but actually seeks to cultivate it. Love, like the act of creation, is the courageous act of creating space for the presence of the other.

You are engaged. You are definitely glowing, though you're not sure if it is from joy or sweat. Where is the fairytale that you pictured for so many years? What is wrong with you?

There were no greater festivals for Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur. On these days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out... and dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? "Young man, raise your eyes and see which you select for you..."

Only when we turn around do we realize the truth, the inner essence, and then we are “face to face”—which does not only mean that we can finally look at each other, but more so, that we can look in each other . . .

Marriage has been getting a bad rap lately, and it’s entirely unjustified. Decades of studies on human wellbeing provide the same conclusions consistently . . .

No man is permitted to use his wife solely for his own personal, physical gratification. Thus intimacy, in the framework of Jewish marriage, like any of the other Torah commandments, is to be enjoyed, enhanced and sanctified.

Who would have expected that within just two years from their wedding day, their relationship, once so passionate and loving, would have already grown stale?

I get the impression that while it maybe cool to be someone's girlfriend or partner, getting married and becoming a wife is no longer deemed respectable...

The more you make space within yourself for another person, the more likely you are to draw the right one to yourself...

The truth is that we have very little control over our moods and whether other people like us or not or what they choose to do with their lives. People can suddenly reject us or can be so overwhelmed with their own issues that they seem to not care. When we are dependent on others for reassurance, approval or understanding, we remain suspicious and insecure...

Why not keep our ring on our first finger? Our pointer may be our strongest and most passionate. But, our fourth finger, our ring finger, is our gentlest...

Because we live with family members, there are innumerable opportunities for experiencing frustration, hurt and upset.

No matter what we choose to do in order to address our anger, it cannot include waiting for the world around us to improve.

If you want to go far in life, partner with someone who shares your vision, and whose skills and abilities will complement yours.

Jody’s husband, Ari, came home from a business meeting, and he happily announced that he had brought her a treat: some cheesecake. She thought this was a little unusual, but sweet of him and went to open the fridge. There she found a see-through container with the very small, sunken remains of a piece of cheesecake. Strange, weird, funny, yet also vaguely insulting, even hurtful.

Couples who remember to compliment each other often are usually much happier.