Trigger Warning: This story includes detailed and explicit descriptions of control, neglect and abuse.

Ben never put his hands on me.

I was not physically abused, but my body paid the price for staying in the relationship.

My body bears the scars of physical abuse, even if it was not  inflicted by Ben’s hand directly.

Here’s my story.

I come from a very dysfunctional background and have no support systems. Never had.

My father tried to kill me when I was sixteen years old, and I have not been in touch with him since. It’s been over 20 years now.

I have a mother and sister who I am in touch with, but cannot be of much help to me, and no other family whatsoever. 

 

When I first arrived here, in California, I was all alone. I got a job as a salesperson for an IsraBen construction company, which I liked, because I am a native Hebrew speaker.

The company kept some apartments for employees and I was glad to have a roof over my head, since I could not afford rent anywhere else on my salary.

I was pretty good at my job, and I counted myself lucky for the roof over my head, work to keep me busy, and occasionally, enough pay left over to buy a decent meal. I was satisfied.

The only thing missing was a social life. I was all alone. I didn’t have anybody in the world in my corner and I didn’t know anybody in California.

 

The company didn’t always pay in a timely manner. Sometimes, when they were late with payments, I literally did not have enough funds to pay for food.

There was another salesman at the company, Ben, who noticed that when the paycheck was late, I was in real distress, and he started inviting me to join him for lunch, and paying.

He was really sweet, and caring. He was a great listener, and he began doing all kinds of little, helpful things for me.

He became my best friend in the whole world.

Eventually, during our deep, meaningful conversations, I shared my background with him. I told him about my very broken home and that my biggest dream is to have a truly happy family of my own one day.

He was my confidant; my sounding board- my Hero.

I had never heard the terms ‘love bombing’ or ‘narcissism’ at the time. He was simply the first person on this earth who did anything for me in a long time, and my gratitude was overwhelming.

I felt like he had my back, and I could rely on him. I thought we were healthy best friends.

I was happy with our relationship the way it was. I wouldn’t have changed anything.

Unfortunately, the glow of the fairy-tale wore off pretty fast; I was in for a very rude awakening.

 

One Monday, out of the blue, I got a text from the company at six AM: “From this day on, the apartment is no longer available for employee use. The space needs to be cleared by 6:30 PM. Today.”

I had nowhere to go.

I got out of bed and wandered around for a while. 

I had no clue what to do next, but if there is anything I am good at, it is surviving in chaos and crisis.

I quickly packed up my personal things and put them in my car. I didn’t want to be late for work if they were downsizing or something.

While I was driving, I called my best friend. (Ben was the only person I could call at that point. I had racked my brains for alternatives. I had none.)

 “Listen, I have no idea how to proceed. My day is going to be crazy. I don’t know what to do. All my earthly possessions are in my car; I got nothing.”

“Don’t worry Kitty,” he said. “It will all turn out okay. I’ll help you work through this. Why don’t you drop your things off at my place. You can stay here for a few days, just until you sort yourself out.”

I knew he lives in a small condo. “I am not comfortable with that,” I said. “I don’t want to impose… I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to stay with you right now.”

“Okay…” Ben said. “May I ask why you feel that way?”

“I am a religious woman, Ben. It’s just… small quarters, you know? I don’t want any boundaries to get crossed between us.”

“Oh, no,” Ben said. “I would never! Don’t worry, Kitty, I don’t expect any benefits here, okay? We’ll keep all the boundaries you want. I’ll sleep on my side of the bed, and you keep to your side.”

I had to start work, so the conversation ended.

That evening, I moved my things into Ben’s apartment.

Ben was true to his word: He slept on the bed with me, but kept to his side of it.

At least… for the first night.

The boundaries went out the window very fast. The small space and constant proximity seemed to trigger something in Ben. He started using innuendo in our exchanges, and over the weekend, he made several sexual advances. When I demurred, he pushed harder. He escalated to using coercive tactics to get me to let him cross the invisible line in the middle of that bed.

He did not force himself onto me; not sexually. There was no aggression. He just directed the conversation in a way that made it very clear to me that if he doesn’t get what he wants, there is a chance that I will end up on the street. He may not have directly forced me, but he had all the power. 

The whole situation kind of coerced me to sleep with him

 

He wore me down with a potent mixture of flattery, begging, making me feel guilty, and veiled threats, until I succumbed.. 

I had no other options, nobody else on the planet I could call for assistance besides for him.

After a couple of days, it became clear that I was going to need to stay on a long-term basis. I didn’t have enough money to even rent a guest room somewhere else. 

Ben asked me to pay half of his rent if I was going to share the apartment. “We’ll be roommates,” he said. 

Like roommates, my ass. We were ‘like roommates’ with benefits, because there was only one bedroom and just one bed.

 

Trigger Warning: Avoiding pregnancy.

I will speak very openly here. 

I did not want to get pregnant, but Ben refused to consider using a condom. He swore that he was very adept at the pull-out method.

Ben talked a lot, but the technical follow-through was very lacking.

If he ever meant to follow through on his promises. 

I think he just said whatever would pacify me in the moment, whatever he needed to say to just shut me up, and then he blithely went along and did whatever he pleased.

 

Now that I was living in his apartment, Ben  was suddenly exerting more control over me at work. He’d tell me to partner up with him on projects; only with him, on all projects. He started being rigid at work, demanding my exclusive attention. He started checking up on everything I was doing, commenting and correcting  me.

Ben and I were both salespeople. He was not my superior at work. I had been doing just fine at my job before I moved in with him… better than he was, in fact. I had a stronger work ethic, I worked harder, and made more sales than he ever did.

I went to complain to the Boss- I told him that Ben was being very controlling and not letting me focus on my work, not letting me do it my way. The Boss went back and reported my complaint directly to Ben, instead of helping me. “Work it out between yourselves, you are now his…thing/problem?” was the underlying message I was getting at work. 

I thought they were simply misogynistic. I didn’t realize that Ben had worked hard to create that perception, nurtured and developed it a long time before I fell into his clutches. (But they were also very misogynistic. And vulgar.)

One particularly vulgar manager at the company thanked me for helping him win a bet- he made money because, “Ha! I knew Ben could get you into bed over the weekend.”

That’s when I realized that Ben had told everyone at work we slept together- he’d been planning it, he shared his plans, and they’d been placing bets.

My experience with people here in LA is that they are not genuinely kind or helpful. Nobody is interested in actually providing assistance; they are all ‘fair-weather friends.’ They’ll eat you alive-without salt- if they will gain something from it.

 

At home, Ben felt entitled to comment and correct my every move as well. He did this by default, without forethought, like it was just a natural way to engage with other humans. 

 

I decided to leave the company where we both worked. I managed to find another job that would hire me, but it was far away, in Orange County. I didn’t care. I started driving back and forth to work each day. The commute was worth it for me to get away from Ben for a while.

 

Ben included me in his plans, and we went out to be social together. He introduced me to his crowd, which I didn’t like that much, and had only superficial interactions with.

One day, we were in the car together. Ben was driving like a maniac and playing some game on his phone. He was well over the speed limit and we were on the freeway.

Some car made a sudden stop. The truck in front of us braked abruptly, and Ben drove right into the back of that truck at high speed.

Thank G-d, we lived.

We both looked at each other, in shock.

“I can’t move my leg,” I realized.

Ben was opening his door. “Come on, Kitty. You can move it. Come on.””

“I can’t move my leg. My right leg.”

“Sure you can. Don’t be dramatic.”

“I’m serious, Ben. I cannot move my right leg at all.”

Ben refused to call an ambulance. “Okay, just wait two seconds,” he said. “We can handle this without an ambulance. Don’t be so spoiled.”

He called a friend, who came in his car and drove me to the emergency room. I assumed the leg was broken, but x-rays showed all the bones were intact.

They sent me to a specialist to check my spine. The specialist discovered that my tailbone had cracked in two, and one of the inner bones was disintegrated. That whole mess of dysfunctional bones was sitting right on my sciatic nerve.

It hurts me to this day. Every day, I still deal with pain in my right leg from that injury.

Just one example of how my body still bears the scars from my time with Ben. He may not have directly smashed my tailbone, but he drove recklessly, which resulted in this injury.

 

That evening, when I got back to the apartment, Ben was really nice to me again, but his generosity of spirit was a loan, and he felt entitled to demand payment in return with interest when we got into bed.

 

Somehow, I went back to work. I could not afford to lose that job. The commute was a lot harder with the injury. A few days later, my stomach suddenly started roiling, and I had a terrible premonition. A really bad feeling.

I drove myself to a pharmacy and got the morning after pill. I realized that there was a significant chance that Ben hadn’t kept his word about the pull-out method, especially that night when I was sick and in pain with a smashed tailbone.

I took the pill, and 24 hours later I was terribly sick. I didn’t initially connect those two occurrences: I thought, “what is wrong with  me? It must be the flu.” I took my temperature and it was normal.

I decided to just go to work. I ended up collapsing there. I managed to get myself back to the apartment, where I started vomiting violently.

I prayed so hard. “Please, G-d, don’t let me be pregnant. Anything but that. Please.”

My period never came. 

