How Betrayal Evokes Life Transitions Part ll

In Part I of this series, I wrote about how betrayal disrupts our sense of self — how it doesn't just break our trust in the person who hurt us, but our trust in our own judgment. That piece was written broadly, about betrayal in all its forms. But the response that came back was anything but broad. Reader after reader wrote to me specifically about romantic betrayal — the affair, the secret, the partner who turned out not to be who they believed.

So in this piece, I want to go there directly. I'll draw on what I've seen in my professional practice — the shape romantic betrayal takes, what determines how devastating it becomes, and what the process of healing from it actually looks like. If you haven't yet read Part I, I'd encourage you to start there first; it lays the groundwork for what follows here. Part III, coming soon, will turn to betrayal outside of romantic relationships — circumstances that can be just as devastating, even when they look very different on the surface.

It is an accurate assumption to make that betrayal in romantic relationships is both common and devastating.  How devastating the ensuing emotional fallout will be is a function of several factors:

• how long the couple has been together

• what the understood commitment was between the parties

• what the relationship was to the outside party

• whether this was a sexual infidelity or a betrayal of trust (such as the sharing of private or intimate information)

• how the betrayal was discovered

• the duration of the involvement with the other party

• the manner in which the discovery of the betrayal is handled

• the end result

  
  

The most painful outcomes happen when a couple is in a deeply committed long-term relationship, the betrayal involves both an infidelity and a sharing of intimate, private information with another love interest (especially if the love interest is a part of both of their lives) and if it was discovered by the injured party.  This scenario is the one that gets the most attention and has come to represent betrayal in an overarching sense.  This is also the type of situation from which it is the most difficult to recover because it shakes a person’s core values at the deepest level.

When a person experiences this type of betrayal, it calls into question a multitude of trust issues.  Most obvious is the trust that has been lost in one’s partner.  Less obvious is the trust one loses in their own ability to be aware of what is going on their partner’s life and simply put-their own ability to determine who is worthy of their trust and who is not.  This can undermine a person’s sense of self to such a degree that they feel their whole life is out of balance.  I recall the disorientation of a man after finding out about his wife’s affair with a trusted neighbor and friend.  He went into work everyday and sat at his desk, his head in his hands, unable to work and barely able to function.  The emotional chaos of his wife’s betrayal entered every facet of his being.

In this particular case, the marriage could not be salvaged.  That is not always the case.  The healing of a relationship can be accomplished with a lot of motivation and hard work.  In order to do this, the couple must be willing to explore what the failures were in the relationship that preceded the infidelity and be open to the possibility that the infidelity was a symptom of an ailing relationship.

Herein, you have two people on the threshold of a major life transition. Basically the couple has two options- to decide to try to heal their relationship or to decide to separate.  Both options will force transition, in surprisingly similar ways.  Regardless of their decision, both parties will be forced into some degree of of self-reflection.  When a relationship falls out of balance, the impulse is to find blame in the other.  It doesn’t take long before the other makes it clear that they carry their own attribution of blame.  The details may be revealed in arguments or in a therapeutic setting, but each person’s account of what is wrong is stated and heard.  Of course, how much of that is reflected upon versus dismissed is a huge factor in what sort of transition ensues.  Growth is facilitated when one is open to learning what their part was in the derailed relationship.

In the example above, the husband was not given an opportunity to save the marriage.  He was left with only questions.  He had to try to figure out, on his own, why his wife made the choices she did.  This was nearly impossible while in the haze of shock and heartbreak.  Eventually, he was able heal without the benefit of insights from his wife.  It took much longer this way but he was able to reconstruct his life and enter into a new, healthier relationship.  He was armed with new tools of communication, insight and reflection which finally allowed him to trust again.

Other situations offer different promise.  Certainly, when the betrayal is of a lesser magnitude than in this example, there is a greater probability that the two parties can work together to either resolve their differences and heal their relationship or decide together to move on without the other.  This, too, becomes an important life transition.  Again, the success of the transition rests upon the work one is willing to engage in to  not only learn about themselves, but to learn about others they invite into their lives and how that changes both of them.

Fundamentally, every experience of betrayal is an opportunity-an opportunity to learn something about oneself and how their thoughts, feelings and behaviors impact others.  It is an opportunity to discover what you can change about yourself and what you are unwilling to change.  It is an opportunity to discover what you are and are not willing to accept from another.  It is also an opportunity to create a new version of yourself which may be with or without your partner.  In any case, this is about growth.  For some people, being the recipient of a betrayal forces them to make changes they’ve avoided for a lifetime.  The saddest outcome is when the transition is one in which there is no growth-only a move towards victimhood that becomes the new definition of oneself.  That is what we want to avoid.