Shin'yuu no Otto wo Ubatta no wa, Watashi deshita - Ch. 3

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I wonder what her reasoning for being the only employee of her cafe is.

Being expected to juggle food drinks and orders a is a lot, unless you have it clearly indicated that service will be "when it gets to you" and the clientele understands that when they enter.

If it's a matter of not being financially able to hire more staff; paring down the menu would seem prudent (lowers costs on food/supplies as well).

I assume Rio has the café independently of Itsuki, and that he didn't purchase it for her as a toy for her to feel like she's doing something with, since she makes no mention of it being "given" to her.

That's leaving aside everything else going on, but it also sorta reads like a symptom of what I suspect might be her larger issue, of seemingly being unwilling to rely on another.

She doesn't confide in her friends about the truth of her marriage. She doesn't get help she clearly needs with her café.

When she does reach out, it's not to address the core problems in her life around her marriage; it's ostensibly to quell her lonliness or feelings of missing affection & intimacy. And she seeks that from someone she shouldn't.

Just an interesting contrast to how she approaches this huge problem in her life, and how Mahoro approached hers.
 
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you see, if Rio were the Main character in a roncom and the main story didn't exist, we would all be cheering for her getting "the man she deserves" and praying for her husband's downfall
I think that would depend on Rio's methods and how she behaves upon sleeping with Rei the first time.

I say that knowing Rio's chracter and her actions in the main series following Mahoro's story, but even if we were getting that Rio, from her perspective here, but in a vacuum without that preceding context, then Rio's behavior still doesn't feel healthy or "cheer-worthy", because she taunted and mocked Mahoro and screwed up Kyouko's life and burnt all those bridges trying to run away from her marriage and the abuse of Itsuki.

Rio's situation is sympathetic, but we have Mahoro as a metric of comparison - and Rio still made selfish choices that hurt others and those choices are not justified or excused by the fact she's in an abusive relationship.
 
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Shit like that is VERY depressingly common and how/why a lot victims just bounce around between abusers as well as that becoming their "normal".
Yep. Especially if/as the victim starts to internalize the abuse and degradation of their personhood, and ends up feeling like they deserve the abuse and that it's simply part and parcel of being with another person.
A truly vicious cycle that is also incredibly difficult to disrupt and escape from once it gets going, because that person will also often isolate from those who could help them, whether on their own, or via additional pressure from their abuser(s).
 
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you see, if Rio were the Main character in a roncom and the main story didn't exist, we would all be cheering for her getting "the man she deserves" and praying for her husband's downfall
Maybe some people would if she wasn’t going for a married man. Her friend’s husband. Not to mention how she taunted her friend with proof of her cheating and gloated about it online on a secret account plus sell videos of them having sex specifically without Rei’s knowledge let alone consent.

The only thing I support Rio in is getting a divorce and the doing some much needed self reflection and perhaps even something akin to an apology towards Mahoro.
 
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It really rubs me the wrong way when both husband and wife are working and the wife is still expected to do all the household chores and cooking.
Doubly so when her husband is clearly rich.

I have neighbors who literally order delivery food every day (I swear I know all the uber eats drivers in my town thanks to them) and have cleaners come in at least once a week and as far as I can tell, while they're certainly way more well off than me, they're not "fuck you money" well off.

Itsuki here seems clearly capable to have all that and much more. It makes absolutely zero sense for Rio to do all the house chores, if any. It's obviously about control to him.
 
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Yeah no that's BS and part of the problem WHY victims rarely ever come forward.
No, he's right, victims gaslight themselves and their entire support system stating the obvious just to run defense for an abuser because they mistakenly think that they can suffer the bad to keep the perks.

Here, Rio has no reason to lie to her friends about Itsuki but she does it anyway. The three would have supported her and taken her side if she had been honest. But her pride didn't allow her to be vulnerable and admit that she hadn't a perfect houselife.

I think we've done collectively better work to understand things like abuse with empathy, but at some point, we need another lens, one that gives back agency to women (to victims). This is Sartre's existentialism, we are all responsible for our choices, we have so much power over our life because even if the most dire circumstances we're always free to pick between options.

So, I understand how terrible was Itsuki, I understand how alluring Rei and Mahoro's life seemed in comparaison, but it doesn't change the fact that Rio was free to leave him, she could even have cheated with anyone else but her friend's husband!

But she made her choices, they were terrible and she still has full responsability for it.

My takeaway from this chapter is that Japan, like pretty much everywhere else, is so misogynistic, women are brainwashed from birth to accept being treated like maids, to enable their own mistreatment by not even letting them consider how easy it would be to tell all those lazy boys to fuck off.
 
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Yeah no that's BS and part of the problem WHY victims rarely ever come forward.
I agree. Of course new relationship excitement and the rose tinted glasses that often come with being in a new relationship can contribute to not recognizing certain red flag behavior, but the primary thing is often just how insanely manipulative these abusers are. They deliberately don’t show their true colors until they are in a position that they know they can keep getting away with it. And people definitely shouldn’t underestimate manipulative tactics like gaslighting. Especially if they also have separated their victim from their victim’s support system.
 

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