The sentence might raise a smile. Yet it says something very precise: a man who eats spicy food is a man who will love my cooking, who will recognise what I prepare for him, who will agree to share what I am. Eating the same food is already being, in some way, of the same world. Behind a seemingly anecdotal criterion lies a complete theory of the relationship: cultural connection, recognition, mutual care.

This scene is told by Ivy Daure. A psychologist and systemic therapist, she facilitates a support group at the Maison d’Ella, with exiled women who have survived violence.

More and more women on the roads of exile

First clinical observation: asylum applications from women have soared. On the roads of exile, one meets more and more women, younger and younger, sometimes already mothers back home. Women who have been subjected to genital cutting, beaten, forced into marriage, repeatedly raped. Women caught in a form of intrafamily violence that we sometimes struggle to think, so completely does it escape our categories.

And yet these women find the energy to leave.

The clinician who receives them therefore encounters two things at once: the trauma, and the resource that made it possible to break free of it.

The silent risk: replaying here what was fled over there

This is perhaps the most unsettling point of the testimony. These women arrive in France after being mistreated in their countries of origin. What kind of men will they meet here?

The clinical observation is blunt: forming a couple here can become the return of the abuse once endured. The same mechanics fall back into place. The woman at the man’s service. The woman there for the man’s pleasure, her own desire and wishes coming second, or not counting at all.

The therapeutic work then consists of a genuine relearning of the relationship. An entirely new path for these women, which they must build step by step.

Two levers emerge in this work.

The anchoring group: rejoining the world of ordinary people

The group facilitated by Ivy Daure bears a name worth pausing over: an anchoring group. To anchor is to fasten a cargo down securely so that it withstands the voyage. The image is a beautiful one for women whose crossing has torn everything away.

The stated aim: to help these women rejoin the world of ordinary people. No grand programme of psychic reconstruction. Finding a place among others again, in the ordinariness of life. For someone who has known the unthinkable, the ordinary is a horizon.

It is in this group that the limits of the couple relationship can be addressed. With the support of the others, some women dare to say: “Me, I don’t want men in my life any more.” Others formulate their criteria, like that of the man who eats spicy food. Each position becomes sayable because it is heard by women who know.

Amour Monstre: cards for saying the unsayable

Ivy Daure offered the women of the Maison d’Ella the game Amour Monstre. The set-up is simple. The cards are laid out on the table. A question is asked. Each woman chooses a card and explains her choice.

The answers come, carried by the images:

• “I was not recognised.”
• “I was not heard.”
• “This violence damaged me.”
• “It was not love, I knew that, but it was the only thing I received.”

That last sentence concentrates years of clinical work in itself. It states the relational trap in all its complexity: violence received not because it was mistaken for love, but because it was the only bond available. The bond above all, even a toxic one. This is exactly where the systemic gaze finds its relevance: it is not the person who is pathological, it is the relational configuration that left no other place.

And there, something very moving happens. The women describe relationships where I feel respected, where the other can hear me, where I can voice my needs. Relationships of mutual care, without violence, with kindness. Nothing extravagant. The vital relational minimum, which for them represents a continent to be discovered.

The group ends by choosing a shared card, the one that embodies the way of being together they want to uphold: a quiet little monster, offering simply tenderness, love, peace, soothed relationships.

What this clinical work teaches us

Three things, at least, for practitioners.