Do not make your body pay for someone else's wrongdoing

A woman discovers that her partner has hidden another relationship from her. The fault is his.

Yet, in the days that follow, she is the one who stops eating. She is the one who no longer sleeps, can no longer work, refuses invitations and goes back over every detail until her days are drained.

Meanwhile, the man sometimes carries on with his activities. He may be embarrassed, ashamed or worried. He may also avoid explanations. But the life whose ordinary functions are collapsing is not necessarily his.

One injustice then produces a second.

The first is the fault received. The second is the cost that the person already wounded imposes on her own existence, as if someone had to pay and the only person immediately available for the punishment were herself.

The suffering received and the punishment added are not identical

It would be unfair to tell a betrayed person that she chose to be hurt. Some discoveries pass through the body before thought even knows how to explain them. The heart races, the mind scatters and the day loses its shape. The pain exists.

But not everything that follows this first pain is condemned to obey it.

There is what the fault caused. Then there is what we still take away from our own life because we feel we no longer have the right to function: a meal, a night, an activity, a conversation, an hour of calm or the possibility of laughing.

The wound says: "Something important has been destroyed."

Self-punishment adds: "Since that has been destroyed, I must also destroy what still works."

Responsibility does not deny the first pain. It refuses to needlessly give it a second territory.

Justice can target the wrong body

When we cannot reach the person who committed a fault, a silent conviction sometimes appears: something this serious cannot happen without someone suffering.

We would like the other person's nights to be just as long and his activities to lose their taste. But we do not have access to his inner world. The person we can act on immediately is ourselves.

We skip a meal, cancel what could have done us good or go back to the images and messages that bring the wound back to its maximum intensity.

We may believe that our suffering proves the seriousness of the act. Yet an infidelity does not become more serious because the betrayed person stops eating. The fault has its facts, its consequences and the decisions it requires. It does not need to receive the body of the wounded person as additional proof.

Continuing to eat, sleep, work or laugh means neither forgiving, nor staying, nor restoring trust. It only affirms: "What was done to me matters, but my life matters too."

Our body must not become the receipt of the fault

Our body carries the nights we refuse it, the meals we skip and the days lived only in a state of alert.

Yet this body did not commit the fault.

It is the place from which we will have to understand, decide, speak, work, protect our children, rebuild or start over. Weakening it amounts to reducing our capacity to act at the very moment we need it most.

Taking care of ourselves is therefore not a decorative gesture placed beside the problem. It is preserving the instrument from which a responsible response will become possible.

We can be angry and nourish our life. We can be disappointed and complete a planned task. We can acknowledge that a day is difficult without deciding that it will contain nothing but the fault.

Every gesture maintained says to our existence: "You are not guilty of what happened to you."

Pain influences the day without having to govern it alone

The other person can trigger an emotion in us that we did not invite. But influencing is not governing alone.

Between the fact received and the following response lie the meaning we give it, the attention we grant it, the images we repeat and the decisions we still allow to be possible.

This does not mean that simply saying "stop" is enough for the pain to disappear. Emotions do not obey an order immediately. Our power sometimes begins much smaller: not reopening a conversation at three in the morning, completing a task, accepting a pleasant moment without declaring it forbidden or shifting our attention for a few minutes.

This power does not erase the suffering. It prevents it from becoming the only decision-making center.

Context also influences what we feel. A sentence can make us laugh one day and seem aggressive after a conflict. We can then ask ourselves: what comes from the present fact? What am I assuming? What old scene am I adding?

This question does not turn a hurtful remark into a joke. It prevents context from manufacturing a certainty greater than the facts.

Taking care of the body is not siding with the other person

It may seem inconsistent to prepare a meal, rest or resume an activity while the relationship remains hurtful. As if the return of an ordinary gesture risked erasing the urgency of what is happening to us. Yet eating and sleeping sign no reconciliation agreement.

Let us imagine that we have spent the night looking for an explanation. In the morning, the explanation is still not there and our body must still get through the day. We can accept help from a loved one, postpone a non-essential task or seek appropriate care when we can no longer hold on. We do not need to turn this gesture into an exemplary victory. It responds to a present necessity.

The distinction is simple: the other person is answerable for what he did; our health does not have to become the means of making him acknowledge its seriousness. This does not mean that our physical difficulties are voluntary or that a single decision will be enough to make them stop. It means that help for the body does not have to wait for the verdict on the couple.

The first useful support can be modest and concrete: who can relieve us today, what can we be temporarily unburdened of, what need can no longer wait? Returning to these questions gives back a place to the living person behind the story being told. We protect the one who is suffering, not the conduct that made them suffer.

Reopening the other rooms

After a fault, we can close the curtains of every room in our life. We refuse an activity we love because it seems out of place. We no longer want to see our loved ones because they might make us laugh. Then we ask why we no longer see any light.

The fault may have darkened one important room. But sometimes we ourselves have closed the doors of the others.

Reopening them does not instantly rebuild the damaged room. A conversation with a loved one does not cancel the betrayal. A completed task does not erase the humiliation. A peaceful hour does not mean the decision has been made.

We do not do justice to a loss by refusing everything that has not been lost.

We want our partner to treat us as a precious person. Let us begin by not taking away from that person all food, all rest and all joy because of someone else's decision.

Self-respect shows itself precisely when we have a reason to abandon ourselves. It refuses to let the lack of respect received become permission to disrespect ourselves.

Taking back your life is already a response

We often wait for the other person to explain, regret or change before allowing ourselves to take back our life.

But if our food, our sleep, our work and every possibility of joy depend on his next decision, we are entrusting him with even more power after the fault.

Resuming an ordinary act can become a deeper response than a long speech:

"You were able to influence my day. You will not automatically get all the ones that follow."

The goal is not to force ourselves to be happy. It is to leave life several entry doors instead of handing all the keys to the fault.

A pain can remain present while we nourish something else. A decision can wait while we protect our strength. A day can be difficult without being entirely lost.

If sleep, eating or daily functioning remain deeply affected, seeking appropriate help does not diminish our responsibility. It gives it a means to act.

Continuing to live after an offense is not a favor done to the offender. It is refusing to let his act alone decide the value of our existence.

The questions that remove my body from the place of punishment

What need of my body have I stopped listening to since the fault?

What ordinary gesture can I resume without denying my pain?

What image do I keep reactivating until I am exhausted?

What other room of my life can I reopen today?

What help becomes necessary if my body can no longer hold on?