I still hadn’t said a word to Ben about any of it.

I took a pregnancy test, and it came out positive.

 

I took the pregnancy test on Shabbat afternoon. Ben was having a nap. I woke him up and said, “We need to talk, Ben- I’m pregnant.”

He squinted up at me. “Yalla,” he dismissively muttered. “I know you need money, but extortion? With a pregnancy? What is this, some game to you?”

I left the room. Let him go to hell, I thought. 

He turned over and went right back to sleep.

 

Later, when he got up and came out of the bedroom, I noticed him staring at me.

“Were you serious? Is this for real?” he asked.

“Yes, this is real.”

Then I told him this sentence, which I am putting down here exactly, word for word, the way I told it to him: “I want this child, but I will not be married to you.”

Ben’s expression shifted at that, but he didn’t try to change my mind at that moment. He could see that I was taking a stand and for once, he wouldn’t be able to cajole, guilt, and plain exhaust me into changing my mind. I should have known that his retreat was not the end of the battle for him; he was just regrouping and trying to find alternate strategies.

 

The minute Ben realized I was actually pregnant, it was like he vanished. The entire persona of the great listener, best friend that was present for me on occasion, even at this point, was completely over.

He stopped putting on that act entirely.

We lived in parallel and didn’t cross much.

Whenever Ben spoke to his family, though, he was suddenly including me. He’d hand me the phone: “Hey, Kitty- my sister wants to see who you are.”

“Hey, Kitty- come say hi. It’s my Mom.”

“Come meet my Mom- she’s going to love you.”

Ben’s Mom forged a connection with me. She was curious about me.

“Hey, Kitty, do you have a minute? My Mom says you’re more fun to talk to than I am.”

My conversations with Ben’s Mom were fun and upbeat. His mother was so loving and affectionate, and I began feeling warmly toward her. I felt like we really got along, almost like she could take the role of a second mother in my life. 

We struck up a lovely relationship over a series of calls and videos.

Recognize the pattern?

Nobody had ever loved me, or made me feel wanted before. I came from a home that was so broken, where I was terribly abused- and suddenly this woman was pouring so much love and affection into my life.

She was so convincingly warm and benevolent toward me. 

I remember sitting outside the apartment once, after a particularly dismissive response to something from Ben, crying out to Hashem. I told him: “Hashem, I have a request. I don’t want to be here, in this place, or in this relationship, with this guy, but I don’t see a way to get out of here right now. Do me a favor. I know there must be a tikkun here, but the minute it is over, the minute this needs to end, help me get out mentally, emotionally, physically- in all the possible ways- and give me a smooth exit. Please.” Then I thought to myself: “At least I have somebody on this earth who loves me. At least Ben’s mother loves me.”

She was good, I’ll give her that- but she didn’t love me. It was love-bombing all over again.

I don’t know if that woman knows what love is.

When I tell you what she put me through, you will cry. 

 

After she cemented our relationship, she started applying insane pressure on me to agree to marry her son. I am not overstating this.

She pushed me every time we spoke, and at some point, after a heady mixture of flattery, affection, and guilt-tripping me, I said, “Okay. Let’s get married.”

 

I discussed marriage more with Ben’s Mom than with Ben. Ben had completely checked out at this point. He was not available to me in any capacity, in any sense. I feel like he handed the reins for the entire job of trapping me in a marriage to his Mom, and he? Went into retirement. 

He succeeded in this project of getting me to belong to him, enmeshing me into his life so that he can let go of his responsibilities as an adult and I’d be there to pick up the pieces.

 

Later I discovered that Ben had truly orchestrated my downfall. He created the whole apartment fiasco that led to me entering into a longer-term relationship with him to begin with. He actually asked the construction company to revoke my apartment to create desperation and a need for him. It was all a setup He created a need and was there to fill it, knowing that I had nobody else to rely on if I got into trouble.

He knew which buttons to press to push me deeper into his clutches, and who to recruit in his little game. . Why did the company agree to play along with his crafty, deceptive plans? Well, none of them were good people. They just couldn’t care less, I suppose. I have no idea how to explain or justify their insanely terrible decisions and the part they chose to play in my tragedy. Maybe they thought they were helping a brother out or something. 

To be honest, my experience of people here in LA is that they like to look kind and helpful, but they are neither kind nor helpful, and will devour you without salt if they can gain something from it. 

My experience has unfortunately been that nobody is interested in providing genuine assistance. They are all ‘fair-weather friends’, lots of talk but no real follow through…. With some notable exceptions, which I will mention as they come up. (Esther Macner is one of them.)

 

PART TWO: PRE-WEDDING JITTERS

 

Since I agreed to a wedding, Ben started pressuring me to arrange for citizenship. He’s a US citizen, and I was here on a tourist’s visa.

“You can get citizenship now, since we’ll be married,” he said.

We started the paperwork process.

One good thing. That was the one good thing I can think of, when I try to find something positive to say about the whole wedding fiasco.

 

It was hard for me to apply and stay on top of the paperwork and appointments, because my pregnancy was advancing.

It was horrible. Pregnancy was a nightmare for me. I was so sick, so extremely nauseous all the time.

Looking back, I must have had Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) but I was not diagnosed with it then. I didn’t think of trying to change the nausea. I just went into the clinic for an IV so many times because I was dehydrated from all the vomiting.

Why didn’t they suggest checking for HG? Did they care??

I can’t explain other people’s behaviors. I don’t know why the clinic didn’t take further steps to treat my recurring dehydration/vomiting. 

On top of that, I had severe pain because the pregnancy was exacerbating the damage to my sciatic nerve.

Ben checked out.

As I mentioned.

He was completely incurious about how I was feBenng, how the pregnancy was progressing, what I was going through. For those nine months, he seemed to have no care for me at all.

He was not there to assist me technically. When I would get dehydrated and need to go into the clinic, he was never around to help.

I remember, once, feeling like I was about to die. It was on Rosh Hashanah, the High Holy Day, so I didn’t want to drive. I waited, gritting my teeth through the sensation. I ended up going to sleep.

I asked Ben to please drive me in to the clinic the next morning, because I didn’t think I could manage behind the wheel.

He said, “No, no, Kitty- the clinic is so close. It’s right there. You’ll make it.”

I drove myself, and when I arrived, I have a flash of a memory of holding on to the edge of the front desk so I don’t topple over and begging them to let me see the Doctor right away because I am otherwise going to die.

Ben continued acting like none of it was his concern.

His mother, on the other hand, kept flooding me with so much attention and what seemed to me like genuine concern for the minutia of my life. Throughout the whole process of juggling the pregnancy and planning a wedding on top of that, she was there: A rock, a haven, a place where I could rest my weary bones and get some sympathy. She kept pouring oceans and oceans of love over me.

 

I wasn’t able to work any more, and had to leave my job. I could hardly stand on my own two feet, and that’s not an exaggeration. The sciatic nerve damage affected my leg. There were days where I couldn’t stand.

In terms of the wedding planning, I couldn’t really manage it from so far away, so I hired a wedding planner to help me keep all the pieces together. I’ll call her Hofit.

Hofit made sure we dealt with all the little details. “What about bridesmaids?” asked Hofit and Ben’s mother.

“It’s a wedding, not a performance. I don’t want a whole show. Two little flower girls are just right. That’s all I want.”

“Okay,” Ben’s mother said. “Sure! Of course. Whatever you want, Kitty. It’s your big day. Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

We were constantly video calling. It felt like we were discussing wedding details all day, and she always said Yes to whatever I wanted. She never fought over any of the wedding details with me.

 

Even with the advancing pregnancy and accompanying illness, even with the sciatic nerve damage intermittently stealing function from my leg, I was also keeping house. I was doing all the household chores: cleaning, cooking, shopping, carrying in the groceries- doing everything necessary to maintain a home in the usual way, like I would if nothing had ever happened to me.

Ben couldn’t care less that I was feeling ill or that my legs were paralyzed on and off. He actually once said to me: “But you can still crawl! And you can push the mop and pail around on your hands and knees! So you can totally still wash the floor!!”

That was his perspective.

That’s one of the things that flashed through my mind when Esther Macner asked me if he was ever physically abusive. I realized, then, that he never laid a hand on me, but physical abuse still occurred. My poor body really went through the wringer!

 

A month before the wedding date, my grandmother passed away.

I missed her funeral and the mourning period, but I comforted myself with the thought that I’d be going to Israel soon, and I’d have a bit of time to spend with my mother, who just lost her own mother.

I needed to comfort myself with lots of little thoughts like that. The wedding felt like a pit in my stomach. 

 

Ben was raring to go. “Let’s go! We’re flying to Israel! We’re getting married!”

Looking back, I believe he was so insistent on marriage in Israel because he believed that I wouldn’t be able to divorce him too easily if we had our wedding there. That was a myth, but it was a myth that he managed to perpetuate for many years afterwards.

We did get civilly married here in the US as well, but he absolutely insisted on having the ceremony there.

Getting on a plane for fifteen hours during the seventh month of my pregnancy was not ideal, to say the least. My accompanying conditions made it abjectly miserable.

