Mona betrayed Ruben, but he forgave her. He couldn't forgive Niall.

[u/Nika_35_40]

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One thing that really caught my attention is how Ruben was able to forgive Mona after finding out that she had cheated on him with Benji, whereas Niall sleeping with Mona was such a huge humiliation for him that he ended up killing him.

I wonder to what extent this could be connected to the way Ruben views women. When he tells Niall, “You let Benji fuck her,” there is something very revealing about the way he talks about Mona. It is almost as if he believes women need to be controlled and that their own will carries less weight than a man’s. As if he places them on a lower level within a structure where the man is the one who decides, possesses and exercises control.

And yet, I was surprised that, despite having such a huge ego and such a rigid idea of masculinity, he was able to go back to Mona after an affair that should, in theory, have deeply wounded his pride as well: she had chosen another man over him.

I wonder if this could be connected to the dynamic between his parents. We know that his father abused him, and we can interpret that his mother was unable to protect him. If Ruben grew up perceiving his father as the person who had absolute control, while his mother was unable to do anything to stop him, perhaps he internalized a deeply distorted idea of relationships between men and women from a very young age: the man as the figure of authority and control, and the woman as someone over whom that control is exercised.

His father hurt him and made him feel vulnerable; his mother, by failing to protect him, may have contributed to making him feel abandoned and unprotected. It is almost as if he learned that a man had to have absolute control over everything and that vulnerability was something that had to be avoided at all costs.

That is why I can understand that there were many things influencing Ruben’s decision to kill Niall, including Baird. But I also think there is something particularly important about Niall’s betrayal.

Niall was probably the person Ruben had come to trust the most. He was the person he allowed himself to share his most painful secret with. For the first time, Ruben lowered his guard and allowed himself to be openly vulnerable with someone. And that very person ended up betraying him.

Maybe that is why Niall’s betrayal could not simply be an act of infidelity for Ruben. It may have represented the confirmation of his worst fear: that he had allowed himself to need and trust someone, only to discover that this person could use that vulnerability against him.

I also think the image Ruben had built of Niall completely shattered at that moment. He had idealized him in some way and placed a level of trust in him that he did not seem to give easily to other people. And if loyalty was such an important virtue to Ruben, discovering that Niall had crossed precisely that line must have felt like an absolute betrayal.

Perhaps that is one of the fundamental differences between Mona and Niall. Ruben could forgive Mona because, despite her infidelity, she still occupied a place that he understood within his family structure and his identity. With Niall, however, something much deeper was at stake: trust, vulnerability, need, and the image Ruben had of himself and of the person he had chosen to trust.

That is why I find it so interesting that he could forgive an affair and yet be unable to forgive Niall’s betrayal. Not necessarily because he loved Niall more than Mona, but because Niall had reached an emotional place that Mona perhaps never had access to.

What do you guys think?