Episode 227 - Daven for Your Husband

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | 24Six

Why Davening for Your Husband (Not Just Your Marriage) Changes Everything

Many of us naturally daven for shalom bayis.

We ask for less tension, smoother communication, fewer recurring arguments. And that matters. A lot.

But there’s a subtle shift that can be incredibly powerful for your marriage: davening for your husband as a person — not only for the relationship you share.

Marriage Is Not the Same as the People Inside It

I often talk about marriage as a three-part system:

• You

• Your husband

• The marriage itself

All three are connected, and all three matter.

When we daven for our marriage, we’re often focusing on outcomes that affect us directly — more peace, more understanding, more ease. That’s legitimate and important.

But when we daven for our husband, something different happens.

We’re no longer asking, “What would make this better for me?”We’re asking, “What does he need right now?”

That question alone shifts perspective.

Why Davening for Your Husband Builds Perspective and Respect

To daven for your husband, you have to set aside your own agenda — even briefly — and consider:

• Where is he struggling?

• What pressure is he carrying?

• What might help him grow, feel stronger, or feel supported?

You are likely the person with the most insight into him. You may even see needs he hasn’t fully named for himself.

That’s not just spiritually meaningful — it’s relationally powerful.

It creates respect. It creates curiosity. It interrupts the assumption that “I already know everything about him.”

The Danger of Thinking You’ve “Figured Him Out”

One of the quiet dangers in long-term relationships is the belief that:

“There’s nothing new to learn here.”

That sense of certainty can feel stabilizing, but it often leads to emotional flattening.

Your husband is not an extension of you.He’s not fully predictable.He’s not static.

When we allow space for his inner world to be complex and evolving, we create a healthier kind of closeness — one that balances familiarity with respect for his separateness.

How This Practice Strengthens Your Marriage (Indirectly)

Davening for your husband as an individual does several important things:

• It counters emotional dismissal

• It restores a sense of “otherness” in a healthy way

• It strengthens appreciation and respect

Our brains are wired for efficiency. They stop noticing what’s consistent — even when it’s good. Add negativity bias, and appreciation easily fades unless we’re intentional.

If you want to feel appreciation, you have to direct your attention there.

This is one way to do that.

A Very Doable Way to Start

This does not require long tefillos or a perfect routine.

Some simple options:

• Two sentences when lighting candles

• One perek of Tehillim left somewhere visible

• A reminder near your coffee

• A note in your siddur

The goal is not intensity. It’s consistency.

Even a small, repeatable practice can create meaningful internal shifts.

Try This This Week

For one week, experiment with davening for your husband — not as part of your marriage, but as a person with his own needs, struggles, and strengths.

Notice what changes in how you think about him. That shift alone can be transformative.

🎧 You can listen to the full podcast episode here: [insert link]

Transcript

[00:00:00] if I'm going to daven for my husband, I have to do something that's very, very hard for us to do as wives sometimes, which is I have to put my personal desires, needs agenda to the side and just think about what is life for him like right now.

[00:00:25] Welcome to How to Glow, where we get real about building the marriage of your dreams. I'm certified coach Kayla Levin and I help married Jewish women go from surviving and overwhelmed to thriving and connected through practical tips, real life inspiration, and more than a little self-awareness along the way.

[00:00:43] 

[00:00:45] Hey ladies. Okay. I am realizing that this week, this episode's gonna need to be really short, and I was debating whether I should just skip the week and come back next week, and I realized, you know what? Even if it's short, I feel like with our marriages, we just want a little.

[00:00:58] Idea, a little something to chew on, a little inspiration. And so I wanted to kind of expand in this episode about the latest challenge I had in my email and inside of my Shalom for Shalom Project, WhatsApp group. So you can get the challenge in either place. By the way, if you're not on my email list, just go to kaylalevin.com. You can sign up there.

[00:01:20] And the challenge this last week was to dive in for your husband, and I encourage people to share what time of day works for them, or time of week, or how they work it in to even remember. I mean, sometimes we know that there's something that's important and it's a priority, and when it comes time to daven, or let's say you're not in a phase of your life where you're doing a lot of formal davening.

