I Love You But I Don’t Trust You, By Mira Kirschenbaum
I hated my husband; but in those moments when I could see beyond my hatred for him, I hated myself. I hated my rage, I hated my judgment on this, I hated my fear. And I hated how miserable I felt. Why should I feel so bad? I haven’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t cheated. I hadn’t lied. I hadn’t acted irresponsibly. He had. He was in the wrong. He messed everything up so it was his job to fix it. Right?
Love can survive a betrayal. People we love will too often hurt us and disappoint us and betray us, which will set up a chain reaction that too often destroys a relationship. We must find a way to repair the damage that’s done when there’s been a betrayal. Understanding the full extent of the damage makes it all the more important that we know how to heal our relationships when there’s been a betrayal. Because the damage just doesn’t have to be so bad. It’s not the betrayal by itself that causes most of the damage. It’s the poor way we handle the aftermath.
You can’t have love without trust. Having trust makes love come alive. Trust isn’t just the basis for relationship; it’s the lifeblood that keeps a relationship healthy. When you have trust you can relax, be open, be yourself.
Chances are, you don’t have any trust left. You’re hurt and angry and confused and you don’t know what to do. You don’t know if this relationship should exist anymore. You’re wondering, what do I do? Do I stay? Or do I go? How do I handle all of this? Most of all, you’re wondering, can I ever trust this person again? How can I possibly regain trust? And even if I could, would I want this relationship anyway?
So how do we do it? How do we heal the trust? Let’s go back to the betrayal for a moment. Betrayal happens when you don’t take into account another person who is relying on you. Anytime we treat someone as if they don’t matter, they are going to feel some disappointment and betrayal.
You are probably thinking, “What could I possibly mean to him for him to do something like this?” And that’s where people are when there’s been a betrayal. And there’s a huge mess. First, he didn’t take me into account. Then, of course, I am furious and even if he recognizes that that’s justified, he’s being assaulted by my anger and that makes him feel like I’m not taking him into account. If you’re not careful, things just get worse and worse, often surprisingly quickly, and pretty soon the relationship is blown out of the water, with both partners not considering the other.
Love can survive a betrayal. People we love will too often hurt us and disappoint us and betray us, which will set up a chain reaction that too often destroys a relationship. We must find a way to repair the damage that’s done when there’s been a betrayal. Understanding the full extent of the damage makes it all the more important that we know how to heal our relationships when there’s been a betrayal. Because the damage just doesn’t have to be so bad. It’s not the betrayal by itself that causes most of the damage. It’s the poor way we handle the aftermath.
You can’t have love without trust. Having trust makes love come alive. Trust isn’t just the basis for relationship; it’s the lifeblood that keeps a relationship healthy. When you have trust you can relax, be open, be yourself.
Chances are, you don’t have any trust left. You’re hurt and angry and confused and you don’t know what to do. You don’t know if this relationship should exist anymore. You’re wondering, what do I do? Do I stay? Or do I go? How do I handle all of this? Most of all, you’re wondering, can I ever trust this person again? How can I possibly regain trust? And even if I could, would I want this relationship anyway?
So how do we do it? How do we heal the trust? Let’s go back to the betrayal for a moment. Betrayal happens when you don’t take into account another person who is relying on you. Anytime we treat someone as if they don’t matter, they are going to feel some disappointment and betrayal.
You are probably thinking, “What could I possibly mean to him for him to do something like this?” And that’s where people are when there’s been a betrayal. And there’s a huge mess. First, he didn’t take me into account. Then, of course, I am furious and even if he recognizes that that’s justified, he’s being assaulted by my anger and that makes him feel like I’m not taking him into account. If you’re not careful, things just get worse and worse, often surprisingly quickly, and pretty soon the relationship is blown out of the water, with both partners not considering the other.
Having done something to not consider your partner, the trust-healing process involves finding ways to radically consider your partner.
Right now, you may be wondering, “Who is this other person and how can I possibly have a relationship with them? Should I stay or should I leave? This is the place everyone gets to when there’s been a breach of trust and this can be a very scary question. If this question won’t release its grip on you, then you have to face it so then the time to figure this out is now.
- Instead of escalating impatience, there’s growing patience.