Ben’s parents had found us a tiny place to stay in that was close to them. We slept a bit after the flight, then got up late that Friday afternoon and went to their house to meet the family in person.

Ben’s brothers stared and stared at me like I was the Loch Ness monster.

I didn’t understand what the staring was about, until one of his brothers cracked a joke about my physical appearance.

We were there the entire Shabbat, and they joked about my ‘weird’ looks the whole day.

I am 5’10” and fair. Ben’s family are all short, dark, and hairy. They have overgrown eyebrows and overbites, spindly and ungainly.

I thought they all looked… well, not handsome, to put it  mildly.

But did I jeer, tease, and snipe back at them about their looks?

Maybe I should have. But I’m not that kind of person. I don’t weaponize people’s appearance or anything else to degrade them. I prefer to express my feelings and opinions directly, in ways that are conducive to getting my needs met, without malice.

They happily humiliated me the entire Shabbat. That was the way they spend time with each other, I guess.

 

Ben’s mother was loud and welcoming when we first entered the house, but over the course of the Shabbat, she began saying hurtful things too. For example, she declared this: “Your baby girl is a bastard child, impure. You have conceived her in sin!”

All that love she showered me with?

The minute we landed in Israel, it vanished.

Her job was done, apparently. She could retire and hand my strings back to Ben.

 

We hadn’t finalized the menu because we couldn’t taste the food from afar.

We went in, and I chose the entries that I wanted them to serve at the wedding.

Then we went home and I went to rest. It felt good to have done something concrete. I was happy the catering was finalized.

Ben’s parents came into the room where I was horizontal and began criticizing and berating me about the food I chose. Their tone and volume rose until they were yelling.

How dare I neglect to order the steak and offer some other pitiful main course to the wedding guests? They demanded. “You are bringing shame upon us at our wedding. How dare you dishonor the family name like that?”

I did not understand, could not fathom this disproportionate reaction. Were they serious? Yes, they were.

Finally, there was a pause in their diatribe. “Look,” I said, “I can see that my menu choices are extremely distressing to you, and now they are very distressing to me as well. I am sorry I am causing so much trouble for your family. I won’t stay here any longer. I’ll pack up my things and leave, and you can cancel the wedding.”

Ben’s father promptly pushed his father out of the room and shut the door. She came closer to the bed and put my hands in hers. “There’s no need to get dramatic, Kitty,” she said. “Forget about the main course, and about the whole menu. I’ll take care of it all. You just don’t worry. It will all be okay.”

I was so exhausted and jet lagged that I simply turned over and went back to my nap. I was in no condition to deal with any of it.

I don’t know why they even pretended to need my input on the food. 

 

Did I mention that I only invited eight guests? They said they needed all the other seats for their family and friends and restricted the bride’s party to eight people. 

 

The next day, Ben’s mother and my mother were supposed to accompany me to the Mikvah. My mother was taking a bus and travelling for hours, all the way from Jerusalem to Rishon L’Tziyon, where the Mikvah I chose to use was located.

Asking her to come was an emotional decision for me, because it was beyond the mostly dry and technical relationship I was comfortable keeping with my mother. I made a choice to ask her to come with me. It was a significant step for me, but I decided that she’s my mother, and I am getting married, you know? That’s a big life event. 

My sister never married. I’m the only child that married. It was her only chance to attend her own daughter’s wedding and be involved in these milestones.

It wasn’t easy for my mother either. It wasn’t the way she’s used to supporting me, it wasn’t the way we usually engaged. We were both stepping out of comfort zones to a more hopeful place.

My  mother is a highly sensitive woman, of German and Polish descent. She had trouble following the vagaries of a cruel world. She is a delicate thing, and I am careful with her.

 

When I arrived at the Mikvah, Ben’s mother and Hofit (the wedding planner) were already there, and Ben’s mother melted down in a fit of impatience. “I’m not waiting for your mother,” she declared. “Let’s go! Dip yourself in that mikvah already. Now.”

Looking back I can clearly say: Ben’s mother is not a highly sensitive woman- quite the opposite. She has trouble appreciating emotional nuance, and she is a perpetrator of the vagaries of a cruel world. She is a vulgar Romanian three-headed monster. 

The other people around all responded to her commanding presence, and I was ushered in. 

My mother arrived as we were leaving. She was really disappointed to have missed the whole thing, and sad that I didn’t wait for her.

Ben’s mother took one look at my mother and told me, “I’m going home.”

She did not introduce herself to my mother. She didn’t even make eye contact, or greet her.

She swept right past my mother, got into a cab, and left.

I guess she realized that my mother held no value, no social currency for her to use, no other way to gain from the association.

 

My mother left, too. I felt sad for her, but didn’t have much capacity to help her process the emotions, explain or apologize. Hofit bundled me into a car and we proceeded to the next engagement: 

My bachelorette party.

Hofit organized the whole thing at a cafe. Since I had no friends to invite, she organized a bunch of fun girls my age and got them to show up. They were nice, but I didn’t know any of them. 

 

I was feeling excessively pregnant and physically miserable. Emotionally, I was so overwhelmed because I didn’t have time to process the whole Mikvah incident with my mother. I tried to join the festivities and I managed to start feeling a little bit of the tension leaving my shoulders. 

Then Hofit pulled me aside. 

 

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Listen, Ben’s mother says she’s cancelling the wedding.”

“What??” I said. It was hard to wrap my head around that statement. Now??

“Yes. She said that if your mother is in attendance, she won’t have the wedding.”

 

“Okay. Listen carefully,” I told Hofit. “Here’s my last word. I won’t change my mind about this. My mother will attend my wedding. I don’t care if this wedding is cancelled, so you can’t use that to manipulate me or mess with  me and my mother. If my mother’s not there, I will not be there either, and that’s it.”

Unfortunately, Ben’s mother backed down and didn’t cancel the wedding.

Why didn’t I? It didn’t occur to me. I’m sure there is a clinical explanation for my behavior; acting like a trapped animal when technically there were other options besides keeping my head down and slogging through an increasingly dysfunctional life, but I wasn’t able to see any options at the time. 

 

My wedding video shows my mother at the wedding, approaching me for a dance, and getting shoved aside by Ben’s mother. My mother reached me eventually and said, “I just finished mourning, why am I being shoved??”

Have you heard enough? Because, bad news: There is more. 

 

PART THREE: THE WEDDING.

 

You probably guessed this, but the bridesmaids were not just like two cute little flower girls, no big hullabaloo.

The bridesmaids were a highly performative bunch of older females, dressed and choreographed to appeal to the male gaze and entertain.

I didn’t know who they were- some remote family members? Whoever Ben’s mother appointed for the job, that’s who.

 

The menu? They served whatever Ben’s mother chose.

The entire wedding was Ben’s mother’s little circus. It was her production. Her movie.

They  only let me think I was making decisions, that I had choices, to get me to sit down and shut up.

My opinion never mattered.

Everything we had discussed over the phone evaporated. Even things that she brought up!

For example, 

Ben’s mother kept telling me, during our phone conversations: “You’ll wear a tight corset so nobody will see that you are pregnant.”

In the days before the wedding, when I was in her house, she repeated this constantly, and added, “Nobody has to know about your whoring ways.”

She made me feel like she was ashamed of me. She made me feel guilty and responsible for repairing her image in front of all her friends and acquaintances, she made me feel like I had to hold up the facade of respectability or the whole family will suffer terrible consequences.

 

When I got to the hall, everybody was discussing my pregnancy.

Wait a minute. Hold on. How do they know? I didn’t mention it to a soul. I was so afraid to say anything that was less than perfect!

Ben wouldn’t say anything… would he? He never seemed to acknowledge the pregnancy, or care at all.

It must have been Ben’s mother.

She’s telling me to hide it and going around publicizing it?

I was strangling in that stupid corset.

If I showed you a picture, you wouldn’t believe I was seven months pregnant. I was carrying high… but suffering.

That corset killed me. I suffered terribly the entire evening.

 

Ben did not dance with me even once. He went over to the bar and drank with his friends.

The video shows me approaching him so many times, calling him, beckoning: ‘Come dance with me’

He dismisses me.

 

Then Hofit approached! (By now I should’ve realized this could only mean trouble.) 

“We’re changing the music, Kitty, okay? Ben’s mother just went up to the DJ and asked him to play a set using only Hassidic music.”

She knew I had an intense aversion to Hasidic music, I have some trauma there, I didn’t want it at my wedding, and I had explicitly told her that.

That little stab of the knife finally got through my thick head. My wedding music is my prerogative. Right? Even I knew that. That much was clear, even to me, and yet- she was maliciously interfering with it.

If the rest of the show was just… well, for show, this move felt personal. 

 

“Hofit,” I said. “Hofit- shut this whole wedding down. NOW. This circus is over.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m still the bride. Yes, I am sure.”

Hofit went to the DJ and told him to shut everything down.

“What about the last song? The final dance?” the DJ asked.

“Nope. Shut it all down.”

That’s how I ended my wedding. Abruptly. The music simply shut off.

 

Everyone has their limits. Even me. 

Clearly I have a higher tolerance for abuse than your average person, but that was too much even for me.

