New York – Is Bungalow Colony Life Hazardous to Your Marriage?

New York – Appearances, appearances. What we see might not be the truth—but what we see still affects our state of mind.

Rena doesn’t wax nostalgic about the good old days in Woodbourne, or Monticello, Liberty, and South Fallsburg, nor does she care to see how the small villages have evolved over time. What she does want to do, more than anything else—after she’s enfolded her grandchildren into her warm embrace, slipped them some cash, and dutifully taken the de rigueur tour of their gleaming bunks—is depart, as quickly as possible, the verdant beauty that is balm to so many souls, and return to the gritty streets of Brooklyn where no memories fester.

While the Catksills represented an idyll for Rena the child, the married adult experienced them as the rocky shoals on which her foundering marriage was shipwrecked. Having never remarried, Rena demurs forcefully when she hears younger women speak effusively—and innocently, she thinks—about the myriad benefits of “the country.” She feels that they have to be forewarned and she minces no words. This is what she’ll tell them: Be careful…bungalow colony life has its hazards. Living together under such intimate circumstances can breed plenty of problems. It’s only human to observe other people’s lives and contrast them to your own. Just don’t look too closely or you’ll plunge down a slippery slope. I coveted the lives of the women around me—and it ended up destroying my own.

Rena concedes that her marriage was far-from-perfect when she first began joining the annual summer exodus up to the Catskills 30 years ago, a time when the luxury developments that currently dot the countryside were virtually non-existent. The bungalows were mostly old, dilapidated, teeny, some listing to one side, others actually sinking into the ground. Women would journey up to their decrepit bungalows a few weeks in advance of their arrival to scrub and scour their summer haven squeaky clean—evicting the multitudes of mice that had turned it into their winter headquarters—but despite their best efforts, the faded wallpaper still curled, the stained sinks remained grimy, and musty odors stubbornly clung to the yellowed, torn linoleum. The bungalows were simply “yucky,” Rena remembers, in an uncharacteristic lack of eloquence.

“We simply couldn’t stay inside an extra minute. From our cramped quarters we fled outdoors, to the leafy grounds of the colony, anchoring ourselves to a favorite spot under the trees, where we gathered daily to recite Tehillim, work on needlepoints, knit sweaters, embroider tablecloths, but, above all, talk. I hear that this doesn’t happen as much in the new housing developments that have sprung up,” Rena observes. “The houses are so beautiful and spacious, no one needs to escape them like we escaped the bungalows. And somehow, when planning their brand-new communities, a lot of the developers forgot or neglected to create an outdoor space—a kind of plaza or clearing—where women could gather and socialize. This is both a good and bad thing. On the one hand, women need the company of other women and so many new, lifelong friendships were formed in the colonies—which I don’t think is happening quite the same way in the new developments. On the other hand, the fact that the bungalows were often attached or set close together—the fact that entire families were mostly outside all day long stretching into the late evening hours—created a “fishbowl” existence where everyone’s life was under a microscope. This was not a healthy thing for marriages,” she says emphatically. “At least not mine.”

Marriages were challenged by a two-pronged threat: from what the women heard and from what they actually saw. At a time when shmiras haloshon (literally, guarding your tongue) had not yet gained the widespread currency it enjoys today, women spoke freely—and sometimes indiscriminately—about their marriages. If the group was large and non-intimate, they might have felt inhibited from publicly discussing their husbands’ flaws, but they weren’t equally as restrained when it came to broadcasting their merits. It was not out of mean-spiritedness, chas v’sholom, or a lack of consideration for other women’s feelings that they prattled on unthinkingly; rather it was naivete, a certain innocence and obliviousness that loosened their tongues and made them unwittingly the bearer of daggers that dug deeply into other women’s hearts.

Rena, like other women whose marriages weren’t stellar and needed propping up, listened intently to every single word of the monologues she called “In Praise of My Husband,” ovations that dropped like sweet nectar from ingenuous lips, but transformed into insidious worms of acrimony that ate away at her heart. Those who artlessly sang their husband’s praises or proudly narrated specific incidents where their mates emerged as heroes, protectors, or just plain mentschen, could not have possibly envisaged the suffering their guileless paeans caused their bungalow colony friends whose marriages did not match up.

“‘When he comes up for Shabbos, my husband insists on waking up with the baby all night long,’ one woman would casually tell the group. ‘He says I do it all week while he’s sleeping soundly at home and I deserve a break. Isn’t he a doll?’ she would beam,” Rena remembers. “Some women would nod enthusiastically, while others would stare moodily into their coffee mugs—me included—jealousy pricking at us. Our husbands never did that.

“‘Well, my husband doesn’t wake up at night for the baby here in the country, but he does watch him all Shabbos afternoon—for four hours at least—so I can catch up on my sleep and reading and just plain relax. How nice is that?’ another woman would share happily, as a few of us exchanged stricken glances. Our husbands never did that, either.

“Endless variations of this kind of homage were repeated frequently, inevitably forcing even the most mature women of our group to compare and contrast their husbands with all the icons we were hearing about. As much as we intellectually knew that everyone is a package deal and that no human being is perfect, the stories rankled: Her husband is always the first one in shul for the early morning Shabbos minyan? Mine is inevitably late for every single minyan he attends, no matter what time it’s called. Her husband puts in a good three hours of learning every night, after a long, grueling day at the office? Mine barely looks at a sefer anymore. Her husband gives away practically all his money to tzedaka, and wears a threadbare suit? Mine spends it on expensive toys instead. Why can’t my husband be more like Yanky? Or Mendy? Or Ben?”