- Instead of anger that goes nowhere, there’s real listening and a real sense of feeling seen and heard that goes somewhere new and very important.
- Instead of inflicting pain there’s an understanding of how to better meet each other’s needs.
- You can discover how to consider each other in ways they’ve never done before.
- You can feel you matter to each other more than ever.
- Both of you become intimate partners in this rebuilding of trust.
- Many people say that their relationship has never been stronger.
Right now, you may be wondering, “Who is this other person and how can I possibly have a relationship with them? Should I stay or should I leave? This is the place everyone gets to when there’s been a breach of trust and this can be a very scary question. If this question won’t release its grip on you, then you have to face it so then the time to figure this out is now.
- Would you want this relationship if the trust could be restored?
- Does the fact that this betrayal happened ruin everything for you?
- Can you imagine the possibility of forgiveness?
- Does the person you mistrust care about how you feel?
- Can the other person work on your relationship with you?
- What do you have to lose by giving your relationship a chance?
When we’ve been betrayed, we think we’ve discovered the truth about someone. But in fact, all we’ve done is discover one truth about them. We discovered that they can do this bad thing. And of course, it’s devastating. You can’t let a bad thing that someone has done blind you to their good qualities. We’re all capable of doing things out of stupidity, weakness, ignorance, or selfishness. But the most important thing is that our good qualities can redeem our mistakes. And it’s so easy to overlook someone’s good qualities.
It’s really important for you to understand that hope is not a precondition for accomplishing important things. We often believe that hope is required in order to take the right action. But it can be the opposite. Hope can be the gift the right action brings to you. Hope can be the way you find out that you’ve done the right thing. So right now, you don’t need to have hope that you can rebuild trust in your relationship. You just need to think that it’s worth attempting, if only so you can say that you attempted it. Life is full of surprises. And many of the very best surprises start after we’ve lost hope. One huge reason to give rebuilding trust a chance is the possibility that the other person can surprise you with their good qualities as they’ve just surprised you with their bad ones.
Sure the process can be painful but if you do it right it could be much less so. It’s the mistakes we make along the way that cause all the trouble. If you know what those mistakes are, why you make them, how to avoid them, and what to do differently that really works, your broken trust will heal, as has happened for so many others.
It’s really important for you to understand that hope is not a precondition for accomplishing important things. We often believe that hope is required in order to take the right action. But it can be the opposite. Hope can be the gift the right action brings to you. Hope can be the way you find out that you’ve done the right thing. So right now, you don’t need to have hope that you can rebuild trust in your relationship. You just need to think that it’s worth attempting, if only so you can say that you attempted it. Life is full of surprises. And many of the very best surprises start after we’ve lost hope. One huge reason to give rebuilding trust a chance is the possibility that the other person can surprise you with their good qualities as they’ve just surprised you with their bad ones.
Sure the process can be painful but if you do it right it could be much less so. It’s the mistakes we make along the way that cause all the trouble. If you know what those mistakes are, why you make them, how to avoid them, and what to do differently that really works, your broken trust will heal, as has happened for so many others.
Trust versus safety
Our thinking goes something like this: if he could hurt me the way he did, then anything can go wrong, everything has the potential to blow up in my face. I can’t even trust myself.
There are two parts of us. There’s a trust hungry part and there’s a betrayal vulnerable part. And the trust hungry part guides us easily and automatically unless the betrayal vulnerable part is aroused. Because we want to trust, because we were designed by nature to function best in an atmosphere of trust, trust is our default mode. If we don’t have a reason not to trust then we will trust. And even if there’s been a betrayal, we still want to trust. Our desire and need to trust, is so strong that we will trust again unless we are confronted with a reason not to. And this is where a betrayal vulnerable part comes in. If anything happens that even slightly can be perceived as an offense, the betrayal vulnerable part of us will be stimulated and rear its ugly head, wreaking all sorts of havoc.
