Having a reason to react does not make my reaction right

"It was the other person who started it."

The sentence sometimes seems to explain everything.

Our partner insulted us. We answered with a harsher word. He or she cheated on us. We cheated in turn so that our partner would feel a comparable pain. Our partner stopped doing their part in one area; we withdrew ours elsewhere without explaining anything.

When someone criticizes our behavior, we go back to the beginning:

"If this person hadn't done that to me, I wouldn't have reacted that way."

This sentence may contain a truth. The offense did indeed come before our reaction. It may have provoked it, made it more likely, or loaded it with an anger we would not have felt otherwise.

But between the two, a word slipped in: therefore.

He or she humiliated me, therefore I had to humiliate in turn. He or she broke their word, therefore all my promises lost their value. My reaction is understandable, therefore it is right. Others tell me I'm right, therefore I no longer have to answer for the consequences.

This word gives the impression that the first fault chose the whole rest of the story in our place.

Yet our partner may have written the first sentence of the crisis. He or she does not automatically sign every sentence we add.

"I'm right" can answer several questions

When we say "I'm right," we are sometimes talking about different realities without realizing it.

We can be right about the fact: our partner lied to us, betrayed an agreement, insulted or belittled us, or stopped making a promised contribution.

We can be right about our emotion: the anger, the sadness or the sense of injustice has a real cause. We are not inventing that something has affected us.

We can be understandable: a person who knows the whole story sees why we shouted, pulled away or wanted to give back the pain.

But another question remains open: was the response we chose right, proportionate and useful to what we wanted to protect?

And one last question remains: who will answer for what that response produced?

These verdicts are not identical.

Being right about the harm suffered does not automatically make the method used right. Being understood does not make all our conduct constructive. And the existence of a trigger does not remove our authorship of our response.

The insult returned opens a second file

A man has long been asking his partner to stop insulting him when she is angry. He explains to her what these words produce in him. Yet, during arguments, she continues.

One evening, he answers back.

He chooses a word he knows is hurtful. Perhaps even a more precise word, because he knows this woman's vulnerabilities and knows exactly where to strike.

The next day, he tells the scene to people close to him. Several tell him:

"We understand you. She can't insult you nonstop and be surprised that you answer back one day."

They are right about part of the file. The repetition of the first conduct counts. It contributed to this man's anger and exhaustion. His partner cannot erase her behavior on the pretext that she was hurt by the retaliation.

But the insult returned opens a second file.

Why did this man choose that word? Was he trying to interrupt the attack, to make his boundary visible, or to make a comparable pain felt? What did his word produce? Was it the only response available? What will he now have to acknowledge if he still wants to ask that the insults stop?

The first fault remains whole.

The second does not replace it. It is added to it.

Outside approval will not live with the consequences in our place

Being supported feels good when we have been affected.

We sometimes need someone to confirm that the fact exists, that our expectation was not absurd and that our partner's conduct was not acceptable. This confirmation can help us come out of a doubt or an unjust accusation.

But those around us can understand the path that led us to react without having to live with the consequences.

The people who approve of a humiliation returned will not necessarily live with the coldness that settles into the house afterward. Those who declare that infidelity deserves infidelity will not have to live with trust that is even more damaged. They can tell us we're right during a conversation, then return to their own lives.

We, we will live with what our response has built.

The question is therefore not only: "Do others understand why I did that?"

It becomes: "If no one could applaud my reaction, would I still be proud of its method and able to own everything it makes possible?"

Outside understanding explains our logic. It does not pay the relational bill.

The first betrayal does not write the second

A person discovers that their partner has cheated on them.

The betrayal is real. The commitment has been violated. Trust, plans and the way of looking at the shared story can be deeply affected. It is not about reducing this fault to a simple misunderstanding.

The hurt person may feel the desire to give back what they received: "He or she will finally know what it feels like."

If they cheat in turn, their conduct is partly explained by what they suffered. It nonetheless remains a decision they made.

The first infidelity may have created the anger, opened the crisis and changed what the person still believes they owe the relationship. The person at the origin of that first infidelity chose neither the place, nor the moment, nor the lie, nor the person involved in the second.

Two betrayals can then coexist without canceling each other out and without necessarily becoming identical. They may have neither the same story, nor the same intention, nor the same consequences. Each nonetheless keeps an author.

Saying "I only gave back" describes the link we created between the two gestures.

It does not turn the second decision into a simple parcel returned to sender.

Reproducing a fault does not make us identical

When we do what we reproached the other for, we may conclude: "I'm no better than this person."

This sentence can help us leave behind an easy superiority. It can also become too broad.

Two people do not become identical because they performed a comparable gesture. A story is not summed up by one act. The seriousness, the repetition, the intention, the acknowledgment and the efforts to correct can differ.

But regarding the precise act we chose, we cannot claim a moral exception solely because the other started.

Our retaliation does not remove our right to name the initial offense. It does not make the first person innocent. It simply obliges us to give up the double standard: "When you do that, it's a fault; when I do it, it's only a reaction."

We can still say: "You insulted me."

We must also be able to say: "And I chose to insult you in turn."

Consistency does not require that one stays silent so that the other may speak. It requires that each act finds its author again.

The other's fault can change my commitments without signing a general permission

When an important commitment is violated repeatedly, the couple's agreement can genuinely change. Staying does not automatically renew every former access, every availability or every contribution under the same conditions.