I’d like to remind you to please recall that I had nobody to turn to and nowhere to go. No money. No car. No nothing. This was the only life I had and I was doing my best to cope with it.

 

The guests began wafting out and my mother went to get her suitcase. The Shabbat Sheva Brachot was going to be at Ben’s parents house. They kept saying Sure, invite your Mom and your sister. We have so much room, our house is so huge, blah blah blah.

The wedding was on a Thursday, so my mother brought her suitcase with her to the wedding already, planning to stay one day till Shabbat.

Ben’s mother came over to me and said, “Your mother will not come to the Shabbat Sheva Brachot and I don’t care what you will do.”

I turned to my mother with tears in my eyes, weeping, and she said, “Kitty, sweetheart, you don’t need to tell me. You don’t need to explain anything. I see it all. Go to your Shabbat Sheva Brachot and try to have fun. We’re good. I’m not offended. I just wish you the best.”

Then she left. 

 

I was going to head out, to say my goodbyes to all the wedding guests, when one of the kitchen staff came out holding two huge, industrial-sized pans of food. He handed them to me and said, “Here, hold this, it’s the leftovers for the Shabbat Sheva Brachot, I was told to give it to you.”

He tipped the pans when he handed them over and the sauce spilled on my wedding dress… I wasn’t able to see my guests out after all.

I just stood there for a moment. I thought, ‘Good God, what have I gotten  myself into??’ 

Would I ever catch a break?

Ben witnessed the whole thing, surrounded by like 30 of his friends. He laughed and said, “Look, I married a fishwife.”

At that point, I was not able to speak; the tears choked me.

I made my way silently to the car, and we drove to the hotel. 

There was no wedding night. 

I walked into our room and curled into the fetal position. 

Ben was staggeringly drunk and immediately fell asleep.

 

I spent the night weeping, and at some point I felt that my baby stopped kicking.

I had no way to get medical treatment in Israel.

My medical records were far away.

In all the hassle, I hadn’t thought to bring a copy of the medical records. I lay there, paralyzed, fearing that I had failed my child as well as myself. 

Ben got up. No ‘good morning’. He started counting the checks we received. “Look at this,” he muttered at me, like I was just a sack of trash sprawled on the chair. “See this? Your guests didn’t even cover the wedding.”

“You only let me invite eight people,” I said. “How could they cover the wedding?”

“Honey, my family is Yemenite, the money ‘ain’t coming from us, it was supposed to come from your side!”

I was in shock, I think. The whole thing was surreal.

Thank G-d, after I got up my baby resumed normal activity.

It’s like trying to play chess and no matter what you do, you are always at check mate. There’s no way to win, ever.

No stability. No support. Just Ben’s verbal vomit.

On Shabbat, everyone was murmuring gossip about me. It was pervasive- about my mother and my sister, about my family background and situation. They spoke vulgarly and hatefully. Ben’s parents cultivated the kinds of friends who understood backstabbing, humiliation, and social currency. I didn’t meet anyone who had any interest in being kind to me at all. 

Then we left for the honeymoon, which I had set up in the South of Israel. Ben called and shortened it from four days, three nights to two days and one night.

“Why?” I asked him.

“What am I gonna do alone in a room with you all day? There’s nothing to do.”

I have one photo from our honeymoon. He is clearly on his phone and I’m attempting to take a selfie of us, but it’s not really working.

 

Why??

Why would these people start off being so nice, and then so horrible?

Today I know some clinical terms to describe this phenomenon: Narcissistic Family Mobbing.

 

Narcissistic family patterns are like a cult- a tightly-run, emotional cult built on a hierarchy and maintained with fear, control, and silence. The narcissistic matriarch is the cult leader. She doesn’t quite lead the family, but rather, she owns it. She decides who is accepted and who is shunned, who gets love, and who will need to make do with crumbs. Every member of the family has been trained to orbit around her emotional (and sometimes also technical ) needs. Even adult children still seek her approval like trained dogs, begging for scraps. 

When a new woman- the daughter in law- enters the system, the system is destabilized. She is immediately perceived as a threat, because she shifts the established dynamic. She represents independence, since she hasn’t bought in/ been brainwashed yet. She brings a new energy, and can expose the limits of their queen’s illusory power. 

The cult activates. The family closes around her like antibodies around a virus.

The entire narcissistic family targets the daughter-in-law, treating her like an outsider and competing with her instead of accepting her. In these families, the one who acts the nicest to your face is often the one that will deliver the deepest betrayal. This is beyond mere dysfunction.  The mother competes with her like she is ‘the other woman’. The siblings act like she stole something (that was never theirs.) Her husband, (most dangerous of all) stays silent and lets her fight these battles alone, refusing to acknowledge the war raging around her, siding with the family, defending his mother, intentionally breaking her by doing nothing to protect her.

She is left alone. If she tries to protect her sanity they paint her as the villain, ungrateful, selfish, or a bad wife who corrupts their golden boy. She is left confused. Wondering what she did wrong. (Answer: She existed outside their control, that’s her crime.)

She is not just marrying a man. She is entering an empire, and unless she submits, she will be emotionally assassinated. Slowly. Systematically. All while they smile to her face and call her ‘family.’ (Like Sansa Stark, from ‘Game of Thrones’.)

 

The narcissistic family never wanted a daughter-in-law. They want a silent servant, someone who will fold themselves into their dysfunction and never question it. (Danish Basheer, on narcissistic family mobbing.)

 

At the time, I had no capacity for making out these patterns. 

Day by day, I did my best to function.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to deal with Ben’s whole crazy family all the time- we returned to the US of A, where I got busy preparing for the next big milestone: Giving birth.

The birth was horrific.

The pressure of labor on my shattered tailbone caused my legs to give out.

My baby had the cord wrapped around her neck.

We both nearly died.

 

Did I mention that Ben is addicted to marijuana? That hasn’t come up yet, has it? Well, it sure did during the birth. 

When I was finally ready to push, a moment before the baby was out, Ben said, “Honey, I’m going out for a smoke.”

The Doctor got very upset. “Sir,” he said sternly. “Your baby has a cord around her neck and we don’t think she is breathing. Your wife’s life, and your baby’s life, are at risk… and you’re going out to smoke??”

NOW??

I don’t think Ben was ready to bear the yoke of fatherhood… not then, and not ever.

I held my incredible, miraculous daughter in my arms for the first time, alone. 

 

I raised my beautiful girl myself. We had no help- even if I would’ve wanted the help, I couldn’t afford it.

There were so many days where my legs were paralyzed.

After giving birth, the recovery forced me to lay in bed, which set off my feet again. It took me two days to regain any function, to be able to walk.

I had therapists coming to help me get out of bed because all that pressure on the sciatic nerve caused the function in my legs to come and go.

Ben didn’t help me at all.

During recovery, when I was still in the hospital, he didn’t visit once. “I’m working,” he’d call to say. He’s still using that same excuse to this day, every time there’s something he doesn’t want to be present for, or deal with. “I’m working.”

 

I managed. I look back and remember a life full of purpose. I had a baby to care for and a clear goal of regaining function in my legs. I was fighting to survive and had no space for introspection, only a deep satisfaction as I reached milestone after milestone in my recovery, and my baby’s development.

The financial situation was rough. I had no money to buy formula and my  poor body refused to produce breastmilk, so I was not able to breastfeed her. I’d wait for checkups at the pediatrician to get the formula samples they always give out. The Doctor was nice, when she saw how eager I was to receive the samples, she gave me a lot- that’s what I used to feed my baby.

Ben brought in the money, and he controlled it. He never put aside any for ‘extras’ like doing my hair, or nails.

My looks changed so much. I would cringe, disgusted at the vision of myself reflected in the mirror. I didn’t like the shape and form I had turned into.

So much for my modelling days. Ben was ‘embarrassed to be seen with me’. He’d add to my insecurity. He’d go out and say, “I don’t want you coming with me; I’d rather not be seen with you.” He’d also say things like: “Just look at you, you ahbla, how do you expect anyone to touch you? I can hardly stand to look at you. What happened to you??”

Looking back, I can now see that I was still beautiful: I was still young, blonde, and tall. It was just a matter of maintenance… but I believed him.

I remember crying after more such verbal abuse from him, pleading with God to fix me.

Can you fathom how deep the pit I drowned in was? I was asking God to fix ME, while Ben was strutting around- two heads shorter than me, unibrow, uglier than a toad in a hailstorm!

 

Through it all, my baby was thriving. She spoke early. She did everything early. She was so bright and communicative.

One evening, Ben came home from work and tried to find something to be upset with me about. I noticed him searching, searching, with his eyes. In the end he growled, “Why is the baby’s bottle here,  on this counter? It should be placed on the other side of the sink.”

???

That was an eye-opening moment for me. He is not just frustrated, having a hard day, judgemental, harsh.

He is actively prowling around the house, looking for ways to make my life miserable.

I felt like my life force suddenly drained out of me. I did not want to live any  more.

But my daughter made a noise and I was called back to reality.

Life went on…

I found work, and began to bring in some income. Ben’s salary was never going to be enough to sustain us, and I have a head on my shoulders, even if it did take a miracle to remind me of that.

