Her Husband Tried to Kill Her. Now She Helps Free Abused Brides.
Fraidy Reiss Feared for Her Life—Today She Assists Domestic Abuse Survivors Get Their Lives Back
Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. If you're new around here, read my introductory post.
Everyone agrees we’re in a massive transition, but few agree on the best way to navigate it. Every Wednesday at The Nonlinear Life, we focus on life transitions. Today we continue a new feature: a portrait of a nonlinear life well-lived, from the 400 life story interviews I’ve conducted since 2017.
Our first subject went from GED to PhD. Today, one of the most inspiring people I've ever met.
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Fraidy Reiss was the second youngest of six in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn. Her Cuban-born father was “extremely violent and abusive,” she said, so her mother took the children to raise by herself. Fraidy was spunky, but not hostile toward religion. She wore knee socks under her shapeless dresses. “It was kind of lame—Watch out, world, Fraidy is wearing socks over her tights! Still,I liked to push boundaries.”
As a child, Fraidy had no access to the outside world. “I went to an all-girls school where we learned to cook and sew,” she said. “I didn’t know who the Beatles were and thought hamburgers were made of ham.”
At eighteen, Fraidy was put into the marriage pool. With parents who were separated and poor, she was not considered a good match. She started going on arranged dates on which the intendeds were not allowed to be alone. “You’d sit across from each other, order Coca-Cola, and talk about how many kids you’d like to have,” she said. “Then you’d go home and have to decide whether to spend the rest of your lives together.”
When her first match confessed he’d tried marijuana, Fraidy turned him down. Her next match was a chain-smoker who had dozens of violations for reckless driving. On two of their three dates, he got into fistfights with strangers on the street. Because Fraidy had spent her “one reject card,” she agreed to marry him. Six weeks later, they were husband and wife.
Fraidy on her wedding day.
“You weren’t supposed to be in love,” she said, “but I persuaded myself that I was happy.”
He threatened to kill her on their wedding night. Not just in passing, but in minute, grisly detail. “I’m going to wrap my fingers around your neck,” he said. “I’m going to squeeze until you take your last breath, and I’m going to look you in the eye and watch you stop breathing.” Another time he told her he would dismember her. “He would break dishes, furniture, windows, and if we were driving in a car, he’d speed up to one hundred miles an hour, then slam on the brakes so I’d go flying.” He also made her keep the bathroom door open to make sure she had nothing to hide.
Fraidy spoke to his father, who was offended. She spoke to her mother, who turned and walked out of the room. She thought it might get better when they moved to New Jersey and had children; she was wrong.
“I was a twenty-year-old stay-at-home mom and housewife, and I hated my life,” she said.
When Fraidy was nearly a decade into this life, a friend slipped her the name of a therapist outside her Orthodox community. In their first meeting, the therapist used the expression domestic violence and said Fraidy might be eligible for a restraining order. “I went home and thought, At least I’m not crazy.”
A few days later she was caring for their newborn when her husband kicked open their front door. Fraidy grabbed the baby, hopped in the car, and headed for a friend’s house. He got in his truck and tailgated her, shouting, “I’m going to kill you!” Her friend’s house was in a cul-de-sac, and when Fraidy parked out front, her husband blocked her in. “It was the stupidest place for me to go,” she said, “but this time I had an out. I called 911.”
Fraidy was the first person in the history of the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakeland, New Jersey, to get a restraining order. Her husband was removed from her home. “In any other community, this might have meant freedom,” she said. “But in my community, this was a sin.” The next day the rabbi sent a male lawyer to her house, and she was hauled before a judge to retract her claim. “I had no choice,” she said.
Fraidy stayed with her husband for the next five years. During that time, she secretly squirreled away cash in a Total Whole Grain cereal box in the pantry. He’d give her money for a new wig; she’d wash the old one and keep the cash. When she’d saved up $40,000, she enrolled at Rutgers University. When her husband objected, she said, “What exactly are you going to do to stop me?”
Fraidy advocating for the end of child marriage in front of the Massachusetts State House.
School was not easy with Fraidy’s background. In her first semester, she studied Greek civilization and was stunned to learn there were other gods. Soon, she stopped wearing her wig. Appalled by her brazenness, her mother sat shiva for her, the Jewish ritual of mourning the dead. One Shabbat, when her husband threatened her, she drove the children to the mall and watched a movie. The neighbors were horrified. When Fraidy and the children returned, her husband was gone. “I realized this was my chance, so I changed the locks,” she said. “When he came back a week later, I told him, ‘I’ve inhaled and tasted life without you, and it’s sweet. You’re not coming back.’”
Fraidy filed for divorce. She graduated from Rutgers with a 4.0 average. Her class elected her valedictorian. She got a job as a reporter with the Asbury Park Press. (In her first assignment, she had to ask how to spell the name of the town’s most famous son, Springsteen.) She bought her own house. And a few years later she founded an organization that helps women escape forced marriages. She called it Unchained at Last, after what she considers the shape of her life: a broken chain.
Fraidy speaking TEDxFoggyBottom in 2018.
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Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.
You might enjoy reading these posts:
The first entry in this series: From High-School Dropout to Ph.D.
The Forgotten Psychological Tool That Can Make You Happier Today
Or these books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, and Council of Dads.
Or, you can email me directly.
Photos courtesy of Fraidy Reiss.
