This chapter talks about a very common attitude even among women who do not belong to the "dark world," but once again, the intensity and systematic nature with which it presents itself in Miriam makes it paradoxical and therefore paradigmatic, an example of a relationship model that is typical ESPECIALLY of that world.
I often wonder to what extent this is also due to the local, Venetian culture, but again I ended up concluding that it is something general... and pervasive.
The attitude I am referring to, already mentioned in other posts, is a systematic attack on one's partner, a continuous torment, made up of hours of complaints, protests, accusations... something almost daily and relentless... impossible to stop.
The evening of 01/30/2025, I had one of the most remarkable examples worthy of being told.
It was a weekday, and I had decided to go to bed at a decent hour, also because the next day I had an early wake-up call and an intense day ahead.
I decide to call Miriam and we start chatting, I express my love to her as usual, I say sweet words to her, and Miriam's tone for a while seems in tune with mine.
Then she starts, without even changing her tone of voice, as if continuing the same logical thread, she throws terrible accusations at me, tells me that I am the meanest, the most evil of ALL her partners, indeed of ALL THE PEOPLE SHE KNOWS, that I HAVE HURT HER MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE ON EARTH... and attributes to me the almost total responsibility for her recent problems (if possible even heavier than the "usual").
I now know her and know what she is doing, she wants to provoke me to induce me to argue, she wants to "throw it into chaos," make me shout and talk over as she does, and she wants to do it to reduce me to the same behavior, bring me to her level, to free herself of HER RESPONSIBILITIES by attributing them to me.
I try to stay silent and let her vent... but she continues undeterred for at least an hour, the absurdity of her statements eventually succeeds in making me react, I can't stay silent, I can't pretend nothing when she compares me to notorious thieves, fraudsters, and even to a person defined in newspaper articles as a "human beast," insisting that I am far worse than ALL of them.
I reply keeping my voice low, I try to present arguments of elementary logic supported by FACTS, which demonstrate the absurdity of her reasoning, I remind her that unlike her partners I have always lived honestly and with highly qualified jobs, that I trained at a prestigious university, that I have taken care of my family and my children, that I have never stolen, dealt drugs, beaten people, abused the disabled, that I have never raped any woman (unlike at least one of her partners who raped her multiple times right in the silence of the domestic walls, before finally being shown the door), and I try to remind her that the people who are at the source of her current troubles are the same ones she chose to associate with instead of ME, I remind her that they were her choices, and that if she is now paying the consequences she has only herself to thank, I remind her that she was the one who wanted to reduce our relationship to the bare minimum, I demonstrate to her that the type of "evolving friendship" relationship is in contradiction with our past because we are already well beyond friendship, and I cite one by one the contradictions in HER behavior.
ALL USELESS, the more my arguments are irrefutable the more she raises her voice and increases the severity of her accusations, in the end, I give in... I talk over her too... we shout at each other, and I realize that to an uninformed external observer we are the same, indistinguishable in the shouting, with good peace of good reasons, logic, and even FACTS.
After the argument, she runs away, as usual, she has achieved her goal, I try to compose myself and console myself by saying that at least I listed all HER CONTRADICTIONS... I know that some part of her was listening, but it is a small consolation.
The only TRUE consolation is that Miriam does these things ONLY with partners... AND... she has done them with ALL partners... even with the human beast who, Miriam tells me, was smarter than me and simply kept quiet, I finally find consolation thinking back to how partner number 3, a well-known local criminal, endured: he basically kept quiet too, and when it seemed that the ordeal was over he would say: "gheto finio?" (are you done?), occasionally managing to make her laugh.