I discovered that you can work remotely. 

I started to design internet shops and some of them worked well enough for me to make some money.

I had no bank account,  no credit card,  nothing.

Ben kept telling me that credit is so complicated and I’d never be able to manage to figure out how to build credit, how to manage the credit card, so he’d take care of the finances.

It took me a while to question that, but meanwhile, like an idiot, I handed all my earnings over to Ben. 

 

I was still keeping up contact with Ben’s mother, despite all the resentment I carried. I’d give her updates on the baby and ask after her. (She didn’t need much encouragement to talk about herself and dominate the conversation. I didn’t need to contribute much.)

When my baby was about a year and half, Ben’s brother died of a sudden stroke. 

This brother was so sweet to me. He suffered from schizophrenia, poor guy, and the family referred to him as ‘the sick kid’. They trash-talked him a lot.

Ben’s mother was home with him when he died. She was a couple of feet away, just on the other side of his door, posting recipes on facebook. She heard a thud, but she chose not to register it until Ben’s sister came home and asked where the poor guy was. That’s when they discovered him, on the floor of the bathroom. 

Ben-ever the doting son- graciously offered to host his mother for a visit. “Let’s bring her here, give her a bit of a break,” he said. “Her son just died. She needs a little hiatus, a little breather, some joy in her life.”

Ben’s mother bought a ticket, to come and stay with us.

For ten days.

You know, you’d expect a woman who just suffered the loss of a child to be a little subdued, but in those ten days she managed to create more chaos and distress than a horde of zombies in an apocalypse. The horrors she subjected me to were more than even I could put up with. I thought she wasn’t a very nice mother in law, due to the whole wedding fiasco, but little did I know! There was  more evil yet in her. 

She came ready to party. She immediately started discussing plans to go shopping for all kinds of brand name clothes, bags, and jewelry…

She asked me to buy  her very specific foods, but then deliberately sabotaged any hope I had for a whisper of appreciation. For example, one morning I set up a breakfast with the bread she requested- it was a more expensive bread that I never bought for myself. She took one bite, said, “Nope. This doesn’t taste good. I don’t think it’s fresh,” and threw the entire loaf into the trash. 

I was washing the floors every day, and when I was done, she would deliberately put on her shoes and track footsteps through the room, then say, “Why are your floors so dirty? Your house is filthy.”

It was completely deliberate.

 

I was shocked to discover that she smokes. 

Also, I discovered that my perception of her as a religious woman was not accurate. She may have been a religious woman at home, but her religiosity did not extend to her vacations. She smoked on Shabbat. In my house, which was another whole layer of rudeness. She knew that I observed Shabbat, but there was no consideration for me, my values, my feelings. There was no “your house, your rules,” kind of courtesy.

 

One morning she pulled a square of silver foil from her pocket and opened it. It was full of cigarette ash. She placed it on the couch where she was sitting and let my baby play in it.

I said, “What are you doing? Like, seriously, what in the world do you think you are doing? What on earth?? Why are you letting my baby touch ashes from your cigarettes?”

“Shut your mouth,” she replied.

That’s an exact quote.

 

Then…

She asked me to help find some men she can fool around with.

She’s asking me. Her daughter in law.

Like, she’s married. To my father in law.

She’s religious. At least, so it had seemed to me. Until now. 

(Ben was not home when she made this request.)

 

Two days later, I heard her on the phone with a guy she met. She didn’t even bother lowering her voice when she thanked him in detail for their nightly encounter.

The hairs rose on my arms. I felt a chill in my bones, having to hear that. I wish I could scrub that conversation from my brain.

 

I thought I can let myself sleep in a little bit, since she was around, and more attentive to my baby than Ben ever was. I knew she wouldn’t completely ignore her.

By sleeping in, I  mean getting up at seven AM instead of five AM, OK? 

Heaven forbid I should ever get a break.

I woke up and heard Ben’s mother in the next room, where my baby slept. She went in there and told my daughter: “Listen, your mother is dead! You don’t need your mother any more.”

That piece of… I won’t use profanity, but honestly.

I raised that child all alone with no help from your son. You’ve never seen her before and she doesn’t know you. You never came to lend a hand when I  needed help- but you come and tell her that her mother is dead? 

Then, I noticed that she had rummaged in my purse, and displaced the credit cards.

She went after Ben’s credit cards!

She boggled my mind.

My God.

 

Every meal, she asked me to prepare the food fresh and hot, no cold food or leftovers please.

She worked me like a slave.

Then one day I overheard her on a call with her daughter, Ben’s sister, telling her: “I’m working like a dog here, I’m doing all the cleaning and cooking; that’s what I’m doing all day, Rina doesn’t do anything.”

If that doesn’t make you want to strangle her, what would??

 

The ridiculousness is so astounding, it’s almost funny. She’s a caricature.

 

When she went back to Israel she continued saying that she spent the whole vacation caring for my house and kids and I just slept all day, which coincidentally is the narrative that Ben has been pushing for years- he’s here doing everything all alone while I’m in bed. So maybe his story idea came from somewhere…

But I’m not done. There’s more…

 

I was still running my online stores while she was here. One  night, after working through most of it, I was so tired, I fell asleep and left the screen open. So listen to this horror show. 

I already had sales on  my site come morning, and she took pictures of it and said, “Ah, you’re making money on the internet? Yes? That’s great. Build my daughter a website too.”

She got Ben’s sister on the line. “Look, look, Rina makes money with this website thing.”

Ben’s sister is my age, okay? That woman never worked a day in her life and is bankrolled by the family. “Oh, that’s amazing, Rina, that’s what I need. Build me one of those and keep it running so I can make money too.”

“Stop right there,” I said. “You want me to work for you?”

“Exactly.”

“Really?” I said. “Seriously?”

“Sure,” she said, like it was obvious.

“Look, I’m not a rBenef bureau,” I said. “Just like I can figure this out at my age, you can figure it out yourself too. If I can work- so can you.”
“No, I can’t work,” she said. “I don’t need to work, my family gives me money.”

“I’m so happy for you,” I said, “but nobody’s giving me any, and I need to support myself and my child alone. I can’t do this for you…”

That’s how I found myself on the entire family’s black list. By refusing to do work for Ben’s parasitic sister.

 

Every morning, Ben’s mother asked us to go out with her and do something fun. One day she asked me to drive her to the beach in Santa Monica. My daughter was in her stroller, and I leaned over to take the handle.

“No, no, I’ll take the stroller,” she insisted. She grabbed the stroller from me and started marching across the street. A huge truck came barrelling down and almost killed my daughter.

I shrieked really loudly. “Do me a favor,” I screamed at her. “My daughter- my arms. Okay? I don’t want you touching my daughter or her stroller.”

She looked crushed. “Why are you yelling at me?” she whined. “You are making a bereaved mother sad. I just lost my child, my son.”

(And now you want to lose my daughter, too??)

“You are a monster, Rina. You have no decency,  no sympathy, no feelings for what I have to go through. You’re a she-devil.”

Finally- the grieving mother.

She remembered to play the part the minute it was convenient, the minute she could capitalize on her grief.

 

Another morning, she picked up my daughter out of nowhere, and my daughter gave her this bite! Right in her stomach.

She turned to me and said, “You must send this child to obedience school. behavioral training.”

I said, “OHHHH No, no, no, if she bit you, you must have earned it.”

The ten days she was here felt like ten years

She finally crossed my lines. My lines! I was capable of putting up with so much, keeping my resentment contained for so long, putting my head down and bearing way more abuse than an average person- and she managed to really get to me. Have you ever heard of a more awkward in-law visit?? 

She tried to turn my kid away from me, and turn me against my own kid… not to mention, again- asking me to find her some booty? Was there ever anything more insane??

 

I didn’t speak to her again after she left. I stopped calling or answering her calls. She asked, “What happened? What did I do? I don’t understand why you would just ghost me like this.”

When I finally lay down a boundary, I don’t go and try to explain why to that person, or let them know about it. The time for communication is done. When I cut people off, I cut them off completely.

Even I have my limits. Since she crossed that line, there was no going back.

Of course Ben’s whole family started a defamation/slander campaign, telling horror stories about me, and all of them stopped contacting me altogether.

Which, all things considered, is not bad.

By angering their mother, I was betraying the whole family. By refusing to submit to the nonsense perpetuated by the narcissistic  matriarch- I got heavily blacklisted.

I’m so much happier being blacklisted than being subjected to a submissive role in my mother-in-law’s quest for ultimate control of everything. That’s just the kind of person I am, I guess.

 

Ben’s mother celebrated a birthday this week. 

Ben played it, like, ‘she’s not answering her phone and I gotta head to work, can you try  her again for me?’

I said, ‘Sorry, Ben, this is not my problem to solve.’

He tried to get me to take the responsibility for the birthday phone call and I kept at it: “What does this even have to do with me??”

I now recognize and shut down all the manipulations. I’m in a much better place.

After Ben’s mother left our financial situation stayed dire for a while. 

Ben would mete out money for food- he’d hand me credit cards and say, “There’s 30 dollars on this card, 15 on this one, 20 on this one. Work it out.”

I’m not kidding about the numbers. 

