There is only one portrait of Miriam's exes hanging in her room, and it is that of her second partner, whom I will call Mirko here and in the following, and this is just one of the many peculiarities that characterize him; his background diverges from all the others, who instead seem to have come out of a crime and/or horror and/or splatter film.
After the separation from her husband, Mirko had stepped forward; he was a "normal" guy, having lived the first part of his life as a truck driver until, thanks to a wealthy wife who unfortunately(?) passed away prematurely, he had the financial means to become an entrepreneur.
Mirko was wealthy and not for dishonest reasons; moreover, he had never hit anyone (unlike Miriam's ex-husband), had never robbed/cheated/dealt drugs (like the partner who followed him, number 3, a well-known local criminal), nor had he tortured disabled people or could be said to be a human beast (like partner number 4)...in short...if you examine Miriam's entire life, he certainly represents an anomaly, a sort of "discontinuity"...ENORMOUS!
Miriam describes him as a delightful, sensitive, well-intentioned person who was hopelessly in love with her, and there are unequivocally happy memories in that relationship, one of which is a caricature of both made during a trip to Rome and attached next to Mirko's photo.
Even when they were in a relationship, Mirko represented a discontinuity, IN A POSITIVE WAY, compared to Miriam's other partners: Mirko never used psychological violence against Miriam and her children (as Miriam recounts was usual for her Husband), never raped her (as Miriam says happened with partner number 3), never tried to strangle one of her children (as Miriam says partner number 3 did), never destroyed or damaged her personal belongings (as Miriam recounts both partner 3 and 4 did), and never hit her so hard as to break her jaw (again partner no. 3).
But beneath a happy appearance, there were underlying conflicts. The main problem was that Mirko wanted to have a "normal" couple relationship, wanted Miriam to move to his house, insisted on taking care of Miriam's three children, insisted that Miriam be involved in managing a business he was following...but she didn't want to know about any of this and always treated him as if he were a suitor...a potential partner still "under observation".
Miriam accepted invitations to Mirko's house but treated them all in a "formal" way, as if they were the first romantic date at the beginning of a couple's life. To give an idea, I quote her words: "Mirko NEVER saw me without makeup, not even when we made love, not even when we spent an entire night together, not even during our trip together."
As if that weren't enough, at appointments at Mirko's house, Miriam often brought along her pre-adolescent daughter, whom she could hug for indefinite periods, and when Miriam told me this detail, she added, "so if Mirko wanted to screw..." and then made the umbrella gesture.
I want to clarify that I don't think Miriam intentionally wanted to harm Mirko; I am convinced that there were a series of unfortunate circumstances poisoning their couple's life: Certainly, after the failure of her first marriage, Miriam wanted to tread carefully before committing to someone, perhaps the female upbringing in a very conservative region like Veneto pushed Miriam to an excess of selectivity in choice, certainly Mirko was already psychologically unstable and suffered from depression well before meeting Miriam and misinterpreted her hesitant attitudes.
What is a fact is the tragic epilogue of the story: Mirko's suicide.