[00:01:44] We're pulled by other things. We're responding to other things for so much of the day that I think we often need an external reminder to stop and actually dive in for the things that matter the most.

[00:01:56] So I think there's two different ways to look at davening for your marriage, right? So one of them is. When I think of davening for my marriage, I think of davening for shalom bayis, davening for us to maybe resolve the challenges that we're dealing with to get past some old patterns for one of us to grow if we have certain backgrounds that make it harder for us as a couple.

[00:02:18] This is kind of what I think I've, you know, I often talk about marriage as a three part paradigm. We have ourselves, our husbands and the marriage, and those are three separate pieces that are all interplaying, right? So when I'm talking about my marriage, I'm not only ever talk, only just talking about the health of the relationship.

[00:02:33] It's so dependent upon what's going on with the two people that are creating that relationship. But there is still that third piece, right? So it's all going on.

[00:02:42] A thing that's so valuable about specifically focusing on davening for your husband as opposed to davening for your marriage.

[00:02:51] So number one is it'll remind us just to do it right? Because if I think about, I wanna daven for my marriage. So in a way, I'm almost davening for myself, right? Like I want more shalom bayis. I want us to be able to get past this argument that we're dealing with. I want us to learn how to communicate better.

[00:03:10] Yes, we both benefit, but I am definitely, you know, a major beneficiary of any bracha that comes as a result of that davening. So there's nothing wrong with that. We absolutely should be davening for what we want in the world. But when we're specifically deciding to daven for our husbands, what happens is it's an extremely powerful perspective taking exercise because if I'm going to daven for my husband.

[00:03:36] I have to do something that's very, very hard for us to do as wives sometimes, which is I have to put my personal desires, needs agenda to the side and just think about what is life for him like right now. Where is he struggling? What does he need more of? How's he doing? What do I think as the person who uniquely most likely has the most insight into him, out of anybody on the planet, what do I see he needs right now?

[00:04:18] It's a very different question than asking, what does our marriage need? What would make our marriage better? How could we have more shalom bayis, which again, are very, very powerful questions. I just think that we do that more naturally, and I really wanna encourage you. To take some time this week and really daven for your husband as his own person with his own needs, right?

[00:04:42] Not, not insofar as it ties back to you, but really just for him. So a couple reasons that I love this idea. Number one, obviously if you see that he needs it. So then we wanna ask Hashem for it because otherwise how's it gonna happen? Right? It's basic hishtadlus start with some davening. Okay? So we wanna make sure we're bringing Hashem into the picture.

[00:05:02] And again, you have a very, very unique perspective into your husband. It could be that you could see something to daven for that he might not even realize, he should be davening for, for himself. He might not realize that's the thing that that would be helpful and you might be right. Right, and so you're able to ask for something that he might not even be able to ask for for himself.

[00:05:24] That's a very, very powerful thing to be able to offer to any human, especially our husbands.

[00:05:30] But the other part of it, the maybe less spiritual, somewhat less spiritual part of it is that when I'm in this space of davening for him as an individual. So it forces me, again to, to put my agenda aside for a while. And what this does is this creates so many healthy things for your marriage. It creates a sense of otherness, which we always want, because one of the things that can be so poisonous to our marriages is the attitude of, there's nothing else for me to learn about him.

[00:06:01] I've got his number, I've got everything down. I know exactly how he's gonna respond to this. I know exactly how he's gonna respond to that. There's nothing new under the sun, right? This is not how we wanna be feeling about our husbands. And, and I will go so far as to say it is completely wrong. You are totally wrong.

[00:06:15] You might have a good sense, but if you think you know everything about your husband, you're not paying attention or you're not asking the right questions. Okay? So we never wanna be in that state. And anything that we can do that kind of helps us experientially realize that he is separate from us. He is not an extension of us.

[00:06:37] He is not predictable. He is not another piece of us. He is this totally separate person with this totally separate view of the world and, and sometimes we're very aware of that, right? And a totally different agenda or, or value system. And hopefully there's lots of places where they overlap, but fundamentally, he is a different person.

[00:06:57] And creating that space creates a lot that's very healthy for your marriage. I know for some of you this idea actually sounds very scary because what makes us feel safe in our relationships is that sense of, I've got it all down. I totally know.