That’s how I went shopping for two adults and a child, for Shabbat.

My mother actually sold her house in Israel and moved into a smaller rented apartment. She caught onto my situation very quickly and she would send me a credit card you can load and use in the USA. She’d load the card with money and that’s how I’d shop.

She sent it to someone else’s address for me to pick up.

There’s no way I could’ve bought supplies for three people, including diapers, formula, etc. for $100. Especially not in Los Angeles.

My mother was also paying Ben rent, because he spoke to her and cried about having no way to cover the rent, and how sad he was about the financial situation, and my mother said, “What, my daughter won’t have a roof over her head?”

Then COVID happened.

I discovered I was pregnant. 

I started working really well with online shopping sites. I was building sites for people because during COVID they all needed a website to sell. The internet was the place to make money on any product. I started making about $30,000 a month, which is a really good salary for a work-from-home mom- especially one without a minute of respite.

I was still transferring the money to Ben.

One day he called the construction company and let them know he was retiring.

“Why are you leaving?” they asked.

“I started designing websites,” Ben said. Ben! That man doesn’t know where the Shift and Enter buttons are.

“I’m selling websites so I can work from home now,” he told them. “I’m leaving construction.”

He didn’t mention me at all.

Then people would ask him, “So… what does your wife do?” 

“Ah, her- she just sits around all day, doing nothing.”

Sometimes when I think back to those conversations I get so worked up, I feel like chopping his head off. I apologize for using these terms, but I don’t know how to express the feeling in a gentler way. That kind of thing would make anyone want to murder him, I think.

Meanwhile, I was heavily pregnant, and what he was actually doing- while I was slaving away to maintain the house, the children, and to bring in a salary- was sitting around and smoking pot. He didn’t interact with my daughter for even two minutes. 

Then- to add insult to injury- he hired a personal trainer to come to our home four times a week. He paid him with my money and spent the training sessions talking trash about my appearance.

A normal person would probably say, “Hey, since you’re the one paying, why don’t you work out twice a week and I’ll do training twice a week. That way there’s always someone watching the kid.”

Normal person. Normal logic. Right?

But not Ben. 

He basically used me as a source of income for his workouts four times a week. 

 

When my daughter was three years old, I was putting her to be and she said, “Mom, throw Daddy out of our house.” A three year old!! She had more sense than I did. 

 

I kept working right up to the birth of my second child, and I will never forget one night, three days after giving birth, when I was on a business zoom call with someone in Israel who I was selling a website to. My baby was in my arms along with the phone. It was one AM in the morning, and I hadn’t slept or even rested since the birth because I was caring for the newborn and my toddler and the house all day, and now running the business at night, and Ben was home, but he was taking four-hour naps every day because he said he was exhausted by the workout with the personal trainer.

I ended the call and then at four AM I got up for the newborn again.

I had a moment of clarity. I realized it was time to give myself a hard kick in the pants, take charge of my life, but very quickly, because something here is very broken. 

 

 I took myself to the bank and told the guy there, “I need you to help me. Explain credit to me from A to Z. Help me open an account.”

I was lucky to encounter a really good guy. He was actually an Arab, but he was super nice and he told me, “I gotta tell you, the things you’re describing sound like financial abuse to me. I’ll help you put an end to this.”

He opened an account for me and patiently explained everything I need to know about building credit.

Everything.

I have a quick grasp. I opened a business account as well and started depositing there. 

Ben asked, “Wait. What’s going on? There’s no more money?”

So I played the victim a bit: “I don’t have time to work with the kids and everything. You need to go back to work. I’m not managing and I have no way to make more money.”

“I always knew you were worthless,” was Ben’s response, after those three years that he sat there, smoking pot (the kids can’t remember a single time he interacted with them) and I was single-handedly supporting us all.

It took Ben six months to get back to work. There was always a reason to put off his return to the working world: I’m too fat, I’m too ugly.

He took $50,000 and got a set of sparkling new teeth, and he told me that after he gets new teeth he’ll stop smoking.

OK, he got new teeth, so… what’s happening with the smoking?

“Till I’m 45. I’ll stop after that.”

He’s almost 48 years old today. Did he stop smoking? No. He’s still smoking.

Everything was just talk. Lies and stories. 

Outside, to his family and his friends, he was telling this story: “I’m the sole breadwinner. My wife spends all my  money. She’s a gold-digger, sits around all day, what does she do? Sleeps.” That’s the narrative the people around him have been hearing for years and years. 

By the way, when he’s video calling with his family members, he’s really sweet with the kids. The minute he hangs up, it’s like he doesn’t recognize them any more. 

 

Then we discovered that my baby has allergies, to many things, but severely, severely allergic to peanuts.

Ben told me: “I eat Bamba (an IsraBen peanut snack). I’m eating Bamba. If something happens to the kid it’s your fault for not keeping him away from me.”

How insane is that?? I don’t even know how to comment on this, when I think back to this, my mind boggles.

 

I homeschooled both my kids.

The allergies were one consideration.

My older child also went through a severe trauma at a caretaker, and so I kept her home.

When my baby was about two months old, Ben started pressuring me to find a place to send my older child to. He said, “She’s already three years old. If you don’t send her out you’re stunting her social growth. She needs social interactions.”

What social interactions? I thought. (Why does she need to interact with the kids of the other asses you associate with who drive cars with the words “Kus Amec” plastered on them?)

I found some playgroup that was willing to take her in the middle of the year.

The first day I sent her, she came home crying, went straight to her bed, and refused to speak another word for the rest of the evening.

My daughter, who blossomed till then. 

I said, “Something’s really wrong.”

This is a happy child. She walks into places like the Queen of England, waving and smiling at everyone. I've never seen a child more social than this child. She was a social marvel, and she spent the entire evening folded into herself.

“You’re being hysterical,” Ben said. “You never sent her anywhere. You caused this. It’s hard for her to adjust now, to things that normal kids do. You need to learn how to let go more, how to be more chilled about normal things.”

“Listen,” I told him. “I know my child. Something is not right.”

Ben took her back there in the morning, and I went over a little later. The childcare provider’s son was standing near the kids, shirtless, smoking a cigarette.

The caretaker stared me down and told me I need to go. “How dare you come barging in here? You need to give me notice before you visit.”

The third day, I took my daughter to the playgroup. She shrieked, “No playgroup, no playgroup,” the whole way over. I left her there but my heart broke a little.

She came home limping, with a bruise the size of my head on  her body, crying hysterically. Ben picked her up and she ran to him without her little backpack. She left her favorite toy, the one she took everywhere. “Take me to Mommy,” she screamed. 

When she walked in she went to the pot and gobbled rice right out of it, with her hands, like an animal, she was so hungry.

She just started talking and her vocabulary was not extensive.

“What happened?” I asked her.

She took one of the rags that I use to clean the floor and stuffed it into her mouth.

“What are you doing??” I asked.

She said, “This is what the caretaker did to me today when I cried.”

I picked her up, and that’s when I saw the bruise. That woman hit my child and stuck her in a garbage can all day to confine her. 

 

My blood boiled. My Mama Bear instincts went into a rage. I would’ve gone over there and killed her… and she would’ve deserved it. 

 

I didn’t actually do anything. 

Is she still working? Is she still putting herself out there, as a caretaker for children?

Honestly, I don’t know.

The saddest part was, I called some of the other parents that I knew were using her, but their response was basically, “I don’t really care. As long as she takes my kid for five hours.”

 

Obviously I never sent my kid back, but she had so much trauma. She started getting very triggered by loud sounds, or yelling. 

 

That’s how I ended up homeschooling both of my children. 

 

Why did I tell you this story? To mention Ben’s deep incompetence with childcare. Instead of compassion or even recognizing that his child is hurt and needs healing, he couldn’t stop yelling at her for every  little thing- subjecting her to one of the things she feared most after her experience: Loud, angry adults.

One day he hit her. I caught his hand and looked him dead in the eyes.

“Listen carefully,” I told him. “Next time your filthy hand lands on my child you will finish the rest of your life in prison with no parole. I guarantee it.”

I was beginning to rail against my circumstances. I was beginning to reach my limits.

 

When my baby was four months old, I was cooking one Friday in the kitchen. The baby was in his high chair and my toddler was playing in the vicinity, and I felt suddenly dizzy. I told Ben I am seeing black spots and am very lightheaded and dizzy. I feel like there’s an earthquake under my feet; I don’t feel well, I’m tired, incredibly exhausted, I have no strength to go on.

Ben didn’t respond.

He didn’t want to hear it, he had no interest in acknowledging that information, it didn’t suit him. He didn’t care about me at all, so he just ignored the ‘noise’ I was making.

At four PM he told me he’s going to take his usual nap.

He went into the bedroom and shut the door. I swear, not three minutes later, I picked up the pan with the fish while my head was spinning and fell backwards, hitting my head and spine. The fish fell all over me.

My baby was safe in his high chair and my toddler was three years old. She had no clue that I was in distress or how to help me.

She noticed me falling, and she came over.

I came back to consciousness and she was hovering next to me.