For trust to heal quickly and easily, nothing should stimulate the betrayal vulnerable part of us. We need to protect it. Unfortunately, people aren’t perfect. Not you. Not the person who’s hurt you. Even if the person who’s hurt you is so sorry he can’t stand it, his imperfections will lead him to do things that will jostle your betrayal vulnerable part and scare you. He might get mad. He might forget to call you. And since you’ve been so furious, he’s become quite intimidated, so he might avoid telling you something that he knows will get you upset. And when you find out about it, you might get even more upset. Under normal conditions missteps like these are no big deal. But after betrayal these minor incidents stimulate our mistrust. We respond to peacemaking overtures with anger and disgust. We spurn his attempt to understand how we feel. We push him away when he tries to make a healing gesture. These mistakes slow down the healing process, if they don’t sabotage it completely.
All you know is that you can’t trust someone you love and rely on. Or is it “used to love and used to rely on.” And it feels like torture. It’s the pain of an emotional wound that hasn’t healed yet. The pain of betrayal feels like it’s going to stay around forever, because the betrayal itself seems like it’s destroyed your world. You can never change the fact that it happened, so why would you think the pain could lessen?
When you’ve been betrayed, it feels as if you’ve been stranded on a tiny barren desert island. You might figure out how to survive but it will never feel right. And when you’re in pain like that, you lash out. It is perfectly understandable. But even though the things we do in our emotional pain are understandable, if we want to restore trust, they are not so smart. In fact, there are mistakes.
The longer it takes to restore trust, the more anger there is. And the more anger there is, the harder it is to restore trust and stay in the relationship. That’s why so many of us have the experience that mistrust is fatal to the relationship.
Our thinking goes something like this: if he could hurt me the way he did, then anything can go wrong, everything has the potential to blow up in my face. I can’t even trust myself.
There are two parts of us. There’s a trust hungry part and there’s a betrayal vulnerable part. And the trust hungry part guides us easily and automatically unless the betrayal vulnerable part is aroused. Because we want to trust, because we were designed by nature to function best in an atmosphere of trust, trust is our default mode. If we don’t have a reason not to trust then we will trust. And even if there’s been a betrayal, we still want to trust. Our desire and need to trust, is so strong that we will trust again unless we are confronted with a reason not to. And this is where a betrayal vulnerable part comes in. If anything happens that even slightly can be perceived as an offense, the betrayal vulnerable part of us will be stimulated and rear its ugly head, wreaking all sorts of havoc.
For trust to heal quickly and easily, nothing should stimulate the betrayal vulnerable part of us. We need to protect it. Unfortunately, people aren’t perfect. Not you. Not the person who’s hurt you. Even if the person who’s hurt you is so sorry he can’t stand it, his imperfections will lead him to do things that will jostle your betrayal vulnerable part and scare you. He might get mad. He might forget to call you. And since you’ve been so furious, he’s become quite intimidated, so he might avoid telling you something that he knows will get you upset. And when you find out about it, you might get even more upset. Under normal conditions missteps like these are no big deal. But after betrayal these minor incidents stimulate our mistrust. We respond to peacemaking overtures with anger and disgust. We spurn his attempt to understand how we feel. We push him away when he tries to make a healing gesture. These mistakes slow down the healing process, if they don’t sabotage it completely.
All you know is that you can’t trust someone you love and rely on. Or is it “used to love and used to rely on.” And it feels like torture. It’s the pain of an emotional wound that hasn’t healed yet. The pain of betrayal feels like it’s going to stay around forever, because the betrayal itself seems like it’s destroyed your world. You can never change the fact that it happened, so why would you think the pain could lessen?
When you’ve been betrayed, it feels as if you’ve been stranded on a tiny barren desert island. You might figure out how to survive but it will never feel right. And when you’re in pain like that, you lash out. It is perfectly understandable. But even though the things we do in our emotional pain are understandable, if we want to restore trust, they are not so smart. In fact, there are mistakes.
The longer it takes to restore trust, the more anger there is. And the more anger there is, the harder it is to restore trust and stay in the relationship. That’s why so many of us have the experience that mistrust is fatal to the relationship.
Mistrust can heal – – it’s the anger that prevents it from healing. If someone hurts or disappoints you of course you’re going to be angry. Sometimes our anger is the best sign that we’re strong and alive and able to take care of ourselves. The problem comes when anger takes on a life of its own. When someone’s really mad at you for a long time, it feels like an endless nightmare of punishment.
