Frau Mutter Renate

I knew it — but I didn’t want to believe.

He believed too — though he never knew in what, or perhaps he simply refused to ask.

I knew there would be miscommunication. I knew he would twist every calm into a theatre of control.

And yet… I didn’t want to see it. Because to see it would mean acknowledging the truth: that he was never truly for me.

Take Thursday. I got frustrated — with my dog, with something trivial — and instantly, he assumed the center of my irritation was him. Me, upset at him. Not at the dog, not at circumstance, not at reality itself. He projected. He always projects. And in that projection, his ego, his assumptions, his religion — all of it — became the lens through which I was measured. Meanwhile, when he makes mistakes, when he acts without awareness, I am expected to tread carefully. To cushion him. To manage his fallout. But when I express frustration about something that is not him, something external, I am suddenly the antagonist. His beliefs, his religion, his identity — all become shields, excuses, instruments of control. And I see, clearly now, that it has nothing to do with the actual issue. This is the paradox I live in: I am patient, careful, measured. I am silent, I am observant, I am aware. And yet the moment I breathe frustration into the air, it becomes mine to defend — as though the world bends around his ego, but never around my truth. 

He decided we would sleep apart — claiming he needed rest, that he shouldn’t be ‘bothered’ by anyone’s care, least of all mine.

I thought, ironically, that the principle of a housewife has always been to serve the man, to cook before him, to sustain the household. Yet here we lived more like flatmates, orchestrated by his ego.

I offered, calmly, that he could at least learn to manage his rent — a lesson in responsibility, since our intimacy was now suspended, and investments of care, of time, even of my dog, should be measured.

Then came the dog — or rather, the violation of my plates. Two plates, sacred to me, free of meat, untouched by compromise, marked as my boundary. He fed the dog from them, arguing that I was ‘already so close’ to my pet. And in that act, the altar of my personal order crumbled.

Psychologically, one might say he projected — his ego, unresolved maternal conflicts, a hunger for control — onto me and onto the dog. Jung would call this a shadow play; Freud might suggest transference and displacement. Either way, the result is the same: my patience tested, my boundaries challenged, my reality ignored. The night began as an ache and ended as an exorcism. The migraine came without warning — no aura, no signal, just pain descending like a velvet curtain over my skull. Years had passed since I had felt it this way: nausea twisting the stomach, body folding on itself like a creature in winter, sunglasses at midnight, forehead pressed to the coolness of the tiles for a flicker of relief. In that darkness I was not a woman, not a partner, not even a self — only a pulse of pain trying to survive until dawn.

He, meanwhile, drifted between agitation and performance. He asked once what was wrong. “Migraine,” I whispered. He did not hear. He asked again. This time I only raised my hand, signalling silence. The mattress shifted with his turning, his restlessness shaking the bed, the frame groaning until a leg beneath it shifted. Finally, theatrically, he took the couch — a gesture that was not care but statement. I asked him, quietly, if he was angry. Angry at me, or at the dog. “No, baby. All good. Sleep well,” he replied — soft, almost tender, a lullaby over the crack of ice. But I had learned to cage myself in moments like this. Not to show how bad the pain was. Not to say the words that sounded like “kill me now, I can’t take this,” even if my brain was screaming them. People don’t handle it. They flinch from pain that naked. So I smiled instead, even as I folded inward. He read my smile as mockery, as some kind of humiliation. And because the dog slept peacefully on his blanket, he felt small, diminished.

By morning, the ache had sharpened. I woke weaker than I had gone to sleep. I took the dog out quietly at 6 a.m., trying not to wake him. But he was already up, standing in the kitchen, full of accusation and noise. He began to shout — about Poles and Jews and Muslims, about what “they” would or would not accept, his words tumbling like knotted rope, half-puns and half-insults. The Muslim, the Jew, he screamed, as if identity itself were a weapon. I asked him to be clearer, to tell me what he actually meant. But his words came out like kalamburs — twisting, fragmented, impossible to decode. He claimed I was always “low,” because I smiled when the dog lay in his place. But the truth was simpler, and darker: I smiled because I was in pain too deep to show. I smiled because it was the only mask left between my head and his noise.