When I came to, the pain was so severe I thought my skull must have split. I remember touching my head to see if there was blood. There wasn’t, but I felt like I was not able to move. I started screaming for Ben but he didn’t come out of the bedroom.

He could not have been sleeping. Who falls asleep that fast?! Seriously.

I called my three-year old and she came and gently touched my head.

I told her, “Go open the bedroom door and tell Abba that Mommy is dying.”

I didn’t know what else to tell her.

She went and yelled for Ben. He came out of the room and looked at me, laying on the floor with the food spattered all over. “What?”

“I fell and hit my head and spine. Get help!”

“You’re talking okay,” he said. “If you can talk so clearly, it means you’re okay.”

He went back to the room and locked the door behind him.

Now, my toddler- she is my angel on this planet; honestly, I have no other word to describe this child- she patted my head and said, “Mommy, I will help you.”

She had just started talking, and those are some of the first words she used in a full sentence. 

She helped me up slowly from the floor.

I know- and have been told since I was a kid- that if someone hits their head,  neck or spine, don’t move them!! Call an ambulance first because there is no way to know where the damage is, and whether mobilizing the person will harm them.  

An ambulance!

But there were no such ‘luxuries’ for me. 

 

I got up somehow, I have no idea how, the angels were truly helping me that day. I somehow corralled the kids, got them showered, and put them to bed. His Royal Highness was still sleeping. 

I was starting to notice that I can’t take in light, I can’t read, I’m not talking right, something happened to my head. Miraculously, the kids were okay.

Ben got up, wandered into the kitchen, and said, “Bitch, you didn’t make me any fish??”

Can you grasp how insane that was? Sometimes I think I must have hallucinated that guy and everything he did all those years. It’s mind blowing.

But on that day, I told myself: “God literally just knocked you on the head to open your eyes, look what you are living with! Check out the husband you are putting up with here. You can die any minute and he could not care less!”

I felt really terrible the entire weekend. I kept waiting for it to improve and it did not. I grit my teeth and waited some more, while taking care of the children, holding the baby on my hip, cooking and cleaning.  

As usual, Ben didn’t lift a finger to help with any of it.

On Monday I told Ben: “I’m in bad shape. It’s not getting any better and I can’t function any longer. I need to go to the hospital.”

“Fine,” he said, “after you put the kids to bed, you can go to the emergency room.”

Like, I had to drive myself in with a concussion.

I am very strong, as you already know. I can put up with so, so much…

I put the kids to bed and made it to the ER.

When the Doctor got in to see me, I reported that I hit my head three days ago and I feel like I am losing function. 

The minute he heard that, they swept me in to do an MRI and CT and whatever other tests the Doctor ordered.

“Please be thorough,” I remember telling them. “I have two kids at  home and they need me. I can’t die.”

The Doctor came in with the results from the scans and told me that my head is the worst concussion he’s seen in his life. 

“You have a Grade 4 concussion. First off, your skull is flooded with blood. Secondly, you have two herniated discs in your spine. Good luck.”

“Are you serious?” I asked him. 

“Can I ask you a question?” he said. “Who was with you when you fell?”

“My husband and child,” I said.

“Your husband doesn’t know how to dial 9-1-1??”

“I don’t know what to answer you.”

He was a Jewish guy. (His name was Dr. Solomon, I think.)

He bent down, looked me in the eye and said, “Listen to me. Your kids need you to make some choices; the right choices. They need you.”

 

It took me six  months to recover from that concussion and injury. During those six months, Ben never asked me how I’m doing, how I feel, or anything like that.

I didn’t need to do anything in particular to heal, it’s supposed to heal by itself, but it was a terrible time. Imaging that you can’t read one line because the words don’t make sense in your mind, it feels like a big salad of syllables.

While I was supposed to be recovering I kept working.

It was a situation where a normal person needs to rest, but I had two children who could not care for themselves at all and there wasn’t anyone else to provide their basic needs. I didn’t have the privilege or the luxury of resting at all during the day.

Is that not physical abuse?

I’m seriously asking.

He didn’t lay a hand on me, but was I not being physically abused regardless?

 

That incident was a catalyst. 

I stood in front of the mirror one day and I told  myself, Birkathya, start figuring out how to get out of this. You are here all alone, a stranger in a strange place, God will help you. You need to come to your senses. Stop with the prevarication and procrastination and rationalization.

This is it.

 

I shifted another gear and worked like crazy- even more than I did before.

I didn’t care about anything. I just worked.

I was making much more than Ben- he went back to work in construction and brought home $3000 a month.

 It was a joke. 

The rent alone is $4,000.

 

I started checking how to get a divorce. I had no money for a lawyer, because all the family expenses were still my responsibility so I researched the laws myself, slowly. I studied the law until I knew divorce law backwards and forwards, like a law student. I got all kinds of advice: “Take out a restraining order”, “do this,” “Do that,” 

But I didn’t make a move until I thoroughly researched it.

I spoke to a policewoman who told me that if I take out a restraining order, CPS will come interview the kids, and when they discover the horrors the kids have witnessed, I can lose them. 

A child should not witness so much dysfunction. A little girl should never have to see her mother crushed and helpless on the floor with nobody to help her. 

That’s a traumatic experience.

Ben also smoked weed in the house all the time. Did I know about it? Yes. Since “I did nothing about it”, I had a problem. I was in danger of having the kids removed. 

But I kept it as far away from them as possible…

It didn’t matter. It was there, in their living environment. 

 

I couldn’t risk losing my children so I didn’t take out a restraining order against Ben. 

I just studied and studied the law.

I also started learning about dysfunction, marital abuse, narcissism, things like that. 

I delved deep into these topics. They explained a lot. I was able to see his patterns and mine as well.

During this research, after one particularly abusive day, I was kind of scrolling on instagram and I saw a woman speaking about abusive partners.

I learned to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.

RECORD EVERYTHING.

After that, I started documenting everything. There isn’t a single phone conversation or discussion between us that I haven’t recorded. Everything is recorded.

 

For example, we discovered that my younger child has autism.

I recorded the conversation. I broke the news to Ben, and he says, “It’s your fault.”

How can you blame me for my kid’s autism?

By the way, Ben’s family has a history of autism, and to my knowledge, autism genes are often passed by the paternal side of the family. My family has no  history of autism. There isn’t a shred of logic to the claim, but beyond that, who’s looking to assign blame???!!!

That’s your first reaction?? Who do we need to blame???

His family was no better. I overheard his parents: “Oh. So now you also have a sick kid?”

Like autism is an illness? 

“Why are they calling him that?” I asked Ben. “That’s what they used to call your brother with schizophrenia, but our child doesn’t have any mental illness…?”

“Yeah, well, he’s sick- because of you,” Ben says, clearly, on the recording.

 

Instead of helping my baby, he yells at him all the time, and he even hit him once. My poor autistic child. He is so helpless, and he was non-verbal for a long time as well.

I taught him to speak. I’d go into his little world and every time, I’d tell him: I’m in your world now. Soon, you will come out to my world with me and I will teach you two words.

That’s how I taught him vocabulary.

Of course Ben speaks to his family and he’s like, “I’ve been teaching the kid to say words. Rina? Oh, she’s taking a nap. Again. She sleeps all day. It’s crazy.”

I’m dying. 

The insanity of it. I’m just dying. 

I also started following this woman on facebook from Florida who posted things I really resonated with about her own narcissistic husband.

I ended up calling her. We talked, and she gave me the number for Esther Macner.

I called Esther with no real expectation of getting a Jewish divorce.

I honestly thought that according to Jewish Law, I am chained to Ben forever.

Ben also thought so, and over the years, that’s the information he battered me with- that’s the reality I was living in.

Ben was so insistent on getting married in Israel because he believed that if I ever chose to leave him, I won’t be able to get a Jewish divorce here and I’d have to go back to Israel to arrange it.

Esther told me that was misinformation. 

Then it took me a long time.

It took me about a year until I actually called and told her to send him a summons (Hazmanah) to discuss signing the Get, and then we did it in the nicest way possible. 

Esther Mancer and Rabbi Barry Dolinger of the International Beit Din, were going to call Ben at a pre-arranged time. Meanwhile, I would pack his stuff and put the suitcases outside.

I rented him a little place- here’s how insane I am- I rented him a small place so that he won’t be able to cry and complain that I threw him out onto the streets and now he’s homeless. I was thinking about the kids- I didn’t want them to go through another traumatic experience, watching their mother throw their father out to the curb like trash. I wanted them to see that he’s not in danger, that he’s taken care of.

Also, I wanted them to see that when things in life come to an end, you still don’t treat people like garbage. That was a really important lesson to me- I deeply needed them to experience a civil, respectful, dignified, courteous break up. 

My daughter is now seven years old, insanely smart, knows everything and notices everything. 

 

I put Ben’s stuff outside and Esther and Barry called him and told him not to come back home. “Your stuff is outside, you have an apartment set up, your wife wants a divorce.” 

Ben started negotiating with Barry: “I’ll sign whatever needs to get signed, I’ll do everything, I really will, if she’s sure and she wants a divorce, I’ll fully cooperate, I know we have kids together and I’ll do whatever’s in their best interests. I’ll just say goodbye to the kids before I leave.”

