Rabbi Shmuley's Blog

So many of us today are dissatisfied with life – there’s a vague sense that life is passing us by. We wake up with a general feeling of malaise.

I was counseling an unhappy wife who left her first husband, got remarried, decided she shouldn’t have left her first husband, and now wanted to get divorced and start dating again. It was pretty clear to me that she was never going to be happy in any relationship.

Shattered dreams, missed opportunities, failed promise. These are the things that cause us to sigh and feel like we missed the boat. Added to that is the inadequacy of our relationships. We don’t feel connected. We want to be better husbands, better parents, more respectful and appreciative children, but we lack the inspiration to do it. 

Each of us has a dual nature within us, what writers call "the better and the darker angels of our nature." Two opposing camps, waging a war for control of our conscience. Like two kings fighting to take a city, our positive side wants us to be sunny, forward-looking, and joyous. But our darker angels want us to be bitter, feel victimized, and depressed. Why? Because the natural state of people is to want to be happy. And if we’re depressed, then we’ll take steps to become happy, usually the wrong steps. A husband who feels like his life has passed him by might have an affair to feel better about himself. A woman might shop, becoming a materialist. A teen might start having sex or doing drugs.

The point is that this feeling of malaise, of wasted promise, is from the dark side of our nature. The part of us that lives permanently in the past, that is always scrutinizing what we’ve done right and wrong, the part that expends all its energy scrutinizing that which cannot be fixed and has precious left to give to those things that can be fixed, is not our good side. And we have to know where this originates from so as to quash it and find joy with who we are rather that what we could have been.

‘I could have been a contender’ is not a joyous life philosophy.

1. Stop watching so much TV and give yourself a goal of reading a book every two weeks. That’s 25 books a year. You’ll be less sedentary, more educated, more reflective, and will feel so much better about yourself.

2. Stop going to movies on Saturday nights and go with your spouse to a lounge or restaurant where you can talk. If not every Saturday night, then at least twice a month.

3. Start having regular dinners with your kids and talk to them. Or, learn something with them every night, from historical trivia, to the Bible, to some great documents or speeches of the American republic.

4. Begin eating healthy and exercising. Start feeling good about your ability to control your weight and to get control.

5. Fine-tune your job to become something that is uniquely suited to your gifts. If you’re a lawyer and you hate doing real estate contracts, start moving into a field of law that better engages your interest, like family law or intellectual property. 

6. Bring spiritual enlightenment into your life. Join discussion groups, go to more lectures and debates, enroll in a class at night, start going to Church and Synagogue.

7. Stop being so hard on yourself. Find the good in you. Learn to first like yourself and then to love yourself. Don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be a narcissist. But enough to feel good about the unique gifts you have to share with others.

Don’t waste your life feeling bad about missed opportunities or squandered potential. Some of the greatest historical figures were remembered for even one thing they did. Be special by focusing on developing your gifts now. Compliment your spouse. Study with your children. Get focused at work on something you love. And develop your mind and heart through spiritual endeavor and study.

The Differences

1. For men, attraction is physiological, for women it is psychological
   • Men are physical creatures. A man will always feel initial attraction to a women’s appearance. If I offer to match a man with a woman, he always asks "What does she look like?"
   • A women’s attraction is more on a psychological level.
   • It is said that men fall in love with their eyes and women fall in love with their ears. There is great truth in this. Men are attracted to a women's beauty, while women must be won over by a man whispering sweet nothings to her.
   • Men are drawn directly to a woman, like a straight line. Woman feel her attraction growing and evolving, like a circle.
2. Women are in control, men would like to be!
   • Men like to feel that they are driver’s seat, making the important decisions, completely empowered to rule their own lives.
   • In reality, women are the ones who are really in control in both the private and public realms of the relationship. It’s just that men think this is not the case.
3. Men are "freelance," women are "salaried."
   • A man never gets caught up in a single deal, but feels he must always move on, improving on his last accomplishment. (This is why the idea of committing to one women seems so unappealing to your average guy.)
   • Women want the opposite. They want someone to drawn to them, someone who find them beautiful, to whom they can commit for life. They are like workers on a salary, rather than freelancers. They are not usually as afraid of putting all their eggs in one basket!
4. Women want confident men. Men aren’t always self-confident.
   • Women are similarly attracted to men to for their sense of self-confidence. Women love a man with a plan. They love man who is ambitious, who has a vision.
   • However, self-confidence does not come easily to men. Men are like a line, it is finite, with a beginning and an end. Self-doubt plagues men throughout their lives.
   • In relationships, women’s natural self-confidence is a boon -- women can confer it to men and thus give relationship as solid foundation.
5. Women enjoy the moment, men think of its outcome.
   • For men, this is a means to accomplishing something. They think linearly, always anticipating the outcome of any endeavor.
   • Women are far better than men at living in the moment. Like a circle that returns on itself, women enjoy the present. That is why patience comes so must more easily to women.
6. Women expect men to be competent. Men want women to be independent.
   • A man and women always has to feel that they are retaining their choice to give, to love, their choice to choose who they want to be in a relationship with. No one ever likes to be coerced. You must never abuse someone by forcing him or her to show affection or love they don’t feel
   • Women expect their men to be competent human beings. No one likes someone who can’t cope, and women are especially keen on men who maintain a healthy balance between their personal and private lives, and do not get overwhelmed by romance
   Similarly, men want women to be independent. One of the major problems facing women in dating is that few of them have learned the art of on the one hand being aggressive and yet on the other had, remaining feminine. It’s a tough balance to strike!

Today's Shmuleyism:
Men and women are equal, but different, which is why they need each other. Too often, however, we seek to blight gender difference and become dopplegangers. But neither should we allow the gender divide to grow into a chasm that cannot be bridged. In this sense, men and women should retain their differences, so as to retain their polarity and attraction, but should also seek to be positively influenced by those differences in order to draw closer.