Psychologically, moments like this are not random. Research on projection and coercive control (Lundy Bancroft, 2002; Sturge-Apple et al., 2010) shows that partners who feel their power threatened often reassert it by reframing their partner’s illness or behaviour as an insult. The dog, the smile, the necklace — all symbols he could weaponise. Meanwhile, your silence — the very thing you used to protect yourself — became, in his narrative, evidence of disrespect. This is how emotional erosion works: the very strategies of self-preservation are reinterpreted as attack. Dawn broke not as light but as weight. My head still rang from the night, but by then the migraine had fused with something heavier, an undertow of exhaustion and dread. He wanted to talk. He wanted to “clear the air.” What came instead was a litany of grievances.

“You cook for me. I don’t know if I’m allowed in my own kitchen. You do everything, and I don’t know what’s left for me.”

The words were ridiculous, yet they fell with the gravity of accusations. I stood there, mute. Speechless not from guilt but from the sheer absurdity of it. In a sane world a man who comes home to warm food and a clean space would be grateful. In my world that morning, gratitude had turned into resentment, like milk gone sour.

I tried to stop him — “I can’t, I have a migraine, I can’t take this right now” — but the words did not slow him. He kept on, even as my legs buckled and I fell to the cold kitchen floor. The tiles were my only medicine. He followed, barking at me to get up. My mind spun, not with his words but with the practicalities of escape: the unsigned testament for Karol, the plan for the dog, what would happen if I simply couldn’t stand again.

He said he would talk calmly now. Anyone believing that would be naïve. He went on explaining all that I had done wrong — that I had no real migraine, that because of me he was missing things, that I was the problem and the reason everything was “bad.” That he needed the living room cleared because he had been “trying to pack” for weeks, but because of my “issues” and “the dog in the bed” he hadn’t slept. And now everything must be unpacked, sorted, done. Or else.

He even dangled money as ultimatum: “I have twenty thousand zloty. I can give you that if you want to move out. Then you don’t need to pack.” Oh boy, I thought. Truly. Somewhere between accusations he said he was tired of me, that he wouldn’t “fight for me,” that he had had enough. I swallowed two painkillers and whispered a prayer for them to work. I kept myself to the barest minimum, words clipped down to nothing.

Later, when the pain was at its worst, I went to the bedroom floor for cold. My hand reached for the necklace — the one I had worn like a truce. I pressed it into his palm. “Give it,” I said, “to whoever you think deserves it.” He ordered me to take it back, to put it on. I refused. “I’m a Muslim, not a Jew. I won’t wear it again. I don’t want the flag of Israel anymore. Judaism is finished for me.” He broke then — between crying and rage — but I could not break with him. It was too much.

By then I had realised the absurdity of the whole tableau: I was forbidden to cook because cooking made him feel bad, he would not have sex because the dog slept in the bed, and yet all of this was somehow my fault. In his logic it was the highest rationality. In reality it was infantile.

When he declared again he wouldn’t fight for me, I rose — still nauseous, migraine spiking — and looked him straight in the eyes. My face was drawn so tight you could see the muscles clenched beneath the skin. “This conversation is over,” I said. “Think carefully about what you’re saying. You’re about to do something there’s no coming back from.”

He claimed he had thought carefully. “No,” I said, “you haven’t. You’re just pitiful and weak. May the gods have more mercy on you than your own god does.” This is what I say when I want to say “fuck off” but choose not to.

He kept chasing me about unpacking, about leaving, about everything. In the evening he insisted we go shopping. I went — sunglasses on, stomach heaving, head splitting — because the alternative was more noise. Eight hours of unpacking with repeated collapses onto the floor just to avoid his rage. Only to hear, at night, “You did a lot today. I didn’t think it would be so much.”

That sentence shattered me more than the day itself. He cooked meat for the dog — the task he had assigned me — and then used my plate to feed it, as if to show that my closeness to the dog meant I might as well eat from its dish.

Psychologically, this is a textbook cycle of coercion and cognitive dissonance. In research on trauma bonding and intermittent reinforcement (Carnes, 1997; Dutton & Painter, 1993), victims adapt by over-performing, minimising themselves, or masking pain to avert punishment. Meanwhile, the aggressor frames ordinary care as control, projecting his own dependency as her fault. The dog, the necklace, the kitchen — all become symbols, props in a private theatre of dominance.