In retrospect, Rena realizes that these seemingly innocent conversations were landmines, but she didn’t fully understand their potential for danger until much later, when it was too late. “It was impossible to be immune to these kinds of discussions, day in and day out, especially if your marriage was teetering at the brink to begin with. Innocent as these discussions truly were, they served as swords to ravage you with,” Rena says. “It was impossible not to become bitter, resentful, and feel a tragic sense of deprivation…that you were not getting what other women were, what you were entitled to and deserved.

“Bungalow colony life was an exercise in communal living unlike any other experience in our city lives. The lack of privacy offered a birds-eye-view into other people’s arrangements in a way that could be downright revelatory—like holding up a mirror to your life and seeing it from an entirely new and different perspective. The strict segregation of the genders that prevailed in the city was not as easily maintained in the summertime, where, in the bungalows, couples often ate Shabbos meals together and just mingled more in general. Even as pedestrian a task as throwing out the garbage could prove a harbinger of trouble. As you’d schlep your garbage to the colony’s dump 10 minutes away, it was only human to be jealous to find Hindy’s husband there, and Ruchi’s and Shoshi’s, while your own mate never volunteered to spare you the trip.

“In short, the women observed different types of marriages that they hadn’t been exposed to before, and some of them seemed to be working far better than their own. It was bad enough to be regaled with women’s effusive reports of their husband’s myriad feats and virtues—and some of them did possess the smarts to discount much of what they heard. But others were virtually eaten up with jealousy by what they saw with their own two eyes….And other peoples’ marriages on public display, up-close-and-personal, provided the fuel for the women’s increasing levels of discontent, the thorns that stabbed at them continuously. As much as they wished their neighbors well, they couldn’t help but feel constant twinges of envy that nibbled away at their marital satisfaction, making them wonder over and over again just how well we had ‘scored.’

“From the corners of our eyes,” Rena remembers, “we jealously observed Shlomie-who-never-sits-down-for-a-minute assiduously sweeping his bungalow porch and the area around it; devoted father Mendy playing endless rounds of ball with his kids; nurturing husband Menachem arriving every erev Shabbos with a huge bouquet of roses for his wife, which he never failed to bring. Practically every week, Miriam came to shul bearing a brand-new trinket that Heshy had generously bestowed on her —a diamond pin this week, a gold necklace the next. We cast sidelong glances at the husbands who arrived promptly every Thursday night, which made us welcome our mates who arrived 10 minutes before Shabbos with less than warmth. I was acutely aware that my husband did none of the things other women’s husbands did, and my world was continuously being jolted as I registered again and again how lacking he was. I couldn’t help it…everything I saw around me I wanted for myself, too. I began to criticize and harangue my husband with an intensity that accelerated dangerously, and our marriage—which had been more or less apathetic—now turned volatile.

“I don’t believe I was the only one affected. In our fishbowl existence, we were always being forced to watch the tableaux of other couples’ interactions (the positive ones) unfold before our envious eyes, tableaux we longed for ourselves but couldn’t quite attain.

“We heard Binny address his wife with the utmost respect, treating her as if she were a queen—and wondered why our spouses failed to accord us similar kavod. We watched the frummest couples in our colony take long meandering walks down the country roads together and scowled at our husbands who said they were too tired. We cast sidelong glances at Sruli, who, after every Shabbos kiddush at the shul, returned to his bungalow bearing a tray of treats for Leah, who liked to sleep in. The worm of jealousy kept eating away at many of us—particularly me—as I kept on measuring my husband, and he kept on falling short.

“The bungalow colony poured salt on the wound. Too many summers of watching other marriages prosper while mine failed had their effect: I wanted their marriage, not mine, but in the end I had neither. I finally divorced my husband after summers of strife and bitterness boiled over to a point of no return. I never had the opportunity to remarry, and today I wonder if my marriage wouldn’t have survived if it hadn’t crumbled under the weight of bungalow colony pressures and too-close communal living.”
Rena concedes that if she would have been more mature, she would have realized that nothing is quite what it seems to be, that appearances are often deceiving, and that you never, ever know what really transpires behind closed doors. “Even though we seemed to be living in a fishbowl, and everyone’s life appeared magnified a thousand times in clear view of our jealous eyes, in the end we knew nothing about one another’s lives,” she acknowledges sadly. “It wasn’t that people purposely put on a facade or wore a persona that wasn’t true (although that did sometimes happen), it was just that we didn’t see the entire picture, just a small piece of the truth.

“Yes, Shloimie regularly swept the bungalow porch and, for that matter, the kitchen and bedrooms, too, but what we didn’t know was that he failed to communicate with his wife in any meaningful way, and she longed for a husband with whom she could have conversation. Mendy played endless rounds of ball with his sons, but it was because he was a Peter Pan—a kid at heart—who didn’t take his real-life duties, like bringing parnassah or actually learning with his sons, seriously. Yes, Heshy brought his wife excessively generous gifts each week, but there were some husbands like him whose money came from dishonest sources—and who eventually paid for it later, some unfortunately languishing in jail for years. Binny might have been soft-spoken and respectful when he addressed Shira outside the bungalow—but there are many men who act one way when their marriage is on display and everyone hears—and then when the doors are closed and their interactions are removed from prying eyes, physical or verbal blows rain down as the world sleeps in oblivion. As for the couples who take long, intimate walks every Shabbos afternoon—stirring the toxic sludge of jealousy that churns inside of us, inflaming our yearning, inciting our sense of deprivation? Who knows. Even when you think you are seeing the truth, you may not be seeing it at all.

“Perhaps the new summer developments, where people live more privately and their lives are not so flagrantly displayed as they were in the old bungalow colonies, are a better alternative, after all. All I can say is that for me, bungalow colony life snuffed out the last remaining embers of my marriage. I was so busy observing other people’s relationships, that I forgot to stoke my own.”

The above article appeared in Ami Magazine 2 weeks ago, reprinted with permission.