The Things You Cannot Talk About in a Romantic Relationship

Are there questions that are taboo to ask?

I had a long talk with the toxic ex today. This time it was about our relationship and everything that went wrong between us. It has been draining.

I don’t even remember why I wanted to do this in the first place.

I guess I was missing him. I guess I was curious whether any new self-awareness was possibly born in his mind after a month and a half of very reduced contact. But no.

During the time we were together, I was called sexually shaming names and said the nastiest things, I was accused of non-existing betrayals, I was shouted at, and I went through traumatic and dangerous experiences, meaning I saw him with a knife in his hand, or climbing on an open window of a fourth floor, or playing outside a balcony in the night, all of this to threaten he would take his life to punish me.

Still, in his mind, the worst thing of all, during our relationship, was a question I asked him.

Now, maybe it’s just me being weird, immoral, and unreasonable, but I don’t see why asking a question would have such a dramatic impact on his life as he claims. I am aware that the question is non-conventional, that it is possibly very disturbing, and that it could be taken as a non-welcome accusation, but from there to labeling this as the worst thing in our (very) toxic and problematic relationship? A long way.

Let me go in order, though.

Two months ago or so, I visited his country and his family for a family celebration. We had a very cute time together, a garden party. They were very welcoming. I got to spend a lot of time with his mom, brother, sister, nephew, and niece.

The niece of my ex is a gorgeous, tall, and somewhat early 11 years old.

She somehow looks already like my friends and I were looking at 14 or 15, and she dresses and behaves accordingly: like a young teenager driven by the desire to be seen as trendy, cool, and breezy. I found her funny and entertaining with her chatty and somewhat flirtatious nature.

I noticed that she was constantly and particularly looking for the attention of my ex, which is reasonable for someone missing a father figure, and even more so when having a young, humorous, and quite interactive uncle. I also hypothesized within myself that she might be having a child-crush on him, and I didn’t see anything bad or uncommon in it. My ex gladly lent himself to the constant banter and attention game (he is a magnet for people that need to be at the center of attention, somehow), and I also didn’t see anything bad or uncommon in this.

Later, he was making fun of her because of her confused way of explaining stuff, so he repeated a couple of times: “Gosh, she is a terribly confused thinker; luckily for her, she is very, very beautiful”. The first time I didn’t think much of it. When he repeated the concept the second time around, I started feeling something sitting not quite right with me, some sort of deja-vu, but I waved the sensation away and focused on keeping having a good time (allergies apart).

That same evening, we were at his place preparing dinner, when at some point he received a message from his niece on his family’s WhatsApp chat. He broke the news to me as: “Oh, I just received a love declaration from my niece!”. She had in fact stated there, out of the blue, how much she loved him, possibly following the enthusiasm for the great day spent together.

I thought again that she was probably having a child-crush on him, though I was also aware that it could just be a spontaneous and direct expression of affection from a very extroverted child. So, no problem, though the way my ex joked about it seemed to somehow reinforce the first hypothesis more than the second (to his honor, he later claimed he didn’t mean anything romantic by the word “love”: but just, generally, “affection” — which wouldn’t be covered by the same term in my language. So, it could be that there were originally some translation issues there).

However, at that point, the comment he had made at the party, about how beautiful she luckily was, came back to my mind, accompanied by a very disturbing memory from my previous relationship.

The guy I was in a relationship with before my ex was a strong proponent of radical honesty. Once he felt like he could trust me, after six months or so into our relationship, we would have lengthy conversations about the most intimate and off-limits topics, memory, fears, and desires. He wouldn’t leave anything unsaid, and he liked to show unconventional opinions on stuff. Sex was often, but not always, an ingredient of such conversations.

This was in part very refreshing — and I enjoyed opening myself in turn to him — , but on an occasion or two, it brought to revelations on his side that I found quite unsettling.

The most unsettling one, towards the end of our relationship, was about his niece.

This guy, like my ex, was very close to and very protective of his niece, of whom he was Godfather of Baptism. The difference in age between the two wasn’t very big, speaking in relative terms. So, I’m sure he was seen by the girl as the young, cool uncle.

(Well, I cannot be really sure, I never met that niece, but can I use my fantasy plus several hints from his stories, there.)

The girl was eighteen and about to start university. The previous ex at some point showed me some pictures of her, that he had taken during the same summer, remarking how beautiful a woman she was becoming. That was certainly true: regular traits, a sweet smile, long brown hair, long legs, a budding and feminine body. However, the continuation of his statement was way more disturbing.

