A woman discovers that her partner has concealed another relationship from her. The wrongdoing is his.
Yet in the days that follow, she is the one who stops eating. She is the one who no longer sleeps, cannot work, turns down invitations and replays every detail until it consumes her days.
Meanwhile, the man may carry on with his activities. He may feel embarrassed, ashamed or worried. He may also avoid giving explanations. But he is not necessarily the one whose everyday functioning is collapsing.
One injustice then produces a second.
The first is the wrong done to us. The second is the cost the person already hurt imposes on their own existence, as though someone had to pay and the only person immediately available for punishment were themselves.
The suffering inflicted and the punishment added are not the same
It would be unjust to tell a betrayed person that they chose to be hurt. Some discoveries strike the body before the mind even knows how to explain them. The heart races, thoughts scatter and the day loses its shape. The pain is real.
But everything that follows this initial pain is not condemned to obey it.
There is what the wrongdoing caused. Then there is what we continue to take away from our life because we believe we no longer have the right to function: a meal, a night’s sleep, 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 initial pain. It refuses to needlessly give it a second territory.
Justice can punish the wrong body
When we cannot reach the person who committed a wrong, a silent conviction sometimes arises: something this serious cannot happen without someone suffering.
We would like the other person’s nights to be just as long and their activities to lose their appeal. But we have no access to their inner world. The person we can act on immediately is ourselves.
We skip a meal, cancel something that might have done us good or return to the images and messages that restore the wound to its full intensity.
We may believe that our suffering proves the seriousness of the act. Yet infidelity does not become more serious because the betrayed person stops nourishing themselves. The wrongdoing has its facts, its consequences and the decisions it requires. It does not need the injured person’s body as additional evidence.
Continuing to eat, sleep, work or laugh means neither forgiving, staying nor restoring trust. It simply affirms: “What was done to me matters, but my life matters too.”
Our body must not become the receipt for the wrongdoing
Our body bears the nights we deny it, the meals we skip and the days lived entirely on alert.
Yet this body did not commit the wrong.
It is the place from which we will have to understand, decide, speak, work, protect our children, rebuild or begin again. Weakening it means diminishing our ability to act at the very moment we need it most.
Caring for ourselves is therefore not a decorative gesture placed beside the problem. It is preserving the instrument through which a responsible response will become possible.
We can be angry and still 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 wrongdoing.
Every ordinary act we keep up tells our very being: “You are not to blame for 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 influence is not the same as sole control.
Between the event we experience and our next response lie the meaning we give it, the attention we grant it, the images we replay and the decisions we still leave open.
This does not mean that merely saying “stop” will make the pain disappear. Emotions do not immediately obey a command. Sometimes our power begins on a much smaller scale: not reopening a conversation at three in the morning, completing a task, accepting a pleasant moment without declaring it forbidden or redirecting our attention for a few minutes.
This power does not erase the suffering. It prevents suffering from becoming the sole centre of decision-making.
Context also influences what we feel. A sentence may make us laugh one day and seem aggressive after a conflict. We can then ask ourselves: what comes from the present facts? What am I assuming? What old scene am I adding?
This question does not turn hurtful words into a joke. It prevents context from manufacturing certainty greater than the facts support.
Reopening the other rooms
After a wrong, we may draw the curtains in every room of our life. We refuse an activity we love because it seems inappropriate. We no longer want to see those close to us because they might make us laugh. Then we ask why we can no longer see any light.
The wrongdoing may have darkened one important room. But sometimes we ourselves have closed the doors to all the others.
Reopening them does not instantly rebuild the damaged room. A conversation with someone close to us does not cancel the betrayal. Completing a piece of work does not erase the humiliation. A peaceful hour does not mean the decision has been made.
We do not honour 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 depriving that person of all nourishment, rest and joy because of someone else’s decision.
Self-respect reveals itself precisely when we have a reason to abandon ourselves. It refuses to let the disrespect we have received become permission to disrespect ourselves.
Taking back our life is already a response
We often wait for the other person to explain themselves, feel remorse or change before allowing ourselves to resume our life.
But if our food, sleep, work and every possibility of joy depend on that person’s next decision, we entrust them with even more power after the wrongdoing.
Resuming an ordinary activity can become a more profound response than a long speech:
“You may have influenced my day. You do not automatically get all the days that follow.”
The aim is not to force ourselves to be happy. It is to leave several doors open to life instead of handing every key to the wrongdoing.
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 our sleep, eating or daily functioning remain profoundly impaired, seeking appropriate help does not diminish our responsibility. It gives that responsibility a way to act.
Continuing to live after an offence is not a favour to the offender. It is refusing to let their act alone decide the value of our existence.
The questions that stop my body from being the place of punishment
- Which of my body’s needs have I stopped listening to since the wrongdoing?
- What ordinary action can I resume without denying my pain?
- What image do I keep reactivating until I exhaust myself?
- What other room of my life can I reopen today?
- What help becomes necessary if my body can no longer carry on?
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