I’ve been betrayed, o shi*….
Betrayal is such a defining experience, it lays your heart completely bare.
Betrayal shows precisely where you are weak and where you are mighty; all in one emotion.
Betrayal shows your loyalty and reveals the lies you’ve been telling yourself.
And being betrayed by another person is often a reflection of how you were betraying yourself…
That hurts, shames, defines. It’s like a lie looking back at you.
This is how it unfolds, starting with the pinnacle..
You realize you’ve been deceived. Then you realize that you’ve been a complete fool.
How did I not see this coming?
Questioning yourself: didn’t I want to see this coming, didn’t I see this coming?
And that’s when we might want to stop yourself, just before we go off the deep end.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there, the plot hasn’t been fully revealed yet, for you need to find out why: why you played the role you did. Why you couldn’t admit that betrayal was possibility. Why you denied knowing that denial masks fear, we know that.
It might be as simple as
you kept one eye closed so you wouldn’t have to face the pain of the situation. How bad it really was, selling yourself short. How badly you wanted to fill the hole in your soul.
So maybe you got blindsided. Than you see that, maybe, maybe you had a part to play in this betrayal, which, by the way, in no way whatsoever let’s the betrayer off the hook for his or her behavior for, say, being deceptive, manipulative and rude. Because behavior is a choice and so they choose to be f.i. manipulative mean ones and that is the point; the behavior is inexcusable.
And what then, when you dare see what’s beneath the surface, you might realize you were afraid of something.
Afraid of what?
The true answer to that is deeply personal.
And it is the key to where you can change your ‘betrayed’ story.
One of the most damaging aspects of being betrayed can be that you can get to the point where you question your ability to make good choices. When you see what you were scared of, you neutralize the fear, and when you do that, you can regain some trust in yourself. I’ve been betrayed, thank God.