We have to understand what’s at the root of this anger. When you’ve been betrayed, you’re going to be feeling this terrible sense that you’re just not safe in your world. And that’s a big deal, because we have no greater need then to feel safe. Safety for us is everything. We can’t go along in our lives without feeling safe. And that gets at the heart of how trust issues can go on to destroy relationships.
Often yelling does make people feel safer. What better way to let the other person know, fast, that this is a big deal for me? What better way to scare the other person? Once I’ve yelled, I feel better, stronger. Because I feel safer. But the tragedy and the trap is that the things we do to make us feel safe won’t restore trust. They just damage the relationship instead of healing it.
When you feel betrayed, you feel incredibly disempowered. Helpless. There was someone you thought you could count on, and in some way he let you down. That makes you feel if this person could do things to hurt you and there’s not much you could do about it. How do you prevent someone from lying to you? How do you prevent someone from not doing what he said he was going to do? How do you prevent somebody from cheating on you? You feel powerless. The only way we can feel safe at a time like this is to become as powerful as possible. Fiercely powerful. Terrifyingly powerful. We yell, threaten, and attack. We hope that if we scare the crap out of the person who betrayed us, he will be too scared to ever betray us again. That’s why the person has been betrayed has so much anger. We’re angry because it’s a response given to us by nature to make us do things so we will feel safe.
And in fact focusing on safety works, if our only goal is to put up a wall that we can live behind. If you never want to be hurt by anyone, don’t let anyone into your life. Focusing on safety completely backfires if our goal is to restore trust and repair the relationship. The things we do to feel safe usually damage relationships. Anger creates more anger. Distance breeds more distance. And in the end, we’re safe but alone. All we’ve done is get in the way of the healing process.
So now you can see why it’s been so hard to heal broken trust. It’s not that broken trust is hard to heal in itself. It’s that the things we do to make us feel safe when we are living with mistrust, prevent the broken trust from healing. Broken trust is hard to heal because we weren’t even trying to heal it. We’re just trying to make ourselves feel safe.
We have to understand what’s at the root of this anger. When you’ve been betrayed, you’re going to be feeling this terrible sense that you’re just not safe in your world. And that’s a big deal, because we have no greater need then to feel safe. Safety for us is everything. We can’t go along in our lives without feeling safe. And that gets at the heart of how trust issues can go on to destroy relationships.
Often yelling does make people feel safer. What better way to let the other person know, fast, that this is a big deal for me? What better way to scare the other person? Once I’ve yelled, I feel better, stronger. Because I feel safer. But the tragedy and the trap is that the things we do to make us feel safe won’t restore trust. They just damage the relationship instead of healing it.
When you feel betrayed, you feel incredibly disempowered. Helpless. There was someone you thought you could count on, and in some way he let you down. That makes you feel if this person could do things to hurt you and there’s not much you could do about it. How do you prevent someone from lying to you? How do you prevent someone from not doing what he said he was going to do? How do you prevent somebody from cheating on you? You feel powerless. The only way we can feel safe at a time like this is to become as powerful as possible. Fiercely powerful. Terrifyingly powerful. We yell, threaten, and attack. We hope that if we scare the crap out of the person who betrayed us, he will be too scared to ever betray us again. That’s why the person has been betrayed has so much anger. We’re angry because it’s a response given to us by nature to make us do things so we will feel safe.
And in fact focusing on safety works, if our only goal is to put up a wall that we can live behind. If you never want to be hurt by anyone, don’t let anyone into your life. Focusing on safety completely backfires if our goal is to restore trust and repair the relationship. The things we do to feel safe usually damage relationships. Anger creates more anger. Distance breeds more distance. And in the end, we’re safe but alone. All we’ve done is get in the way of the healing process.
So now you can see why it’s been so hard to heal broken trust. It’s not that broken trust is hard to heal in itself. It’s that the things we do to make us feel safe when we are living with mistrust, prevent the broken trust from healing. Broken trust is hard to heal because we weren’t even trying to heal it. We’re just trying to make ourselves feel safe.
Rebuild trust and feel safe
So where do we go from here if we’ve been betrayed? After all, we do need to feel safe. So how do we rebuild trust and feel safe at the same time?
