Man is multiple in his essence.
This diversity, which we notice in human characteristics and human environments, is also reflected in our thresholds of tolerance, in the body as much as in the mind.
And so some people would bear intense physical pain while others would find the slightest scratch insurmountable. In parallel, in relationships, some people would forgive the worst betrayals while others would not tolerate even a single suggestive message sent to the opposite sex.
All of this bears witness to the multiplicity and the diversity of our thresholds of tolerance.
And yet, – just as beauty is relative but we all agree that certain people
possess a beauty that imposes itself on everyone – is it possible to define a universal threshold beyond which a relationship should no longer be pursued?
The question is at once simple and delicate.
Simple in the sense that we broadly know everything that, in principle, causes a couple’s life to break apart or to grow fragile. The couples therapist Bob Taibbi identified, in the columns of Psychology Today, five behaviours that undermine a couple and can lead to separation: the degeneration of arguments, the multiplication of wounds, the triggering of emotional wounds, the accumulation of negative feelings, and the lack of shared interests and shared relationships. Keeping up steamy ties with exes also falls into this category.
Delicate, however, in so far as one can proclaim that one would never accept this or that from a partner. But when you actually find yourself in the situation, it is no longer so obvious. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we will accept this or that offence to save the relationship, for the children, or for the last time. But is it often the last time?
At what moment can we truly say “this is the very last of the last times”? Where is the line that cannot be crossed? What is the point of no return?
In every form of relationship, it is important to work out whether we are passing through a zone of turbulence or whether the plane is irreversibly about to crash.
This analogy of the plane allows us to work out the behaviour to adopt. When it is a zone of turbulence, you fasten your seatbelt and/or pull it good and tight. You put a stop to every form of distraction, you hold firm, you keep calm and you follow the crew’s instructions. You do not change seats and, still less, do you leave the plane. The plane moves forward, you feel the jolts, some of them long, others short, and then the calm returns.
Leaving the plane at the slightest turbulence and expecting the outside to be better is a reckless way to behave. Very often, the grass that looks greener at the neighbour’s hides suffering and wounds no one suspected.
Every person knows the threshold that is theirs to bear. Several people, however, agree in saying that physical violence within a couple is the ultimate and the only thing they cannot endure.
Indeed, physical violence has this particular quality: the first time is already one time too many. And worse still, a man who does violence to a woman is often inclined to repeat it. The vicious circle of physical violence, apologies, forgiveness, calm and then physical violence once again is extremely difficult to break. Often it is the death or the serious injury of one of the partners that brings it to an end. This is why some maintain that the line they will not cross is indeed physical violence.
All in all, whatever the reason or the situation you choose as your point of no return, it is important to have one, to know it clearly and, above all, to notify your partner of it expressly. Indeed, within a couple, each partner must know what they would have to do to the other to lose them definitively and irreversibly. As we had already spelled out in an earlier article, it proves to be a sine qua non condition to inform before condemning.
M. Z.
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