I’m friends with a lot of guys whose wives hate me.
I’ll be sailing along thinking everything is hunky dory between us and then suddenly I’ll say something and I’ll see her temperature has turned ice cold towards me. And it never changes.
Once it was when I said this secular girl I was dating would have to start going to shul with me or we’d be through. And the wife just took a strong exception to my statement. She didn’t say anything. Her body language just changed.
Another time I was explaining to the Mrs. over Shabbat dinner what "hooking up" meant.
"Thank goodness we’re Orthodox and we don’t have to deal with that," she said. And forever after, her demeanor was icey towards me.
Most of the time these blokes have no problem telling me, "My wife hates you."
It’s unsettling. It’s enough to make me think there must be something wrong with me.
I’ll never be able to top one friend who told me: "Here’s how things stand in this house: I don’t trust you. My wife hates you. My kids fear you."
I often feel like I am holding on by a thread. And the name of that thread is "Orthodox Judaism."
