What I find that no one ever tells a chosson and kallah before they get married is that sheva brachos aren’t really fun. And you have to go to seven of them. First you walk in, and everyone says, “You’re late.”
You’re always late. You’re two people who have just started living together, and you haven’t really ironed out the kinks of working around each other, and you have to somehow get out every single night for the entire first week to go to a simcha, and by the way, we’re not starting until you get there.
And then you have to sit there in silence and listen to speeches. And a lot of the speakers have to give sholom bayis advice.
“Communicate,” they say, going on for 20 minutes. “Talk talk talk. Let me demonstrate.” But the chosson and kallah can’t talk during the speech, and they’re just sitting there, slowly polishing off an entire tray of pickles.
And even between the speeches, the chosson and kallah are pretty quiet. Firstly, they’re tired. I spent my entire sheva brachos driving from sheva brachos to sheva brachos, and when I wasn’t, I was moving furniture into an apartment from at least four other houses, apartments and dorm rooms.
And on top of being tired, they’re also thinking:
“What did I get into, here? This marriage thing is harder than I thought. And why is she always tired?”
So here are some answers to the questions you’re silently pondering, but bear in mind that as marriage goes on, your questions will only get bigger. But my hope is that you’ll realize that, “Good. It’s not just my spouse who’s like this.”
MEN: Why do women have so many shoes?
If you’re a guy, then before you got married, you probably assumed that your wife had like one pair of shoes. Or no pairs of shoes. Honestly, you never really thought about her shoes. You probably couldn’t even say for sure if she wears shoes. But now that you’ve merged all those houses and dorm rooms, you realize that about 80 percent of your bedroom is shoes.
But why do women need so many pairs of shoes? The answer, as far as I can tell, is that the shoes are not comfortable. But every pair is uncomfortable in a different way. So they wear a pair of shoes that pinches their feet, and then the next time they go out, they wear a pair that pinches a different part of their feet.
(You don’t believe me that women’s shoes are uncomfortable? Try on your wife’s shoes. Trust me; everyone in the room will be uncomfortable.)
WOMEN: Why don’t men listen?
If you’re a woman, you might be wondering why sometimes your husband will nod along and pretend to listen, but then when you come back to the topic later, he’ll ask a question that shows that he clearly wasn’t listening. But you’re lucky. A lot of guys will pretend to listen to the second thing too, because they know that if they try to understand it, they’ll inevitably ask a question that shows they weren’t listening to the first thing.
So if there’s one conversation ever during which we were preoccupied and missed something you said (and the chances of this happening get higher the longer we’ve been married), there’s a pretty good chance that we’re going to be afraid to get involved in anything else you tell us, ever. And even if we try, we’re only half listening. The other half is trying desperately to remember if there’s anything you’re saying that ties into something you’ve said before, so we don’t ask any dumb questions. And because we’re thinking about that, we’re missing more things.
MEN: Why does it take women so long to leave the house?
A lot of women take forever to get ready to leave, but it’s not because they’re wasting time. It’s because they don’t wear their outside shoes around the house. They wear their inside shoes and their inside head covering etc. So it takes a while to get out. A lot of husbands have figured this out and try to account for it, but a lot of women still aren’t aware of this, and won’t start getting ready until their husband does. And it doesn’t take him long, because he’s already wearing shoes. So he generally has to start getting ready, which involves getting up off the couch, and then she’ll start. But the thing is, getting up off the couch is usually all he needs. She leaves the room, and then he sits back down. Or he continues doing whatever he was doing before, but standing hunched over the desk.
WOMEN: Why won’t guys ask for directions?
You’d think this question is no longer relevant, since people have GPS. But a GPS doesn’t always know what it’s talking about either. Sometimes, instead of saying, “Turn here,” it says, “You should have turned back there. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
Why won’t men ask for directions? Every woman has that question, but they don’t stop to think that if we don’t listen to you, what makes you think we’re gonna listen to some stranger at the side of the road? What does he know? He doesn’t even have a car!
What did we have in common, again? I don’t remember anymore.
You get married because you have things in common, but then you move in together and realize how many things you actually don’t have in common. And the things you used to have in common don’t really matter anymore. “Oh, look, we liked the same type of music.” The only music you’re going to be listening to for a really long time is kids’ music in the minivan.
It’s not important where you’re coming from. It’s important where you’re going. Except that you’ll get there late, because one of you can’t get out of the house and the other won’t ask for directions.
By Mordechai Schmutter
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, among other papers. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].