[00:07:12] In fact, you'll see that the more insecure you are in your relationship, the more urgently you wanna feel like there's nothing new to discover and you've got it all worked out. Very interesting dynamic. But when we create that sense of otherness, we create this very interesting tension as Esther Perel talks about this really beautifully, which balances out that Yeah, I also know what he, you know, looks like first thing in the morning, and I know what he looks like when he's overtired and I know whatever the things are like I, I, I've also seen him as we see our spouses.

[00:07:43] At our best and at our worst. And so we wanna balance that with the reminder that it's not all the familiar, there's also this newness, right? And that creates this very healthy tension in the relationship.

[00:07:54] And the other piece of it is it creates a really healthy amount of respect, right? Because again, it's very dismissive if I think I've got it all figured out, to say that about any human being is very dismissive. And so when I am really taking the time to. Try and see his perspective, try, and this is really even more than seeing his perspective.

[00:08:15] 'cause you're actually looking at how he's experiencing the world and then you're even going beyond it and being like, maybe there's things that he doesn't even see, but I'm putting all of my mental energy into him. Right? And so this creates such a sense of respect, a sense of really holding of him. And again, this is something that's very, very important and often can slide if we don't actively work to maintain it.

[00:08:39] Because again, we live together, right? You see each other all the time. We take things for granted. Right now inside the Marriage Mastermind, which is my small group coaching program, we're in a section where we're focusing on appreciation, and this is one of the biggest things that we were reinforcing, which is to remember that our brains start to take everything for granted because our brains are built for efficiency. I'm just not designed to keep noticing that he does that thing that I appreciate.

[00:09:07] Eventually that just becomes, that's his job or that's just the thing he does, and I don't even see it fresh every time. And we want to not make anything wrong with that. That's just the way that I'm designed and there's lots of benefits, that my brain works that way, but I wanna work with it and remember.

[00:09:23] So again, I have to be intentional. If I wanna feel respect, I need to look for the places to respect. If I wanna feel appreciation, I need to look for the places to appreciate, not because I have to work so hard, 'cause I'm fooling myself. But because my brain will bypass that information because it's repetitive.

[00:09:42] Add on to that negativity bias, which means that our brains always veer towards noticing the negative over the positive. And you've really got a recipe here for a, a relationship that just should not be left on the back burner, right? It should just not be left to be assumed that if you don't actively f, focus on what you're noticing and thinking about your relationship. That it's only just gonna keep feeling great. It's not, it's not, it really requires intentionality.

[00:10:07] So this is the exercise I wanna really encourage for you this week. Look for a time that's good for you to daven for your husband.

[00:10:14] And again if you're in a crazy phase right now, you're not doing formal tefilah, so just pay attention to that and work around that. Don't just assume that suddenly things are gonna change, or, or I'm not gonna daven for my husband until all my kids are back in school and now I have time for shemona esrei.

[00:10:27] Like that just might not be your reality for a long time. Give yourself some kind of external reminder, a post-it note in your sitter, a post-it note next to your coffee, right? Wherever it is, you know, leaving your tehillim maybe somewhere and saying one pair a day. Leave it somewhere where you're going to come across it.

[00:10:46] Find something that feels very, very doable. Very, very compelling. And, and notice the value of really just taking the time to stop. To think about him, to think about his needs. Of course, if you wanna add on your to about shalom bayis, go for it. You know, you don't need my permission for what you wanna dobbin for, but really wanna encourage you to give this a try this week to see how it feels, and hopefully you'll find that this is something very powerful that you wanna incorporate into your week on a regular basis.

[00:11:19] So again, look for something that could be very, very doable. Very repeatable, right? Even if it's literally just saying two sentences when you light the candles. That are only focused on him, right? Just adding that into what you do,

[00:11:34] It can be , powerful work. So love to hear from you. Love to hear how this processes in your brain. And I look forward to sharing the next she Bias challenge with you next week in the email and the WhatsApp group. Again, if you're not there, go to kaylalevin.com and you can get signed up and, um, I'll see you over here.

[00:11:52] Back on the podcast in a couple weeks. Okay, bye.