Like an idiot, I fell for it and let him in, and after he got inside, he did not leave.

The studio I rented for him? I paid for another two months, and every day he said, “I’m going- I’m moving out tomorrow, in two days, at the end of the day…” but he never left. That’s when I realized that I had fallen right into his trap. Again.

Rabbi Barry Dolinger and the IBD sent him summons three times. He ignored them all, and that’s when I officially became an Agunah.

 

About a month ago, I had a meeting with the IBD as an Agunah, to find a way to unchain me from a situation of Iggun. I told the Rabbis everything I’ve told you.

They were shocked to their core.

They said the whole marriage was FRAUD. It was all based on a bunch of lies.

They determined that Ben has a Chiyuv Get, and when he ignored their attempts to communicate, they held the meeting without him and declared the marriage to be null and void.

I’m waiting for confirmation on my annulment. Barry said it takes a while for them to write up the document properly, with all the Halachic reasoning included. When they are done, they will send me the p’tur (divorce document)  and then I will be considered free of this marriage and allowed to remarry by religious law.

 

Ben told me- and I have a recording of it, because like I told you, I learned to start documenting all our interactions for legal purposes- he told me many times that he will not sign a get, and that if he doesn’t sign, I will never be released from our marriage. He will  never allow me to be happy, he said.

But God led me to discover that I can be freed. He allowed me to be released of this sham of a marriage, this abusive relationship. No woman ought to be held hostage in a marriage like this. This cannot possibly be called a Jewish marriage by any means, and I am certain that God does not approve of such abuse.

Ben has no idea that I got our marriage annulled at the IBD.

 

He didn’t respond to any of the summons from the civil court, either.

This seems to be his M.O.: Sticking his head in the sand like an ostrich, believing nothing can touch him if he ignores it. 

If he doesn’t like his choices, he waits until a better choice (one he likes better, anyway) comes up.

When he is not interested in hearing certain information, it’s like it doesn’t exist.

He used this particular coping pattern so many times to avoid seeing me and my distress, ignoring me, neglecting me and my needs and those of the children, so he’d feel free to continue doing whatever he was doing (namely, smoking weed and being a couch potato.)

He didn’t open any official envelopes due to the same mechanism- he doesn’t want to find out what’s inside, and he acts as if Fate will sweep away any deluge if he just keeps his eyes shut long enough.

Somehow, circumstances will work out and he’ll be rescued.

It’s working out pretty well for me now, so at this point, I don’t think I can ever complain about it  again. 

 

Now that I have researched, and am more legally fluent, I am blown away sometimes by how clueless Ben is and how far from reality his thoughts run.

One day, I tried to discuss custody with him, and he told me he wants 50-50 custody.

I asked him why. 

He doesn’t know what on earth to do with the kids. If I leave them with  him for five minutes, he loses his mind. He just yells at them.

That’s the extent of his interaction with them. Yelling at them.

He’s so clueless about human development, childcare, and relationships in general. 

So why does he want 50-50 custody?

“Because,” he said, “you’ll get a place with a backhouse. I’ll live in the backhouse, and if you ever bring home a guy for a drink or something, I’ll take the kids from you. I’ll take out a restraining order and say you’re endangering them by letting strangers into the house.”

“So let me get this straight…” I said. “You want me to rent a place for you so you could control my life? That’s why you want custody?”

“Listen,” I told him. “If you get 50% custody of the kids, you’ll  need to take them 50% of the time.”

“No way,” he said. “There’s no way, I got nothing to do with the kids; I don’t know what to do with them.”

“Okay,” I said. “So… are you sure you really want 50% custody??”

“Well, when I go to Israel to visit my family, I want to bring the kids.”

What he means to say is, I will put on a big show, using the kids, for my family- I need to have children for performative purposes- and when the show’s over I have no interest in the kids whatsoever beyond it.

I was so disturbed by this conversation, that I vowed to myself: When I get full custody, I will not let anyone in his family see the kids. Ever.

I won’t let Ben use them as pawns in his little games, but aside from that, his family is horrible and I won’t expose my kids to them. They don’t deserve to enjoy my children for even a minute. 

One Shabbat I overheard Ben speaking to his parents in the living room. He thought I was asleep.

They were saying, “Yes, we have the room ready for the kids, act like you’re coming for a visit. Once you guys are here, we’ll do something to get Rina deported, and we’ll make sure she can’t take the kids. They’ll throw her out of the country and the kids will stay with us.”

Thank you very much for the information. I took it straight to the Judge.

 

I was in court last week to discuss custody, and since Ben was a no-show, I asked to set a date for another hearing. They told me, you don’t need a hearing, you can get everything by default because he is not responding and neglected to attend. You’ll get full custody.

So I did. 

Mazel Tov!! Best news ever!!!

I have full custody of my children.

I’ve had full custody for fourteen days already, and Ben still doesn’t know. 

They are required to notify him of the outcome of the court hearing. They sent the notice by mail… and Ben still hasn’t bothered to open any of the envelopes. 

 

I was so euphoric about gaining full custody. That was my dream- to protect my kids.

I never wanted them to be in a position where they needed to spend time with grandparents who can’t stand them.

I didn’t want them exposed to that confusion, where the people you are supposed to trust, the adults you depend on, love-bomb you. They tell you they love you, but you feel like they don’t. You never know when they love you, if they really love you, or not, because you can sense that their love comes at a cost, and their actions and words are not aligned, but they tell you that your senses and feelings are not valid.

 All that dysfunction.

It’s so dysregulating, and it creates real damage-You don’t know how to interpret flattery. You don’t know how to differentiate between the flattery and actual loving, caring, intimate behavior.

You can’t trust yourself and your assessments of reality.

 you can then enter relationships where the other person has no regard for you whatsoever because you cannot distinguish between true regard and false promises… 

That’s what happened to me.

 

Another thing I got by default: A restraining order for Ben’s parents. I can now have them arrested if they try to come near my children.

A couple of days later, I had to go on an errand and I left the kids with Ben. My daughter told me that while I was gone, they spoke to Grandma on the phone and she told my daughter that she’s on her way to America to take them on a vacation with Daddy but without Mommy.

I thanked my daughter for the information and told her, “Grandma can’t do that, because I took out a restraining order against her in court, so she can’t kidnap you away from me.”

 

They were preparing to steal my children away from me. 

God was preparing, too- and so, I am now also prepared. 

Man can make plans, but God will thwart Evil. 

How on earth is Ben not aware that if he does not show up to court, I win by default? I don’t know. 

He obviously has no idea and had no interest in finding out.

He simply believes that he can hold me hostage, so he never bothered considering other scenarios.

He has perfected this form of unconcern and incuriosity.

I have bore the brunt of his weaponized indifference all these years, but now? I’m gaining so much from it.

How ridiculous it that?

 

Here’s another thing Ben does not know.

He has no idea how much I earn since I opened my own accounts. 

He doesn’t know that I have enough money now to  move out into my own place, and that I have found a place. It will be available shortly and then I will take the kids and be gone from here.  

 

I am at a crossroads right now!

I am waiting for the religious papers from the IBD, so that I will officially be freed.

I am waiting for the civil divorce papers. They should arrive within the next two weeks, so that I will be officially divorced.

I signed on the apartment and am waiting to move in…

 

I am preparing myself for Ben’s reaction, but honestly? I know that he cannot really contest any of it. 

Thank God!! I am so grateful for that. I know it could’ve been so different.

Since I have full custody, I don’t actually have to consult him on any decisions, and if he protests, or threatens to try to contest the custody in court, I will enjoy threatening him right back- I will threaten to disclose his drug use to the court. I’d love to, actually! 

He might end up in prison. 

He certainly won’t end up changing the custody arrangement!

(He’ll back off. He wouldn’t dare risk it.)

 

I can’t believe I have gotten to this place.

I have been working on this divorce for four years to minimize harm to my kids.

I must say a word about Esther Macner and Rabbi Barry Dolinger. They bring so much light to such a dark place. 

When you feel like you are being held hostage, and you think there is no possible way to leave the marriage, because he’s brainwashed you for so many years and told you there is no way to ever leave him, and then somebody comes and tells you that there is a way out…

There is nothing more joyous and heart-healing than the gift Esther Macner and Rabbi Barry Dolinger bestowed me with. I feel like that needs to be emphasized.

 

If you know any platform that would benefit from my story- anyone interested in learning about red flags and abuse in relationships or in dating- If someone needs to hear my story to learn that these things exist and they are real-I’ll do it. I’ll talk. 

We mostly can sense the red flags, but often, we don’t recognize the significance of that feeling, or recognize it as a warning bell. Most of the time, when we miss red flags, it’s a defense, or a coping mechanism, that overrides the warning signals.

We think we are overreacting. Over thinking. We don’t listen to ourselves.

But sometimes when somebody else tells a story, our defenses are lowered, and our perception sharpens, and we can see things for what they are a bit better. 

I have plans to develop a TV show with a certain producer next year, and I’ll be able to speak about these things. I can speak to the Jewish experience, but mainly I will work to explain how people can possibly even fall into the trap of a man like Ben. 

 

If you think someone needs to hear my story, let me know.