Should I look for a spouse who thinks exactly like me, and what do we do when we disagree?

Rabbi Landau answers: “Great minds think alike. Maybe, but never get married to her. If your wife thinks like you, what do you need her for?” If you only feel close when she agrees with you, he asks, whom do you love: “Her? Or your own opinion coming back to you?”

He is equally clear that peace does not mean giving in on everything, “because then you disappear.” Real love, he teaches, is when “you bring what you see, she brings what she sees, and something new is created.” His example is a parenting disagreement. You think the child needs a consequence, and she thinks the child needs a conversation. Marriage, he says, is not deciding which parent disappears; “it is creating an answer that contains the strength of both.”

This, he explains, is why the Torah calls a wife an ezer kenegdo. She helps you “not by becoming another you, but by bringing what you could never bring alone.” “Your differences are not the enemy of your marriage. They are the material from which your marriage is built.” Hashem doesn’t want either of you to disappear. He wants the real you to come out.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

A spouse who thinks exactly like you adds nothing you didn’t already have.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

If you only feel close when she agrees, Rabbi Landau asks whether you love her or your own opinion coming back to you. Yet giving in on everything is no answer either, because then you disappear.

Underlying need or longing

Each spouse wants to be fully present, not erased. Real love lets both bring what they see so that something new is created.

Deepest human truth

Hashem doesn’t want you to disappear. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that He gave each spouse a separate way of seeing so that, when the two meet, a deeper home can be built.

More questions from this teaching

• How should parents handle it when they disagree about disciplining a child?