Building a Happy Marriage
Question
If you are married to someone happily, does that mean your spouse is definitely your bashert? Is it really possible that one can have a happy lifelong marriage to someone (Jewish and otherwise permitted of course) and feel like they have everything they want in a spouse with the same feelings mutually returned, yet their spouse they married was not their bashert and they didn’t know it?
Answers
In Jewish tradition there is a concept of a zivug rishon and a second and third etc. Our Sages teach that if a person is lucky enough to find their zivug rishon, the relationship will need little effort to reach contentment. The further away a person’s soulmate is from the magical number one, the harder the couple will have to work to reach contentment. There is actually a source that teaches that the only couple in the Torah who married as a zivug rishon were Yaakov and Rachel. This teaches us that it is extremely unlikely that we will find our zivug rishon.
However, this does not mean that we should not look and that we should not marry – it just alerts us to the fact that in married life it is essential that we take into account that fact that our partners have different personalities and that we should always take their feelings into consideration. In effect, this means that we are going to marry the person who we have decided is the right one for us, even if they are not.
Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team