If capitalism were my husband, everyone would tell me to leave

He was impossible to resist. Charismatic, powerful and driven, he came with promises of a better life.. He seemed to have everything under control, knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how to get it. The second his eyes met mine, I was lost.

His immaculate clothes, his smile, his voice and oh, the way he smelled - were intoxicating. He moved through every room as if he belonged there. Always chasing something bigger, he could sell anything to anyone. His speed pulled everyone else along with him.

He lulled me into a sense of security, and I loved it. Everything felt so easy. We travelled the world, ate whatever we wanted, surrounded ourselves with like-minded people, and bought ourselves a beautiful life.

We had very few worries, yet somehow I felt empty. I was living in his world and had no time left for myself. My body ached from ignoring my own ways of understanding the world, my own needs and rhythms.

When I picked up an old journal, it whispered of something I had forgotten. I began hiding in weekends, holidays and Christmases, those brief moments when time slowed down and I could recover some sense of balance. I longed to be outside. I wandered through forests and sat by the sea.

But everyday life returned, and with it my longing for his attention, his smile and his approval. That was how he worked. He didn’t force me to do anything. He drew me in.

Over the years we spent together, he had quietly made himself at home everywhere: in workplaces, schools, legal systems and civic institutions. It was as if he couldn’t help himself. I knew something wasn’t right, but I wanted him, and the cost of questioning him always seemed too high.

I accepted things I would never have wanted a friend to accept. I let my worth be measured by what I did for him instead of who I was.

Then a memory returns. The buffet table was full of food meant for everyone. He walked over and took all the salmon, along with what was left of the most expensive cheese, without a second thought. I saw the looks on people’s faces. Everyone knew it was wrong. They exchanged glances, but no one said anything.

Somehow, he had convinced us that there was something admirable about it. About daring to take more than your share. About winning. About never being the one who loses. And in that confusion, or perhaps that seduction, we stayed silent.

It took me a long time to understand what had actually happened. There was no dramatic awakening, only a slow and weary realization. That I had shaped myself around someone who had never made room for who I really was. That what I had called security was really dependence. And that what I believed was care was actually a form of control that never stopped to ask how I was doing.

And once I saw it, there was no going back.

When our conflicts began, he dismissed every accusation of exploitation or stepping on others to get ahead. “Everyone does it,” he would say. He never really listened to what I had to say. Instead, he withdrew, became determined to prove himself, and only grew worse.

We went through a separation, and I went through the many stages of grief. I needed to understand before I was ready to forgive.

I closed my eyes and imagined him as a child, before he had learned what supposedly gives a person value and pride.

I tried to see his father, and how he had taught him - not through words but through example - that safety comes through control, and that the person who owns the most is also the one who has succeeded the most. Then I saw the grandfathers. Ships. Flags. Generations of men who seized land, raw materials, labour and bodies through violence and called it progress or civilization. I thought about everything they left behind. The memories that were never preserved. The voices that disappeared into silence.

I realized that what in me had never found a place in his world might not simply be my own. It might be a bodily echo carried across generations.

All those ways of knowing that cannot easily be captured or measured. The signals of our bodies. The rhythms of the soil. The movements of the weather. These had all been pushed aside. Presence, attentiveness, care and wonder had become unimportant because his world could not calculate them.

That knowledge still lives in my hands. In my nose recognizing something before my mind does. In the feeling in my gut that tells me when something is wrong. In what cannot always be explained, but is still carried within me.

Had I lived in his world for too long?

His logic still lives inside me. My days fill themselves with lists and tasks to complete. I compare, count, hurry and control. I am free to live differently, yet I still measure my value by what I produce.

More bodies than mine are protesting. People are breaking everywhere, land is being depleted and water is being polluted, but the language we use remains abstract, continuing to revolve around economic systems, numbers, conflicts and ownership of land and resources. As if everything that matters but cannot easily be counted does not fully exist.

Capitalism gave his way of thinking a form, a language and justification. But I don’t think that is where it all begins.

Capitalism did not create humanity’s desire for power and control. It simply built a system that rewards and organizes it and calls it success.

What perhaps hurts the most is not only everything he took from me, but how often I helped him do it. How I accepted a slow drift instead of raising my voice, hoping that politics, legislation, institutions or someone braver than me would regulate it on my behalf.

But they too have been shaped by the same logic. They are made up of people, yet they are also structures that shape what people are rewarded for, what they are allowed to do and what they can get away with.

We can imagine another world but if we do not practice acting as if that world is possible, it will never become real. It is in the moments - before we stay silent, choose comfort over unease or cross a line - like taking something that was never ours to take - that a different world begins to take shape.

I no longer believe that a new economic system, ideology or a hero will come along and save us all. We need systemic change, but none of that will be enough if we continue to carry the same understanding of value and power.

I want to learn how to rest without first having to prove my value through work. Stay in conversations that lead nowhere measurable. I don´t want to settle for exchanging glances with others when someone walks up to the table and takes all the salmon. I want to listen to the voice that tells me when a boundary has been crossed. It sounds almost ridiculously small. But what if that is exactly where everything begins? In those quiet moments when something deep inside us tells us that something is wrong.

I want this, but not only for myself. For her - the one who has carried this the longest.

The one who is still trying to carry us all.

This essay is part of a larger exploration that is slowly becoming a book. If it resonated with you, you can support the work by pre-ordering it. Every pre-order gives me a little more time and courage to keep following these questions.

And if you’re less interested in answers than in practicing another way of being, you’re welcome to join the 100 Days process. That’s where these ideas are tested in everyday life.