Coming Home
The day I go to the mikva is probably the most exciting day of the month. I walk around the entire day grinning like I have a secret, dreamily imagining my husband and thinking about our reunion that will take place in only twelve hours… six hours… three hours…
As soon as I put my kids to bed I start my preparations. I try to get to the mikva with at a time when there won’t be much waiting so that I can get out as quickly as possible. I then speed home, going forty on residential streets, my heart beating with anticipation. Of course this looks like it’s going to be a wonderful evening.
Except when I walk through the door, everything changes. I become this tense, crazy, haphephobic monster. My husband tries to greet me with a kiss, and I duck. He’ll ask me an innocent question, something like “Do you want ice in your Diet Dr. Pepper?” and I start to scream and throw things. Eventually I ease my way back into things—first a poke, then a handshake, and we take it from there.
I am doing the best I can to understand why this happens. I know it isn’t my husband since I can think of nothing but being with him the entire time we are apart. The best I can come up with is that I find the cycle of together-apart-together-apart to be difficult to tolerate. The nature of our relationship is so different from one part of the cycle to the next, and I can’t just wiggle my nose and change into sexual Avigayil from just-a-good-friend Avigayil. Does anybody have any other insights? Advice?
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Ha! I have the opposite problem - I get home and usually it's so late all my husband wants to do is eat dinner and go to sleep. Harchokas are the hardest part for me. It makes me nuts to have to put the baby down on the floor so he can pick her up.
I once went to the mikvah on a Sat. night, and I came home to candles, wine, and a clean house :) This helped immensely. Unfortunately, most other nights there is no time or energy for this sort of thing, and the more rushed the evening feels the worse it is for me.
I'm so sorry you experience this! What makes a huge difference for me, is my husband drives me to the mikvah and waits for me in a nearby parking lot. When I get into the car, we get a nice kiss hello! The few times where I've had to drive myself, that moment of walking through the door feels really awkward at first. Either way, it still takes us a few days to get used to being able to touch each other again.
I realize your husband driving you would be difficult with kids, and I'm sure you've tried all sorts of things. Maybe, if you have a cellphone, you can call him when you're leaving the mikvah, so he can meet you outside your home - someplace sort of neutral, where you can spend 5 minutes just being together. It might relieve some of the stress of feeling like you have to immediately be sexual Avigayil.
And maybe, try to be a little less "just-a-good-friend Avigayil." Unless this really bothers your husband and/or you (I don't think there are any halachic issues with this?), maybe during friendly Avigayil stage, you and your husband can make plans for things you can do after you go to the mikvah. For instance, my husband and I will discuss a movie we want to watch, and will talk about renting it when we can snuggle on the couch together, and share a bowl of popcorn. It's not sexual, but it's closer than "just friends" and helps to remind us that we have a romantic relationship, even if we can't touch each other. We're still feeling (no pun intended) our way through all these things.
FromBeneath, we talk about those things constantly, which is what helps me keep the excited feeling throughout the niddah period. But when I walk through the door all those feelings disappear and it takes me a while to get them back.
Ooch. Well, first of all, tell your husband that greeting you at the door with a kiss is definitely out. That's not fair to you, apparently.
How do you tell him that you're tahor? I mean, obviously, you went to mikvah and now you're back, but I learned that just as you had to tell your husband that you were niddah, you have to tell him that now you're tahor. So maybe you need some kind of routine for that that puts you in charge and lets you ease back into permitted status?
Maybe it's a psychological holdover from before you were married, when touching any guy besides immediate family was taboo? (I'm assuming that was the case for you, since you say you were raised Orthodox.)
Just throwing some thoughts out, because that doesn't sound like a comfortable way to live! Hatzlacha!
I hope it won't seem like an invasion of privacy to have a man reading (and commenting) on this list. I think it should be noted that, despite their bravado, husbands have feelings too ... and mikveh night is often just as awkward and intimidating for them. As such, not greeting your husband at the door with a kiss can be just as hurtful as being undesirably kissed (albeit to a different person) - it unambiguously says "stay away from me" at a very sensitive time when the husband is trying to read your mood and feelings.
I'm not advocating doing what is not comfortable ... but rather simply being sensitive to the other's feelings.
Definitely a good point, and I hope Avigayil isn't uncomfortable -- I appreciate hearing both sides of the perspective, as long as it's done with tzniut. Which I think ipseq did well.
sure i understand where the man is coming from.
it's his duty to be "on" that night, no matter how he feels or what he's been up to
It must be tremendous pressure on him.....
Avigayil, I don't think you're alone in this! I've heard other women mention it. It is so disorienting, this dual life we lead.
The thing I've heard people suggest is to assume that some inhibition will happen at first, and plan for it. Maybe tell your husband that you don't want there to be an expectation of physical affection right away, so you won't be unconsciously feeling that pressure.
And then try to make it like it was when you were dating - watch a romantic movie, go for a moonlit walk, have your favorite dinner (maybe even a glass of wine?) By the end of the evening you'll probably be a lot more mellow, and it will feel natural rather than forced.