Never Enough

The day my quarantine ended, my Ex came to my place and planned on staying for the next few weeks while attending a seminar not too far away from my place. The seminar was supposed to help her prepare for the exam, but it turned out to be less effective than she had hoped for. My Ex complained to me about the instructor, who was not a good teacher and who had made a racist remark to a black seminar participant. She didn’t feel comfortable in the city that the seminar was taking place in, told me how she had gotten the death stare from a passerby at the train station and that she dislikes the North.

One night, we watched something political on TV. My Ex complained about racism in the culture, which upset me. I got angry and accused her that she is racist herself with all the complaining about Germany. In that moment, my suppressed hurt about the cinema incident broke loose. I yelled at her how she had “offended me, the city I live in, and my culture!” After I had gotten this out of my soul, I quieted down, but now she was angry. She repeated the racist remark of her instructor and asked me how I think how the black guy from her seminar sleeps at night when you say this to him. In this conflict, our emotional pain was speaking–my pain about how I felt offended by my Ex, and her pain how she felt offended by people in countries that she had lived in.

That night she decided to sleep on the couch. Sometime in the early morning, I checked on her and asked her if she wants to come to bed. After we lay down in bed, she told me how unbelievably angry and disappointed she is in me. She said that she wants a man who is kind and self-contained. She became furious and yelled at me in return: “You don’t deserve me! Yo do not yell at me!” In that moment, her traumatized inner child was yelling at her abuser. She said to me: “maybe you deserve to be alone,” which hit me in the most vulnerable part of my psyche and retraumatized my inner child. I was shocked by her delayed response to my anger outbreak.