The cruelest lies are often told in silence. —Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend asked me recently what I mean when I use the word betrayal. Since I have written a book on the subject, I thought I better sort out a reply. I wrote particularly about betrayal in a love relationship or marriage—a shattering of trust by the one you have been most intimate with and relied on to be there for you.
I had always assumed that we betray when we fail to keep our promises and agreements. I had done that. I knew how bad it felt to be unable to keep your word and to hurt another person as a result, sometimes even for the best of reasons.
After my long-term partner left me shortly before our wedding ceremony, I felt blindsided and betrayed by the broken promises, that was for sure. But the uncharacteristic panic, tears, rage and despair that set in for months, then years, seemed way disproportionate to the event.
I had always been a strong, resilient, competent person and was bewildered to feel so broken for so long. I kept asking myself over and over, “What has happened to me?”
In trying to understand what did happen, I wrote Love and the Mystery of Betrayal and realized there are many shades of betrayal and the distress it causes. Betrayal annihilates trust. The more trust there is to begin with, and the more deception is involved, the more damage is done. That is why we betray, perhaps most egregiously, when we act as if we are someone we are not, pretend to feel a way we do not, or play out commitment and loyalty when we are not committed or loyal.
In little ways, we all do these things to manage our interactions with others. We tell “white lies” in certain situations to save a person’s feelings or our own self-images—but the stakes skyrocket when hypocrisy infiltrates love and loyalty.
A Soul-Shattering Shock
When the person you trust withholds the truth after having promised to honestly share their thoughts and feelings with you, they create two worlds: theirs, in which they are aware of their opinions, judgments, and struggles concerning you and the relationship; and yours, in which you are not. Meditation teacher Susan Piver said we are betrayed when promises, overtly spoken or implied by actions, have been broken—without our participation or even knowing a decision was being considered. Professing devotion and love while carrying on with someone else or planning to exit the relationship are just two examples.
The word betrayal even comes from the Middle English word bitrayen — meaning “mislead, deceive.” Letting someone believe something that is not true—even for what seems like the best of reasons, e.g.,”to protect them”—produces the same result as saying something false: It is the passive version of lying. Being lied to chips away at your soul. This variation on betrayal is not always about infidelity, though it often is. But it always involves deceit, manipulation, exploitation, and the slow undermining and erosion of your self-confidence and identity that goes with them.
In this way, what looks like an everyday breakup or divorce from the outside can hide months or years of half-truths and withholding. The moment when you finally discover the truth becomes the epicenter of a soul-shattering shock, after which you will never be the same. You need to take special care to recover yourself. Reach out for the help you need to find your way to the deep spiritual healing waiting in the depths of the betrayed heart.
Adapted from “Love and the Mystery of Betrayal” —now available in print and ebook.
Buy Love and the Mystery of Betrayal on Amazon
Related Articles
The 5 Stages of Emotional Triage for the Divorced, Betrayed…and Discarded: by Dr. Andra Brosch
Understanding Relationship, Sexual & Intimate Betrayal as Trauma (PTSD): by Robert Weiss,LCSW
A Medea or a Saint: by Cheryl Fuller, Jungian Analyst
Why Lying Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea: by Julie (JC) Peters, Yoga teacher
Pathological Lying: A Psychopathic Manipulation Tool: by Healing Journey
Thank you for this explanation, Sandra. I’ve struggled with the term “betrayal” because it necessarily carries with it moral judgment. Assuming there’s a place for moral judgments among us mortals, I feel we must be very cautious before we presume to make them, particularly when we feel ourselves to be the victim of the wrong, and ask ourselves whether doing so serves any useful purpose. This seems so not only in the abstract, if we are interested in objectively viewing a matter, but all the more so when we are seeking healing.
The idea that we have been wronged can be a great obstacle to healing; it allows us to nurse our sense of having been victimized, and seems antagonistic to empathy, whereby we may ultimately see that the other may not have acted from a place of malice, but may have struggled to find a path. Even if the other perceives him/herself to have wronged us, if we characterize it that way we may overlook the sufferings that person has brought upon him/herself. (I’m not even speaking of forgiveness, since that assumes we have something to forgive, and that we are the one entitled to do it.)
It also obstructs our taking responsibility for our role in the dynamic. Perhaps we did not see the “deception” because we did not want to. Perhaps we did not care to ensure that the other received what he/she was looking for, as long as we did. Perhaps we expected, even demanded, open communication, but failed to see how we may have made such communication difficult unless it communicated what we hoped to hear.
