Golfer & Joseph- I just chapped what your comments were in response to. I hadn’t gone into details, so based on what I wrote, I guess it was hard to understand. Without going into all the details, the point was that I was feeling exceedingly overwhelmed with my responsibilities to my family and was not thinking about my own needs at all. At some point I started to realize that was not such a good idea and that I was in danger of collapsing if I didn’t start to think about myself, and I realized that I needed to start thinking about my own needs once in a while. This was a big chidush to me and not something that I was used to doing, so it was very hard for me, especially since my family’s financial situation was really bad and no matter what I did, it wasn’t enough, so I felt very guilty spending any time doing things for myself (like sleeping and eating). But I knew that it was something important for me to work on if I wanted to survive.
At around the same time, this teacher decided to pressure me to go out with and marry someone who I couldn’t stand and who was totally not the kind of person I was looking for. The main reason he seemed to want me to go out with and marry him was so that I could support him in Kollel even though I had no way of doing so, and even though I didn’t really want to be going out just yet at all, and certainly not with someone who was expecting me to support him in Kollel for the rest of his life which was something I couldn’t do.
I tried explaining this to my teacher (both before during and after going out with the guy the 5 times he pressurred me to go out with him),
and that just led to his screaming at me and saying really abusive things about how horrible I was because I was poor and had no way of supporting this guy in Kollel who I didn’t even want to be going out with in the first place.
I was under tremendous pressure as it was and the last thing I needed was the additional pressure that I had to marry someone and support him in Kollel for the rest of his life when I was having such a hard time managing as it was! And I was just working on convincing myself that it’s okay to take time to breathe once in a while!
In the course of one of numerous conversations with this teacher (revolving around his trying to pressure me to marry this guy and/or trying to making me feel bad about the fact that I had no way of supporting someone in Kollel), I mentioned something about how I was having a hard time thinking about my own needs once in a while and not just my (current) family’s needs, and likewise, when I get married, I will need to marry someone who is not just marrying me so that I can support him in Kollel, but will care about my needs and encourage me to take care of my needs (such as sleeping). He responded by screaming at me and telling me what a horrible person I am for thinking that I am more important than my husband’s learning, etc.
I guess that wasn’t so short, but I hope that sort of explains things.