We can ask for a new organization, stop compensating for an imbalance or close an access that has become incoherent. But the false "therefore" reappears when we withdraw a value unrelated to the problem solely to make the other pay: "You destroyed this, therefore I have the right to destroy that."

A responsible consequence remains linked to the problem, proportionate and explainable. It can displease without primarily seeking to wound. If our real goal is to see the other suffer in turn, the word "teaching" becomes only a more presentable name given to revenge.

We may have to refuse, displease or frustrate an expectation. We do not need to dirty ourselves to make our boundary visible.

The pain is real without becoming an obligatory instruction

Refusing the false "therefore" does not mean claiming that the wound exists only in our imagination.

A betrayal can affect our trust, our sleep, our ability to concentrate and our way of looking at the future. A humiliation can continue to resonate after the voice has fallen silent. Violence can produce immediate and lasting consequences.

We do not always choose the first impact, its force or the moment when a margin of decision reappears.

Our interpretation can then amplify, prolong, generalize or redirect certain effects. "This person cheated on me" can become "people always end up cheating on me." "I was humiliated" can become "I must humiliate before being humiliated again." "This relationship failed" can become "no relationship can work for me."

These links are not the wound itself. They are conclusions that we can sometimes re-examine when we find enough space to do so.

Responsibility therefore does not order us not to have been affected.

Responsibility then bears on the real margin we have today, whether it is small or large, immediate or delayed. What can we still refuse to generalize? Which reaction can we choose not to reproduce? What part of our future can we refuse to hand over to the fault we received?

The response can protect dignity without seeking compensation through pain

After an offense, we may want to regain a place: to no longer be the one who receives without saying anything, to have the damage acknowledged, to feel that our word carries weight. This need deserves to be understood. But the method by which we seek to satisfy it can produce something other than what it promises.

An insult can give the impression of restoring equality while adding a new problem. The subject becomes our word, the conversation shifts, and what had affected us remains without repair. Understanding this effect does not mean we were wrong to refuse the offense. It allows us to separate the value being defended from the weapon used to defend it.

We can acknowledge a precise response without taking the whole story onto ourselves: "I regret that word; I maintain that the broken commitment must be dealt with." We can also interrupt an exchange or prepare a safe boundary. None of these options guarantees that the other will listen. Their value also lies in what they spare us from adding and in the consistency they protect.

Responsibility for what follows does not mean that we choose every emotion or that every protection required perfect reflection in the moment. It begins with a real margin. What we can learn today should serve tomorrow, not manufacture retroactive guilt for a freedom we did not have. The other keeps their act; we recover, as much as possible, a way of not letting them define our methods too.

Protecting myself is not returning evil

A distinction becomes indispensable when the harm is immediate.

A gesture made to break free, interrupt violence or create distance does not automatically have the same meaning as a gesture intended to punish after the urgency has passed. The intention, the moment, the necessity of protection, the repetition, the balance of power and the consequences belong to the file.

The violence chosen by a person remains their responsibility. The behavior of the one who suffers it does not make them responsible for the violence they suffer.

Taking back our power over what follows means neither sharing the first fault, nor maintaining the same access, nor staying exposed, nor immediately turning our pain into strength.

Staying does not mean consenting. Staying does not remove the right to name what hurts. The reasons and the constraints can be many, and the margin of decision is not identical for everyone.

But, when a margin exists, we can still ask ourselves what it allows: a boundary, a condition, a new organization, a distance or a decision about the relationship. Complaint can tell the truth of the problem. It cannot, on its own, build the whole of what follows.

Refusing revenge therefore does not condemn us to endure.

It asks us to seek a response that protects without adopting as a method what we precisely want to stop.

The other can start the crisis without choosing the person I become

The other's fault keeps its own file.

Our response opens its own.

We do not need to diminish one to look at the other. We can fully acknowledge the infidelity, the contempt, the lie, the withdrawal or the aggression that affected us, then examine with the same honesty what we decided to do afterward.

Our responsibility does not always begin at the first instant. Anger, fear and shock can reduce our freedom. It begins where a real margin reappears and allows us to prepare something other than the learned reflex.

Perhaps we will choose to rebuild. That will also require our partner's will and actions; one person alone cannot manufacture reciprocity for two.

Perhaps we will redefine commitments or close certain access.

Perhaps we will decide that the relationship can no longer carry what we want to live.

In each of these directions, one question remains: does our response serve our dignity, our peace, our safety and the person we still want to become, or is it mainly seeking to give back the pain before leaving us with an additional pain?

The other may have started the story.

He or she does not have the right to write with our hands everything we will add to it.

The questions that unmask the false "therefore" of my reaction

About what precise fact am I right, and what "therefore" have I added to turn that real harm into permission to take revenge, to make the other suffer or to abandon a value that mattered to me?

If my reaction were examined separately from the initial fault, what would its intention, its form and its consequences reveal to me about the person I choose to become?

What immediate relief do I get from giving back the pain — approval, power or a sense of equality — and what price might that relief make my peace, my dignity or my future pay afterward?

Can I fully acknowledge the other's fault while honestly naming what my response added, without equalizing our responsibilities or using their conduct to erase mine?

What response could genuinely protect my worth, make a consequence visible and serve my goal without making what I condemn in the other the new rule of my own conduct?