The morning began before dawn — 4:50 a.m., the faint chime of church bells marking the hour. He was already awake, moving through the flat like a restless shadow, his footsteps silent but deliberate. I remained still, clutching my phone, relieved by the absence of messages. No stress. Only Duolingo blinking back at me. For a fleeting moment, I felt a rare sense of peace.

By 6:30, I returned from walking the dog. The air was crisp, a reminder that I was alive, that the day had not yet begun. I donned my headphones, prepared breakfast, and retrieved my laptop from the living room desk. My intention was clear: to write in my blog without disturbing him. He had expressed a desire to sleep longer, and I had agreed.

Then he appeared behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. He muttered something, and only then did I realize he was awake.

“May I move to the desk and write my blog? I don’t want to disturb your sleep.”

He responded with a vague nod, neither confirming nor denying permission. I set the laptop down, the keys clicking softly. And that’s when I realized: some people are so utterly useless that it takes real material to write them in blood. Perhaps I was the one on the attack now, but at least my attack was honest.

I asked, plainly:

“What does ‘rest’ mean to you?”

He faltered, circling the question like a wolf unwilling to enter a trap. He could describe what my rest was — according to his mind — but not his own.

I pressed on:

“Where do you see yourself in a quarter?”

He blinked.

“A half-year?”

“No. A quarter is three months. October, November, December. Three months. Where do you see yourself — without me, without the dog?”

He couldn’t answer. He spoke of war. Waiting for war. Waiting to vegetate.

Inside my skull, a small voice whispered: Do I have a tumor, or does he? Because my math isn’t that wrong.

Then I asked:

“In which role do you see me? Because if I may not cook for you, may not do this for you, because you feel ‘restricted’, then what do you actually want?”

He drifted. He loves the idea of being loved. He sabotages the reality. He loves the idea of a relationship, but only if he can be single inside it. It’s like a john going to a prostitute, coming home, and telling his wife:

“But I paid. That’s not cheating.”

We had a deal, once. He would tell me where the blame lay. But he only does it after the injury, after he has proven again that I’m not worthy of his trust. That I’m not “good enough” to be spoken to directly.

And still, I held my ground.

“There are studies behind me, Darek. Science. Not just feelings. When mothers see their own dog and their own child, their brains light up in the same networks — emotion, reward, attachment. Stoeckel et al., 2014. That’s not fiction. That’s biology. If your friend compliments my dog more than you, fine, I’ll tell him to compliment you. So you won’t be jealous the dog gets more than you.”

The room went still. The dog yawned, oblivious, yet somehow the only one of us sane.

And then it hit me — as cold and clean as a blade:

He is in love with the thing he imagined, not with what stands before him. He can focus only on the principle of being adored, not on the act of answering a simple question. He cannot survive the hunger of love because he only wants to feed, never to be fed.But then I pause, and I ask myself — and him, silently: But what does love actually mean? We’ve read it in Corinthians, the First Letter, Chapter 13: love is patient, love is kind. But is it really? In practice? In a flat at 5:30 a.m., with church bells clanging and a dog staring at you like a miniature oracle? And what about other religions, philosophies — what do they say? When does the child, or the dog, become a problem? When does your identity show up to object, conveniently, only when it suits you?

Because suddenly, the religion that was invisible yesterday is screaming today. Aha, it says, I have arrived. As if there’s a switch: Jewish, Muslim, secular — take your pick, just as long as it interferes exactly where it bothers the most.

And I think: maybe love isn’t a switch either. Maybe it’s a stubborn dog, a small human, a responsibility that bites when you least expect it. Perhaps, in a world where someone’s ego and a dog’s loyalty collide, the only sensible response is to take a deep breath, pour a cup of tea, and remember that science — yes, the messy, wonderful neuroscience — is on your side. For parents, whether of humans or canines, those same circuits fire in our brains: attachment, care, protection. We cannot cheat biology; it will insist on recognition, attention, love — even from a miniature four-legged tyrant.

And so I sit, in my British morning, with humor like a teabag steeped too long: knowing that love is hunger, no man survives, and yet still, somewhere in the chaos of identities, religions, and furry dependency, I can ask the real question: what does it mean to truly be fed?