Question:
I was sitting at the table with my family and my wife said something. I disagreed with her and was careful not say something sharp or embarrassing to her in front of the children. This is not uncommon between us and a disagreement is not a source of any angst between us. She told me after that she was terribly humiliated and felt as if i spilled here blood. I felt terrible and apologised profusely and displayed true remorse. She forgave me wholeheartedly. Can you advise what can I do for a kappara, if it was a shogeg and she forgave me. but at the same time the severity of malbin pnay chaveiro frightens me.
Answer:
Thank you for your question.
The question is asked, if embarrassing a person is as if he killed him, why is it then that a person who committed murder has a portion in the world to come, but a person who embarrasses someone else doesn’t? One of the answers given is because after a person commits murder, he realizes what he did, and he will feel bad and regret what he did, however after someone embarrasses someone else he doesn’t usually have such a bad feeling, because he doesn’t realize what he did. Therefore he won’t do teshuva. Additionally, even if a person did commit murder, he won’t do it more than once, however there are people who embarrass others in public numerous times, therefore embarrassing other is worse.
You feel genuine remorse for what you did, and you did teshuva for it, therefore you don’t have to worry that you c”v lost you olam haba, however part of teshuva it to take constructive steps to ensure that this Aveiro doesn’t rep\eat itself. One of the suggestions brought in the seforim is that when a person wants to work on something, he should learn seforim that talk about this topic, and this will help him be more cognizant about his actions and help him not to repeat that action. Therefore, find yourself a sefer that talks about talks about talking nicely to people and being careful about their feelings. Additionally, if you will work on minimizing the arguments between yourself and your spouse that will also help.
Best wishes