So, while it’s of course natural for us to feel betrayed, we may want to distinguish between feeling betrayed, and being betrayed.
Thank you, Paul,for taking the time to contribute your point of view. The book I have written is for people in pain, and while I understand the viewpoints you express—they are enlightened, I only wish they expressed my truth—I found they are not helpful when you have been blindsided and are reeling in shock.
This may sound extreme, but please imagine telling a rape victim there is a difference between being raped and feeling like you have been raped. Would you ever say (though you might think it), you need to take responsibility for your part—you must have provoked him? Or, tell her that the person she only feels wronged her was doing the best he could—what a bad day he must have had to attack you? The analogy is real.
Emotional rape is real. It can destroy people and undermine their quality of life for years to come. Not recognizing and coming to terms with it makes it all the more difficult to get beyond it. I have discovered that the idea that a person has not been “wronged,” or victimized by someone else (regardless of that person’s motive, or their level suffering, or the hand of God, or whatever else caused them to behave that way) when they have been is one of the most crazy-making obstacles to healing there is. There is a place for compassion, but it comes after a lot of other healing.
I shared this with you privately but want to post it here for anyone else interested in more on how deception can betray. Thanks again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/great-betrayals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Great answer to Paul. I will bet you a case of condoms that he is a cheater.
To Paul: When you are cheated on, you FEEL betrayed. Why? Because you ARE betrayed! When someone pretends to be faithful to you while they are cheating on you and lying to you, they are betraying you. They are betraying your trust and their honor. There is nothing ambiguous or “gray area” about that. If somebody robs you, you have been robbed. It is not just your “perception” of robbery when someone holds you up at gunpoint and steals your wallet. If you have been cheated on, then you have been betrayed, no matter what cheaters and cheater apologists say.
“…a shattering of trust by the one you have been most intimate with and relied on to protect you from harm. ”
Sandra, I have been through the process you described and come out on the other side a much wiser and more mature person. One thing I have learnt for sure is that to lay this kind of responsibility onto another individual is asking for trouble. It is much too heavy a burden to bear to expect anyone to protect you from harm. Even the devoted mother of a dependent child is limited to how much she can protect her child from.
Life will always give you the experiences you need for your transformation and growth. There is no clear demarcation between victim and victimiser. We are all equal partners in the dance of life no matter how appearances paint the picture.
I could never understand the liturgical line that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus broke bread etc., etc. How could he be betrayed when he knew exactly how the script had been written and went along with its playing out in the way it did?
Now I understand – it is just a story. Even if the facts agree with the way it is reported – a dubious assumption at best – a story can only ever be interpreted through the subjective viewpoint of the individual.
To be stuck in a story of what another did to me is a very painful place to be. To view it as what another did ‘for’ me is the beginning of an entirely different story.
After my ‘betrayal’ I had a seemingly never ending series of dreams in which my house was broken into and either trashed or gutted. I work a lot with dialoguing with my dream figures and I had done this on several occasions but never reached a real understanding of what was going on. One day I went throughout this process of asking ‘why?’ for the umpteenth time and the answer I got has stayed with me and become the natural response to so many of my questions: ‘We do love our little dramas, don’t we?’
It’s a mind stopper.
Gloria, your points are all well taken. Thank you for taking the time to respond and share your difficult experience. I am glad that you have gotten through it so gracefully and feel strengthened by it. Many points you make are gospel in the New Age/spiritual circles I move in. “Betrayal” itself, like ‘victim’, is considered a dirty word—and was for me also before I went through what I did. You too went through a painful experience that looks similar to what I call “betrayal”, but may not be the same.
Like you, I can only speak from my truth, from the point of my authenticity where I am on my path right now. And I am encouraging others to do the same. For me, moving to your perhaps more evolved perception too quickly, which I certainly tried to do it, was all too tempting. In a sense it offered self-protection through spiritual bypass, when I was trapped in post-traumatic angst was looking for a way out of the pain.
If someone you loved and trusted physically battered or raped you, it would be absurd—except perhaps on the highest, most enlightened plane—to claim that you were not a victim of that person’s destructive behavior. Emotional abuse, including ongoing deception, can be equally, if not more, devastating than physical abuse. Until you accept that truth you cannot truly move beyond it.
I wanted to get this post out to pave the way for the book that I wrote for people struggling with this kind of pain. Finishing the writing and starting to communicate some of what I have to say is a scary process. When I saw this quote, it resonated. “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” —Erica Jong
Christ’s real betrayal from my perspective was by God, not Judas. (“Why have you forsaken me?”). Like you say he was prepared, according to the story, there was no shock, when Judas’ turning him over.