Trust is not just a feeling. Trust is what you do when you relinquish your need to feel safe. All hope for the rebirth of trust, for the survival of your most cherished relationships, depends on your seeing that you can only regain trust if you let go of some of your need for safety. You may have to do this in tiny steps. You may only be able to let go of your need for safety very slowly. But the secret of restoring trust is figuring out a way to take some risks and carefully, slowly, focus less on safety. It can be more than a little scary. But it’s the only way. Safety comes into play whenever we’re willing to throw our relationship needs overboard to take care of our personal needs. The things I do to make myself feel safe make my husband feel unsafe, and then he does things to feel safe that make me feel still more unsafe.
You do not have to give up the need for safety to build solid trust. But we have to balance our need for safety with our need for trust. That’s what restoring trust can give you if you avoid making some key mistakes.
So where do we go from here if we’ve been betrayed? After all, we do need to feel safe. So how do we rebuild trust and feel safe at the same time?
Trust is not just a feeling. Trust is what you do when you relinquish your need to feel safe. All hope for the rebirth of trust, for the survival of your most cherished relationships, depends on your seeing that you can only regain trust if you let go of some of your need for safety. You may have to do this in tiny steps. You may only be able to let go of your need for safety very slowly. But the secret of restoring trust is figuring out a way to take some risks and carefully, slowly, focus less on safety. It can be more than a little scary. But it’s the only way. Safety comes into play whenever we’re willing to throw our relationship needs overboard to take care of our personal needs. The things I do to make myself feel safe make my husband feel unsafe, and then he does things to feel safe that make me feel still more unsafe.
You do not have to give up the need for safety to build solid trust. But we have to balance our need for safety with our need for trust. That’s what restoring trust can give you if you avoid making some key mistakes.
Fix it? or forget it?
When we feel hurt and betrayed, there’s always a part of us that wonders why bother working on the relationship? We’re angry and discouraged and we don’t trust the other person so we have to wonder if staying makes sense. We’re afraid that if we stay it will be like throwing good money after bad. Feelings like this are normal. But your discouragement is not a sign that the relationship can’t be fixed. It’s just a sign of how hurt you are, and that’s a big difference. The best way to tell if staying makes sense is to go through the trust restoring process. Then you’ll know for sure one way or the other.
No, You’re Not Crazy
A major betrayal is when someone does something that breaks a fundamental promise or violates a fundamental expectation and does so in a way that significantly hurts your peace of mind.
What is trust? Trust is a feeling based on evidence. Most of the time, it’s not even a feeling we’re aware of. The feeling of trust is barely more than the absence of anxiety. Except when we’ve been hurt. Then the very sense of safety we used to take for granted is now something we ache for.
While trust is a feeling based on evidence, it’s not a feeling based on certainty, because we can never find that certainty. When you say you trust someone, you have to have something that you can point to that makes your trust look reasonable, and there shouldn’t be anything people could point to that would make your trust seem unreasonable.
So all you can do is look for evidence that make trust reasonable and probe for facts that would make trust unreasonable. Then you know you’re not taking a total leap into the dark. But there are still no guarantees. A betrayal adds a new fact into the mixture. When someone betrays or disappoint you, you will more or less quickly come to believe that that person is flawed in such a way as to keep producing those disappointments. The bigger and more unusual the disappointment, the quicker you will come to the judgment. So mistrust is also a feeling based on evidence: anxiety because of a belief in unreliability.
When we feel hurt and betrayed, there’s always a part of us that wonders why bother working on the relationship? We’re angry and discouraged and we don’t trust the other person so we have to wonder if staying makes sense. We’re afraid that if we stay it will be like throwing good money after bad. Feelings like this are normal. But your discouragement is not a sign that the relationship can’t be fixed. It’s just a sign of how hurt you are, and that’s a big difference. The best way to tell if staying makes sense is to go through the trust restoring process. Then you’ll know for sure one way or the other.
No, You’re Not Crazy
A major betrayal is when someone does something that breaks a fundamental promise or violates a fundamental expectation and does so in a way that significantly hurts your peace of mind.
What is trust? Trust is a feeling based on evidence. Most of the time, it’s not even a feeling we’re aware of. The feeling of trust is barely more than the absence of anxiety. Except when we’ve been hurt. Then the very sense of safety we used to take for granted is now something we ache for.
