There is a post on the Yeshiva World News forum about having nothing to talk about with your husband and the comments that follow are quite atrocious. Instead of facing the huge problem of having nothing in common or of interest in your lives, the world is telling you to write thank you notes, get permission from your rabbi to go to concerts, or take cooking classes. All fine ideas for dates, but what about actually facing the issue head on? The issue starts in the shidduch process, where people wonder what to talk about on their dates. It ends during the engagement, wedding, and post simcha celebrations, because you can avoid real life and talk about everything going on. I have friends who literally had nothing to talk about with their wives and I always wondered about the awkward silences that must have persisted in their homes because they were too frum for movies or post marriage dating.
me and my husband have run out of things to do at night in our shana rishona….he learns and wroks and i work as well, but when it hits 8PM we are going out of our minds…..
any ideas? What did you do?
My theory on dating and marriage was always that things in common and ability to carry on in endless conversation trumped most anything else. I figured that when my wife and I were immobile and shitting into diapers we could at least laugh together, right? Yet, shadchanim would never tell me such things, they loved to stress the “good family” thing that seemed to translate “great grandparents knew the chofetz chaim” or something of the sort, which always somehow made the girl amazing.
1) Learn Torah together! Pick something neither of you ever learned that interests both of you.
2) Explore NYC! There are a zillion places to do and see and many are inexpensive. Take a walk through some of the parks, ride the Staten Island Ferry, go to the top of the Empire State Building. And many great museums have evening hours, with great lectures on interesting topics.
3) Visit different shuls together! There are late minyanim in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx and most of the shuls have a kosher ezras nashim; take the subway or bus and enjoy each others company on the way and on the way home. In many cases there is a shiur before or after.
4) If your rabbis permit it (mine does) enjoy a theatrical performance together! There is some great theater in NYC and is isn’t anything like the pagan rites Chazal complained about.
Have a great time!!!
Other friends of mine seemed to overlook the lack of conversation, by thinking they would be having enough sex with their trophy wives to not need conversation. Those marriages lasted the shortest and I was never one to be “dude, do you like anything about her besides her great ass” I was always focused on attitude, laughter, and interesting things to talk about.
Did you finish all your Thank You cards?
Meals prep should take at least an hour, if you don’t live on take-out (or pick-ups from mom / mom-in-law).
Did you get the Salad Time cookbook as a gift? If not, that’s a must. From checking the lettuce to making the dressing (from scratch, not from a bottle) should take up a good portion of your evening.
Another good way to spend from 8-9 is visiting an aunt or uncle or mother’s cousin and letting them see your album.
You can’t really judge an entire community by their silly forum comments, but if you look around the web at the conversations about marriage from the yeshivish perspective it’s pretty unbearable. It’s as if the men marry because they are told and the women marry because they want a wedding and recognition from their already married friends. No one likes to mention that you’re spending the rest of your life with someone you have nothing to talk to about. This may be the reason that my yeshiva friends have wives that seem to be like mutes. Don’t tell me it’s a tznius thing for the wife to not have any conversation with their husbands ever.