Thank you for your article. I believe that betrayers as often betray themselves as they do others. At root, I think that a betrayer is always loyal to one person, if male, their mother. They search for an idealised version of her with whom they tire in the course of a real relationship, or else in betraying a loving partner they express a deep and abiding loyalty to a mother whose conditions of worth were set impossibly high, and whose original message to their own soul was: “you are not worthy of love”.
So insightful, Mark, thank you for sharing this. I have felt this in action (on both sides)—intimacy, commitment, abiding love itself stirs profound anxieties, it so threatens a fundamental “home base” or sense of self as unloveable and unworthy.
how well written, I was moved by your description of these terms I had tried to understand myself. Thank you, Catherine
After 33 years I found my husband betrayed me with a woman 14 years his age, big house, lots of money.
I felt something was wrong but he denied it. He was without a job and I was working 24/7. I trusted him, we had an agreement to be open to each other.
I completely broke down and since he left march 2014 to live with her I’m still in a lot of pain. I do feel worthless also because he told me all kind of stuff like my nose was to big, my face to long, my hair was to long, I was never a good wife, I was social different. I know I look well, but part of my self esteem is completely shattered. Everybody tells me to move on with my life but THE PAIN is still immense. It’s hard work trying to heal and to love myself again. I still miss him, he was my soul mate, father of my boys, lover and I still don’t understand his betrayal and him refusing me to talk about why, and to help me heal.
Wilma, oh, I am so, so sorry to hear what has happened. That is terrible and still very fresh. I cannot imagine what you must be going through after 33 years with someone. I do know that you will do better if you get some help. If you have a kind, understanding friend who will hold you through this, that is a start. But if you can, please find a trauma therapist to help you at least get your nervous system calmed down. Here is a link from my website with a few suggestions. https://www.sandraleedennis.com/shattered-soul/
Whatever needs to be done will be much harder if PTSD has set in, so please take care of yourself.I know it doesn’t seem like it, but seeing him right now will probably make it worse.
Sandra your words are so beautiful and real.
Having gone through this journey myself, and suffering my own ‘fractured reality’, I completely understand what you are saying.
Understanding our part in these traumas takes time, and until we are ready we need to sit and experience the betrayal and allow ourselves the right and freedom to feel every emotion as fully as possible. Once we can do that, our ability to grasp the depths we have been plunged into starts to make sense and healing can begin.
Complex ptsd can be subtle and insidious, and our lives can be shattered and our ability to make sense of what we are feeling becomes skewed and damaged. We feel as if we are on a roller coaster that has no let up. At least, that’s how it felt for me as I wrestled with betrayal and the consequences of it for years.
We do need to be held gently by ourselves and others.
Our therapists need to learn how to deal with us instead of telling us, as one psychologist said to me ‘you must have done something wrong for the the affair to happen’.
Thank you for writing this, I got it.
Yes, I can tell you have been their, Lisa. I am sorry that, but your knowing words warm my heart. The culture of blame makes sharing our stories and holding each other’s hands so immportant. Blessings…
One imagines – rightly or wrongly – that a majority, if not practically all, of the population has experienced something like this to some degree. One remembers the acute depression and even tears, resulting from a perceived casual ‘betrayal’ of friendship when very young. In my own case it stems from approx. 14-15 years ago when a number of suspicions gathering over years suddenly coalesced and winged in from left field to knock me sideways. The feeling was initially one of shock resulting immediately in no feeling at all for a while. I came out eventually with the aid of two separate approaches – although I was aware of the therapeutic nature of neither at the time – which had nothing to do with the world of psycodynamic counselling of which I had some experience and academic knowledge.
Being involved in ‘acting/writing’ at the time, I transmogrified a one-act drama I was working on for showing at the Rhoda McGaw annual festival at Woking, into a pseudo-Aristotelian ‘cathartic’ drama for my own use. That this seemed to work occurs in retrospect to have been due more to the passage of time needed to write the play – approx. six months – rather than the cathartic effect of the play itself. But then I find Aristotle’s ideas of the cathartic effects of drama, like much of his writings, to be half-baked. What writing the play did was to give me a vehicle to travel in whilst the pain was still fresh. All the characters in the real life drama were in the play but – as I said – ‘transmogrified’ into others – less to disguise them (my wife instantly identified them all anyway) than to satisfy my own ‘creative’ criteria.
