Those seven days of abstention before mikvah are a trial. When we first got married, we tried to follow the laws in every detail. Cold turkey. No touching during those seven days. I didn’t even pass him a plate. He didn’t kiss me or hold my hand.

But I was so angry. Look, this was too fast, too soon. You know, I always did things in a gradual way. So we realized that for a while we had to make compromises. We decided we could only kiss and hug outside.

We were living in an apartment. Up on the roof we’d go. We couldn’t be touching each other in the house. That would be too tempting.