While trust is a feeling based on evidence, it’s not a feeling based on certainty, because we can never find that certainty. When you say you trust someone, you have to have something that you can point to that makes your trust look reasonable, and there shouldn’t be anything people could point to that would make your trust seem unreasonable.
So all you can do is look for evidence that make trust reasonable and probe for facts that would make trust unreasonable. Then you know you’re not taking a total leap into the dark. But there are still no guarantees. A betrayal adds a new fact into the mixture. When someone betrays or disappoint you, you will more or less quickly come to believe that that person is flawed in such a way as to keep producing those disappointments. The bigger and more unusual the disappointment, the quicker you will come to the judgment. So mistrust is also a feeling based on evidence: anxiety because of a belief in unreliability.
The essence of the betrayal fight.
|
Betrayed partner
You feel you’ll win if you try to convince your partner of how unreliable they are. You want them to know that the whole thing is a really big deal. You’ll soon be talking to your partner as if you thought they were completely evil. |
Unfaithful partner
You will feel you’ll win if you can convince your partner how anxious they are. You want them to stop making such a big deal of the whole thing. You’ll be talking to your partner as if you thought they were completely insane. |
We will become so angry and so far apart that any possibility of restoring trust will be blown out of the water, along with the relationship.
How to heal our relationship after major betrayal
If you’ve been betrayed in a big way by someone who is important to you, then knowing what these questions are and how to get answers to them will make all the difference in whether not trust can be restored in the relationship can be rebuilt.
How to heal our relationship after major betrayal
If you’ve been betrayed in a big way by someone who is important to you, then knowing what these questions are and how to get answers to them will make all the difference in whether not trust can be restored in the relationship can be rebuilt.
- How will I ever cope with this?
- Does the other person really care about me?
- Can the other person really see me and understand how his betrayal hurt me?
- Can the relationship survive?
- Can we make things safer and better between us?
- Can I forgive?
How will I ever cope with this?
With betrayal, the inconceivable happened. Someone we trusted was supposed to take care of us or be there for us, has hurt or abandoned us. The world no longer makes any sense. Something happened that’s just crazy. And it makes sense that it would make you feel crazy. That’s what betrayal feels like. You may feel crazy, but you’re not actually crazy. What you’re feeling, what you’re going through, is normal. You are normal. It’s just that your life has gone crazy and you’re responding to that craziness like anybody would. There’s something about the power of betrayal that makes you feel that you can’t trust anything anymore, including yourself. This is why most people who have gone through major betrayal talk about how they’ve never felt less safe or more helpless in their lives. It will pass, but feeling crazy can last many, many days or even weeks.
During this period, you might find yourself doing things that you never in a million years thought you do. Or maybe you don’t do anything. Some people just don’t want to talk to anyone about anything during this phase. Although some people do act crazy, the defining characteristic is confusion, wild thoughts alternating with no thoughts at all, an overpowering sense that you’ve entered an alternative, head spinning reality.
Feeling crazy OK; acting crazy not OK
If you don’t get a satisfying answer to the question, “how will I ever cope?” there’s a serious risk that you’ll never stop being stressed out and made frantic by this betrayal. People convince themselves that they can’t cope, and then every time they are hit by a feeling of mistrust they completely lose it. But when you realize that you can cope, even if you’re still upset, you can act in a constructive way.
If you are reading this you are coping. If you just hang in there through this period, you’ll start having a clearer and stronger feeling that you actually are coping. The major mistake people can make during this time is to do something you can’t take back. You might ask, if someone’s betrayed you why not get back at him anyway you can? Why not inflict back on him as much hurt as he has caused you? Those feelings are totally normal but there’s an excellent reason not to do it. The reason not to do anything you might regret is that once the dust is settled there’s a very good chance that you will want to rebuild your relationship. Not without working hard to rebuild trust. But still the relationship may be well worth saving. It is not true that the more pain you feel, the more that means your relationship is better off dead. It’s not the size of the betrayal that kills a relationship. It’s the weakness of the relationship itself that makes it vulnerable when a betrayal occurs.
