Betrayal

A friend was recounting the story of what she terms a betrayal by a person whose friendship she had valued and treated with the extreme tenderness and care.  My first thought was that I can recall feeling the same sense of what I called betrayal. My second thought was, “Jim, what is it you do not understand about  how we humans deal with fear.  Surely, you know that the behavior of the other person was not about you alone, but it was about the fact that it did not feel safe to the other to tell you the truth.”

Dictionary.com defines betrayal as “to deliver or expose to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty…2. To be unfaithful in guarding,maintaining or fulfilling: to betray a trust”

Of course I have always known that we humans get frightened and we lie to those who love us and who we love. We lie by omission or commission.   If my understanding is that another person will not lie to me or betray my trust in any way, I get very frightened if that trust is broken. I suddenly feel as if my little island of safely in an otherwise uncertain and untrustworthy world has been shattered.    When I discovered by accident that my partner who had been constantly reassuring me that our relationship was as close as ever, had been having a very intense affair with another person for some months, I felt betrayed.  When another person took something we jointly shared and which was acknowledged as our most emotionally valuable asset I felt betrayed and  frightened.  If I could not trust this person who could I trust. “Perhaps,” I thought, “No one is trustworthy.”

At this stage of my life, on an intellectual or cognitive level I am able to both forgive and share some of the responsibility for the action of the person by whom I felt betrayed..  I can now realize or accept that there are a number of times in my life when it was very reasonable for the other person to think that it was unsafe to tell the truth.  In some cases or perhaps in most I would have been very angry, righteous, and mean to the other person for there unforgivable “sin”.

As  always I begin to wonder what others say about this topic.  Back I went to google to look up quotes about betrayal.  Goodness,  there are a lot of them. Here are a few of my favorites:

William Blake is reported to have said, “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”

David Levithan in The Lover’s Dictionary says “It was a mistake,” you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”

Albert Camus in The Fall says, “I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe that there is a single person I loved that I didn’t eventually betray.”

Malcolm X said, “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal

And finally one more from a character in Emily Bronte’s Withering Heights, “…drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!  Oh God! It is unutterable!  I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul!”

I suppose that Emily Bronte comes closest for me in describing what I feel when I use the word betrayal. The person who I thought was my friend or lover or partner or child is not that person at all. That delusion I accepted in my mind is standing in front of me looking like the person I thought he/she was. Yet, that person does not exist.  That delusional person I could trust. That person would hold my secrets safe. That person would never deliberately abuse another person, especially a child. 

Unless we somehow manage to live in a artificial bubble, we do not have to be far into this life journey to realize that one cannot depend on much being solid. That friend who promised to always be there suddenly dies in a car wreck or from an insidious decease such as cancer who cares nothing about youth. That parent  or other trusted adult who we need to be one of our rocks or anchors kills themselves or is stolen by addiction or some other acute “dis ease”. 

Still, however, some of us manage to hold on to some innocence about the state of our humanness.  Others are not so fortunate.  Early on that trusted parent, that person who all in the community think of as the paragon of virtue sneaks into the young child room when that child is very young.  That child has lost its innocence. They are not likely to have any illusions left unless they quickly tell  another trusted adult who believes and protects them from further harm.  Sadly that seems all to seldom to be the case.

What do we do with betrayal by others or ourselves?  Yes, if I am going to talk about betrayal, I have to also talk about the times that I have betrayed myself; the times that I have violated some sacred trust within myself; the times when I have found myself breaking to the promise to never …..    It does not matter what the “never” is.  The truth is that I could name hundreds of times when I have said or done something I promised myself or someone else I would never do.  The promise might have been as simple as “I will never smoke a cigarettes in front of my child.” Or “I will never fight over a child as if that child is an object belonging to one of us.”  or “I will  never lie to someone I love and make them feel crazy.” 

Perhaps, I have been lucky enough to never have a desire to have sex with an 17 year old person or at least to never act on such a desire. Perhaps I have never had a desire to have sex with a very young child – a desire so strong it threatened to overtake me.  Can I take credit for not having such a desire? Perhaps I have never felt so desperate that I wanted to shoot another or rob someone or commit any other act which could have landed me in jail.  I have, for sure, nearly hit a pedestrian because I was distracted while driving, been so blindly angry that I wanted to hit someone, been so lustful that  I did not want to trust myself to be alone with someone.

In the face of knowing that all of we humans are capable of what we  call betrayal it is difficult to know who to trust.  It is tempting to never trust anyone. Yet, that is a very lonely way to live.  The fact is that most of us are trustworthy most of the time. Most of us are going to do our best to be the friend, partner, lover, child, parent that we promised to me.   Some of us will be unable to  keep that promise.

We have to somehow continue to work to create a world in which it is safer to be honest  with each other and, when needed, to ask for help.  In order to create such a world we have to be able to trust that love can withstand we secrets we carry;  that we are strong enough to be honest with ourselves and to do what we need to do to avoid betraying the trust.  I have enormous respect for the parent who turns over a child to someone else to raise because they know that they cannot, at that time, be a safe parent. I have enormous respect for the person who says that they can no longer honor the promise they made.  That may hurt a lot, but perhaps it will not feel like betrayal.

My mother used to say to my siblings and I, “Just tell me the truth. Your punishment will be worse for lying.”  Wrong!  The truth as we experienced it was that when we told the truth the punishment was just as harsh if not harsher.  It was much better to try to get away with a lie.  It was never safe to tell the truth.  On the other hand when spending time with my favorite aunt and uncle it was always safe to tell the truth. We were never punished.   If one did something which was hurtful or damaging to something or someone, the goal in that house was to figure out how to prevent it in the future.  The goal was never punishment.

I do not think that we are at the point in our society In which the goal is always going to be prevent another occurrence. I think that, for now and in the foreseeable future, we humans are going to be focused on punishing each other.  This will result in more betrayal. I am not suggesting that this is right or wrong, I am suggesting that this is the current reality as I understand it.