The next sentence was something like: I really hope I will never get physically excited when she removes her clothes at the sea house and I’m around. That would be embarrassing.

Something was very wrong with this sentence. Sure, he was hoping not to have an erection around her, meaning that luckily never happened before, thank God: but why the fear? The fact one could see one’s niece as a random female on the street that could elicit sexual vibes didn’t sit right in my head at all, let alone the age difference.

So now, because of the situation being somewhat similar, in how the pairs of uncle and niece were apparently very close and complicit, and because of the resonance between the two “beautiful” statements, I was brought directly back into time, and I started feeling unsettled again.

I knew my ex-partner wouldn’t react very well to me bringing up my previous ex and memories related to him, but my mood had precipitated so abruptly after his joke about the message, that I was sure all of this was written all over my face. So I decided to share the reason for my unsettling with him (introducing it with: “I’m about to say something you won’t like, maybe it’s a bad idea to share, but…”).

The memory wasn’t well taken.

To make things worse, I accompanied the story with a rhetorical question which has the same exact form I use since forever when I beg a partner to please do the job of clearing my own sky from my own insecurities instead of me:

“You would never tell me such a thing, would you?”

[Other times, it may sound like: You would never do such a thing to me, would you? You would never cheat on me, right? You would never lie to me, right? And so on and so for. Yes, I have a problem with insecurities and projection. I’m working on it, promised.]

My ex started saying how sick my previous ex was, for saying such a thing, and that I was being horrible for projecting that onto him. That this was not a question to ask. That I was basically accusing him of being a pedophile. That I was with a pedophile before.

(Which would anyhow be etymologically wrong, but anyhow.)

Even worse so, the next day I made a stupid joke to try to alleviate the atmosphere after such a heavy conversation, but my joke landed very badly.

For some sort of serendipity, we just watched a movie where one of the main characters, a girl, was confessing having had a romantic relationship with his uncle in the past. So, I took the occasion to say something that to me sounded light, like: “So, did your niece send you more messages with love declarations?”

That night we broke up. The question and the link I implied made him so mad (because in his mind I was implying something sexual about his niece), that he of course took it as an occasion for starting to shout and insult me again, and, among other things, he accused me of enjoying to be partnered with pedophiles and of being sick myself. He also said he won’t be able to look at his niece in the same way again, and that, with my story and my question, certainly ruined his relationship with his niece forever.

Today he confirmed again that I produced irremediable damage in his mind, which is something I struggle to understand.

In fact, I honestly wonder whether it has been my mistake to underestimate the effects of my words. What confuses me is: if we both know the only possible answer to my insecurity-driven question was “no”, why would his look at reality be changed by it? Why would he feel any different about his niece?

Regarding the fact that my question was weird, I have no doubts. That it was unsettling, no doubt. That I was, in reality, expecting no other answer rather than “no”, also no doubts.

So why asking, you will maybe wonder?

Well, I wish I didn’t have these moments of insecurity, obscuring my judgment like clouds. Which makes me project the one man onto all other men in the world, or “all men” onto my current partner. I don’t know why, at times, I feel anything is possible with anyone, at any time. It is not even something I rationally think. As said, it’s just a passing cloud. A weakness.

That said [I’m working on it, I promise], my ex, which in two months will be a co-parent to my son, thought it was a good idea to share that conversation, or a distorted version of it, with his mom and his sister (!), claiming I was accusing him of having sexual intentions towards his niece.

I find it terrible and very violating of a moment of vulnerability that I shared with him.

Moreover, because of feeling his hostility throughout the breakup and the preparation phase for this co-parenting adventure we are about to start, I have serious fears that he will want to use that in court to say that I am a pedophile, or that I like to associate with pedophiles and to remove my child from me. He even hinted at that today. Hinted at lawyers. At who my future partners might be (“how sick they will be”). I am fucking terrorized by what his mind will try to make out of it.

However, his other claim of today: I will say it to everyone [on Facebook!] to see what they think of your question, was not only frightening but also inspiring for me to share this story here, because I’m honestly curious to see what the prevalent opinion about this subject is.

Was that a question that I should have never asked in the first place? Would you feel offended by it? Are there questions that one cannot ask in a relationship? Taboos one shouldn’t touch?

And… does saying a thing out loud make it suddenly more real, as he seems to imply?