I Abuse Myself, You Abuse Me, He Abuses Me

Opinion

It is important to clarify right now: it is not only the abuse one receives from others, but there is a form of abuse that is the worst of all, the one we inflict upon ourselves. Ten years ago, I was writing my first book, ‘Between You and Me’; one of the chapters says: “I have known many betrayals in my life, but the only one I cannot stand is the betrayal of myself.” When I talk about betraying oneself, I mean setting aside one’s essence, staying with someone one never wished to be with even for a minute, and that is a clear example of how we are capable of betraying ourselves, complying with mandates from the past or from others. The origin of this is nothing but the guilt we feel when we transgress the rules imposed on us, the desires of others, our own fear of not being loved, or the need for approval.

Women have come to my office who have never touched their own vagina directly, who have not used their hands even for hygiene, because they have always done it with a cloth, a sponge, or any other object that avoids direct contact with that part of their bodies. Women, who as I often say, have the power to be “partners of God in creation” - a partnership from which we, men, are excluded - are much less informed than men when it comes to sexuality. This is not due to anything other than the prejudices, guilt, and repression they have suffered since childhood on this subject. It is incredible that an act by which a life can be created is seen as dirty, low, or shameful. An act from which a living being is created, a baby is born, which is the purest, most fragile, and immaculate thing that exists.

However, the discriminatory view of women, the inquisitive gaze, makes them have many reservations when it comes to living their sexuality freely. As we saw in previous pages, the Inquisition lasted until the time close Opinion to the discovery of America, that is, between six and eight generations ago.

Therefore, we are not so distant descendants of those men and women and it is possible that many of us still have vestiges of those brutal behaviors that discriminated, judged, tortured, and killed in the name of “God”. In fact, today we see cases of abuse, denigration, cruel murders within a family, as if they were inquisitors who point, judge, and pass sentence on the life or death of women, executed by their own hands and wills. But the most terrible thing is that faced with such an event, there are still people who ask themselves: “What did that woman do to that man?” As if any action could justify the executioner. As if, impulsively and irrationally, they were looking for a reason for such an attitude.

Many years ago, when my program aired on Radio El Mundo, I remember talking to a woman in her forties who told me that her husband had been beating her for over ten years. She had a broken jaw and was deaf in one ear due to the beatings she had received over all those years. It is true that there is also domestic violence from women to men, and we must note that the percentage has increased significantly. (Although here too, reports do not reflect the actual number of cases, because the shame of battered men prevents them from reporting this situation.) However, the physical abuse of men towards women is statistically ten times higher. What punishment is a woman who is beaten in her home seeking and remains there? Why and from what place should she feel deserving of such treatment? What leads her to tolerate, endure, and even cover up that abuse, whether physical or psychological? To understand all this, it is necessary to recognize that the pathology is in both members of the couple, as there cannot be a master without someone willing to be a slave. And in this perverse encounter of master and slave, both need each other and establish a relationship of sick dependence. These dynamics are provoked by a psychopath, whom it is important to recognize immediately or before it is too late to escape their sinister logic. For that, it is essential to know what a psychopath is, how they act, how they live, what they feel, and why there are women who accompany them by their own choice. “If you ask so much to be loved a lot, why don’t you start by loving yourself like that?”