Did you write about me?

"Did you write it about me?" - said my friend with tears in her sparkling blue eyes that still carried all the enthusiasm I have always known her for but also a deep sadness. She referred to my piece "My three friends and other women". "I had no idea about you, darling" - I told her surprised. Then she started to speak about all the humiliation and suppression she had to endure the past years. "There's also her" she told me about another friend who had recently divorced, with very strong reasons "and actually there are many more couples peacemakers are attending regularly nowadays."

My first reaction was: "why?"

Why do peacemakers attend couples of 10+, 20+ years, explaining the unexplainable, sticking to the letters of the law while gaslighting women's feelings and inducing guilt in them?

Actually, wrong question. Wrong and naive. Why? Because that's what's convenient for men.

They realised this is necessary now so they call their loyal friends to influence their wives to stay their obedient slaves. Feelings, facts, religion, rights, teachings are only cards in this game where the only goal is to break her spirit. Everything is allowed for this goal.

Women, especially women in love in their 20's or early 30's don't need a lot. They will gladly do everything for their husbands. They will follow every regulations and rules because they believe they have a key to his heart. We read in the books that a woman needs to dress up nicely, wait for her husband in a calm atmosphere, giving him whatever he desires, so she will do it. There's nothing wrong with this as long as it's reciprocal. As long as the husband will indeed appreciate her efforts and increases his considerate actions towards her as well.

Unfortunately in the majority of cases men who received King's treatment, won't treat their wives as Queens but soon turn to be dictators. They start to take everything she does for granted and demand more and more and more, emotionally, mentally and even financially.

That's when she asks for help for the first time. She has done everything according to the teachings. She is patient, she is kind, she is devoted. She did it for God's pleasure. She studied, so she knows her duties and her rights. And when she slowly realised that her rights were not met, she needed to fly a complaint.

And that's the moment the story goes wrong. Because she doesn't get any help. She is told to be patient - she had already been patient the past decade -, she is advised to stand up and demand her own rights, which basically means that no one will support her and stand by her. 

I really thought in a naive way. I imagined that if a woman goes and asks for advice, same goes for a man. And what advices do men need in connection with their wives? If women are getting 3 hours of lectures about men's ways of thinking and their mental, emotional and physical needs, then same would be beneficial for them about women, too. A dedicated husband is not someone who can read the mind of his wife, but who goes and wants to understand what's going on in her mind. So he goes on and finds out what she needs - just like she did in the beginning. That's what would sound normal, right? That's how something strong can be built for the society. A marriage, a family based on mutual respect, trust and understanding, sustained by mutual work.

Unfortunately many people do not think that way. They might lack the concept of "mutuality" when it comes to marriage and the only way they can imagine it is suppression. 

But that's only a time set bomb. 

It might be buried now, but the way it is set, all the hurt and pain and sorrow will eventually make her decide in another way. 

Because a woman in her 40's cannot bear more. She won't be made to believe that tolerating disrespect is a pious thing in any way. She will give up her dreams about being loved by loving alone and not to receive anything back. She will know that it's something else. It's suppression. It's disrespect. It's being taken for granted. It's a whole concept of disunity. Of people of different levels. 

This is how a marriage dies. Out of neglect and the lack of providing God given rights. Out of the importance of friendship and loyalty between men over the rights of women. 

So her fight starts. It can take years. It can destroy her mentally and physically, but it can elevate her. She can become a phoenix, rising from her own ashes. But it takes time, determination and strength. And going against the flow. Because the peacemakers will not leave her alone. They will search for her weak points and use them against her own self. They will find traces of "love" and "attachment" and appeal to her natural desire for a harmonious life.

They can shake her but can't break her. Not forever. She knows that her life has been far from harmonious. She wants peace, and she realised that she could only reach it if she eliminated everything that goes against it. The lies, the disrespect, the heaviness, the gaslighting... Everything.

She has to go back to herself, and give her all the rights she had been deprived of. She owes it to herself, her children and grandchildren and every woman on earth. 

And one day she will be healed from all her scars.