By the time the play was completed the initial shock had waned.. About this time my wife and I – somewhat surprisingly in retrospect – spent £35 on a ‘marriage guidance’ session which had little effect except to force us to discuss our problems less vitriolically. Not for the first time the method seemingly favoured by your good selves seemed wanting not surprisingly for one currently involved in CBT and mindfulness courses. My guess is that the latter particularly would have proved more effective at the time. In the event I looked for other avenues of expression via the net which were surprisingly easy to find and effective in terms of ‘ego-mending’ (if that indeed was the process involved) than any form of ‘guidance’ could have given. But then, maybe I was lucky and could have been playing with fire.
You are fortunate to have a creative outlet to help with the aftermath of the shock you went through. For some people, it can be enough. I too found writing my book kept me grounded and helped a good deal. In the past few years, the field of trauma studies has expanded enormously and the number of people trained to work with it has also grown. Most therapists are not specifically trained, and I would agree sitting and talking is highly unlikely to be of much usel
There are many factors also that play into the depth of the trauma. One of the more difficult aspects is when the person you have been involved with appears to morph into an entirely different personality and relation to you, making your former life appear to have been a lie. I do not know if that was your situation. You may have been one of the lucky ones, as you say, or perhaps remarkably resilient. Thank you for sharing your experience.
One of my friends did share your story with me and I was so relieved. Finally someone wrote down my feelings, it was normal that I was in this pain and that I couldn’t just turn the page and go on with my life. After my reply you did give me advice to look for help. I went to a therapist because I couldn’t cope. After a couple of sessions she told me that I was a strong person and would survive, she couldn’t help me anymore. I am a very creative person and wrote down my story, I wrote poems in which I tried to be angry. I luckily have a lot of dear friends who listen to me over and over again. My boys are there for me, they experienced the same shock! So I’m not alone, but it’s still hard work and it takes time but I’m confident that there will be a future for me.
It does sound as if you are a strong person, but we all need help after something like this, no matter how strong.. It is so important to screen for someone who is a trained trauma specialist, and even more important that they themselves have been through a similar experience. I even think the life experience may be more important than the training. Often people think they know what you are going through, but they do not.
Having read your article, I feel I would like to read more, as it opened up another pathway for myself (and others who have spoken to me re same marital/relationship issues). What it opened up for myself was that it doesn’t even have to be a Divorce/Separation, but even the realization that the person you married has gradually changed into someone that you don’t feel you know/understand anymore. This realization brought me to the same point of feeling Lost, Useless, and wondering Where Did I Go Wrong? With all these feelings I wondered, should I leave?
Then over the past few months, I started to think differently about how my husband had “changed”; and realized a Pattern – a pattern that I also recognized in his brother, mother and one of my children. I researched these symptoms/actions etc and found that there could be an actual Personality Disorder; and it wasn’t my Fault that things were sooo different!!! I have spoken to other immediate family members (including his other brother), and we all agree. However, although I have been able to help my child recognize that there maybe a mental condition – and hopefully he is going ahead to seek help, I cannot get my husband to see that his actions/thoughts are irrational.
Having learned about this possibility has brought me back my sanity, self-esteem and realization that the issues we have are Not All About Me. It keeps me going when his Outbursts/Irrationality occur. I also remember my marriage vows – in sickness and I health. I know this is a deviation from what the discussion started as, but this is what it awakened in me and felt the need to respond as same. I would like to follow through on all discussions regarding how people/clients have learn’t to cope and survive. Thankyou
You are facing a difficult dilemma, Bronwyn. You might want to check out a book that I understand has helped people in your situation: “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Of course, if your values and beliefs support staying that is vital to take into consideration.
http://www.amazon.com/Should-Stay-Relationship-Can-Should-be/dp/042523889X
I’m currently going through the betrayal of my spouse. We are both in our early 50s, married almost 4 yrs.He recently started a new job, more money, and after 5 months he met another woman and left me . He’s now living with her. There has always been problems in my marriage with this man. I kept holding on because I loved him. When he met her, he lied to be with her. He told me he was going out with his coworkers. It became all about his job. Once HE started Working WITH THE MTA I was history. It hurts. I have my good and bad days.
Most of the above posts are written by people who obviously didn’t go involuntarily fetal. Being surprised & hurt then healing is one thing. Being shocked & devastated & stuck (Unable to process thoughts & feelings) is very different It’s called TRAUMA.
With people who do not understand, their comments sound insensitive to me — it is like they are smiling, laughing, bragging about how well they are doing with somebody in pain on his/her death bed with the same disease.