A Hebrew-language magazine story by therapist Mordechai Rot recounts a session with a 50-year-old married man who said his 25-year relationship was collapsing under repeated conflict. He and his wife came from abusive homes, with shouting, verbal cruelty and regular beatings, and were matched by a matchmaker despite both carrying deep wounds from childhood.
The couple married hoping to build a normal, loving home and to break the pattern for their future children. They had eight children and, for a while, kept up a calm outward appearance. But over time, old emotional patterns returned, they began triggering each other’s deepest sensitivities, and screaming, insults and long periods of silence became routine. The man said they eventually spent years moving from one therapist to another, including respected specialists, but every apparent breakthrough collapsed again, often after stress such as Passover.
Rot told him the problem was not the marriage itself but unresolved trauma from childhood. He used a story about Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz and a king’s cat, which was dressed as a waiter and could act civilized until a mouse appeared, to illustrate that external training cannot erase inner nature. Rot argued that standard couples therapy can temporarily improve behavior, but when a real trigger hits, the old survival defenses return.
He urged the man to seek individual trauma treatment that addresses the underlying schemas, fears and feelings of humiliation and lack of safety formed in childhood. According to Rot, healing the wounded inner child would reduce blame, calm the couple’s fights, improve parenting, and help prevent divorce. He said many marital breakdowns could be avoided if people treated the root cause rather than only the outward “costume” of the relationship.