With betrayal, the inconceivable happened. Someone we trusted was supposed to take care of us or be there for us, has hurt or abandoned us. The world no longer makes any sense. Something happened that’s just crazy. And it makes sense that it would make you feel crazy. That’s what betrayal feels like. You may feel crazy, but you’re not actually crazy. What you’re feeling, what you’re going through, is normal. You are normal. It’s just that your life has gone crazy and you’re responding to that craziness like anybody would. There’s something about the power of betrayal that makes you feel that you can’t trust anything anymore, including yourself. This is why most people who have gone through major betrayal talk about how they’ve never felt less safe or more helpless in their lives. It will pass, but feeling crazy can last many, many days or even weeks.
During this period, you might find yourself doing things that you never in a million years thought you do. Or maybe you don’t do anything. Some people just don’t want to talk to anyone about anything during this phase. Although some people do act crazy, the defining characteristic is confusion, wild thoughts alternating with no thoughts at all, an overpowering sense that you’ve entered an alternative, head spinning reality.
Feeling crazy OK; acting crazy not OK
If you don’t get a satisfying answer to the question, “how will I ever cope?” there’s a serious risk that you’ll never stop being stressed out and made frantic by this betrayal. People convince themselves that they can’t cope, and then every time they are hit by a feeling of mistrust they completely lose it. But when you realize that you can cope, even if you’re still upset, you can act in a constructive way.
If you are reading this you are coping. If you just hang in there through this period, you’ll start having a clearer and stronger feeling that you actually are coping. The major mistake people can make during this time is to do something you can’t take back. You might ask, if someone’s betrayed you why not get back at him anyway you can? Why not inflict back on him as much hurt as he has caused you? Those feelings are totally normal but there’s an excellent reason not to do it. The reason not to do anything you might regret is that once the dust is settled there’s a very good chance that you will want to rebuild your relationship. Not without working hard to rebuild trust. But still the relationship may be well worth saving. It is not true that the more pain you feel, the more that means your relationship is better off dead. It’s not the size of the betrayal that kills a relationship. It’s the weakness of the relationship itself that makes it vulnerable when a betrayal occurs.
Do you really care about me?
In the context of betrayal, anger accomplishes something huge. It enables us to answer the next big question that haunts us as we’re trying to deal with the betrayal: do you really care about me? This deals with the essence of the betrayal and gets at the heart of whether healing the mistrust is possible or not. If you can’t get to the point where you feel that the other person really cares about you, then you probably won’t be able to get back into this relationship. Why would you be in a relationship with someone you know doesn’t care about you? If you do stay, you’ll never feel loved. But when you do realize that the other person cares about you, however ignorant, confused and clumsy he may be, then you’ll have the motivation you need to rebuild trust.
You may be thinking how can someone betray me like this and care about me? Yes, if this person had cared more, and considered you more, they wouldn’t have betrayed you. But strangely enough this doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care. That may be hard for you to believe at this stage.
The person has been betrayed is just a quivering mass of safety needs. This is not a fun person to be with. This is most of us at our absolute worst – quite understandably, of course – and the yelling and storming around making demands can go on for quite a while. But if the person who betrayed you can hang in there while you’re furious, he’s passed the do-you-care test. That’s what we look for: the sign of his commitment to you, to the relationship, and to the healing process. If the betrayer can hang in there, you know that there’s a foundation of caring that can give you solid trust. You’ve gotten the answer to your question: he really does care.
Our anger is not part of a plan, it’s just a response to our pain. But it does have the effect of setting up a situation so that we get a really good answer we can trust to the question do you care about me?
You can be expressing anger without your being aware that you’re putting the other person to the test and without his being aware that he’s being put to the test. Rather than yelling and screaming, anger can come out in the form of coldness and distance. You might be feeling angry, but the other person might think you’re calming down. And although your words are not loud and frantic, they can be brutally cruel.
Another way anger comes out is during the grilling/venting process. And in it, the betrayer is subjected to it seems like an infinite number of questions, and every answer he gives is wrong and leads to a tirade into more questions. Being subject to the grilling/venting process feels like torture. And there’s a part of you that may feel like torturing him.
One of the first questions people who’ve been caught in betrayal always get asked is, “what else are you hiding from me? “But we take this uncertainty further afield. We wonder what dark betrayals other people in our lives have in store for us.
