The Dark Side of "Absolute Modesty"

"I grew up in a very closed and strict community in Chicago. From the age of ten it was drilled into me that modesty (tzniut) isn't just about the length of a skirt — it's total control over your thoughts. We were forbidden even to look in the direction of boys, and any talk about the body was considered something dirty. Before my wedding I took a kallah course, but it consisted exclusively of the dry laws of purity (Niddah). About what real intimacy is, or the psychology of a man, not a single word was said.

And then came the wedding night. My husband is a wonderful, gentle man — none of this is his fault. But when he tried to embrace me, I had the most severe panic attack. My body simply locked up. My brain, which had been trained for 11 years in the mode of "a man is sin and danger," could not switch over at the snap of a finger in one evening after the chuppah. I cried in the bathroom for three hours, feeling guilty and damaged. It took us half a year of gentle work with a family therapist for me to simply stop being afraid of my own husband. You cannot raise girls in fear of their own physiology, or else the holiness of marriage turns into a nightmare."