There are answers to our questions. With time and patience and good collaboration, the two of you can tease out an understanding of what went on that led to the betrayal. But this understanding never comes during the anger/impact stage. But the good news is that both people can hang in there and if the anger doesn’t blow the relationship apart, you can communicate well enough to uncover the truth.
From the point of view of trying to feel safe, anger is a very smart tactic. Angry people are scary people. You don’t want to mess with an angry person. You want to hunker down and stay out of their way. And so, anger destroys relationships and it doesn’t allow for trust to rebuild either. You might say, what do I care if the person who betrayed me trusts me? I want him to be scared of me so he’ll never hurt me again. But just the way you can’t trust an angry person, you can’t trust someone who is trying to cope with an angry person. The fact is that if someone is really angry, or always likely to become angry, we’re more likely to lie to that person or to hide things from them. We don’t want to deal with the anger!
So if you want to rebuild trust, anger is a big mistake. Yes, it makes you feel safer to get angry but it also makes for distance and resentment and undermines loyalty and these are the last things you want if you want to get to the place where you can really trust each other again. The less anger we indulge in, the faster healing happens.
You might say something like, “I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust you again.“ This is a way of saying, “please give me something that will make it possible for me to trust you again.“ But our partner is likely to hear it very differently. They may hear, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust you again.“ So if you stay angry you may get a note from your partner like the following.
“I love you, and I will always love you. I’m so sorry for what I did. If chopping off my arm could turn back the clock and make it solid what I did never happened, I would do so. In spite of this, I don’t see how I can keep going on with you. You keep making it abundantly clear that you will never be able to get past this. I know you’ve been incredibly hurt and angry, but I thought it would’ve started to die down by now. It hasn’t. I don’t know what you want for me. I do know you’ve told me over and over that you will never be able to trust me again. So, I guess at this point I’m going to have to take you at your word. I would give anything for us not to be in this place, but I just don’t see any point in my hanging in there any longer. You’ve told me there’s no point.”
Too much anger is toxic. It damages the relationship and prevents trust from being restored.
The anger cycle
You’re unfaithful partner gets it that you’re going to be angry. He knows he’s really hurt you and pissed you off. He’s expecting a period where there’s going to be a lot of anger. That’s your window. But it’s a smaller window than you might think or than you would like. After all no one likes to deal with rage so well he recognizes your need for anger is not so keen on letting it boil for an extended period of time.
In a perfect world, what anger should be is information. Anger is a gift nature gave animals and us so we could signal to each other say, “this is a really big deal for me.” But when we’re on the receiving end of it we experience anger as control and abuse. No one likes to be yelled at, even when they realize that the anger is justified. So, when your partner gets angry back at you he’s not responding to your legitimate need to let them know what a big deal it was that you were hurt. He’s responding to feeling controlled and abused. And you’re going to respond exactly the same way. Even if you accept that it’s been tough for him living with an angry person, you’re going to feel controlled and abused by his anger and you’re going to get even angrier back at him. They’re only two ways the anger cycle ends. One way is when it kills a relationship. The other way the anger cycle ends when it brings you to such a crazy place that you have to stop and say well this is just crazy what are we doing to each other?
And be aware of what this anger is all about. By being betrayed you were made to feel very small, almost like a nothing. And now you want make yourself seem big, someone to be reckoned with. And of course, you’re doing this to feel safe. The scarier you are, the less like really you think anyone’s going to mess with you.
Message to unfaithful partner
“Look, I know this is hard on you too. And I wish I had some kind of timetable a roadmap that would tell me when my anger will start to die down. But I just don’t know when that will happen. I do know that I want it to happen. I want to find a way to trust you again. And I know you want to be trustworthy. But here’s the thing. When you hurt me, that gave me the message that you don’t care about me. That I wasn’t worth your caring about me. But if you can hang in there with me while I’m still so angry, that will tell me that you do care, and that means everything to me.”
You probably need your partner to be open for you to feel safe. But if you’ve been pretty angry for a long time, then even if you’re within the timetable for what’s normal, he may not feel safe opening up to you because he doesn’t want to deal with your anger. You’re unintentionally preventing yourself from getting the very thing you need. His knowing what you need to feel safe is something you need to collaborate on. It’s in both of your interests. You want to feel safe and he wants you to feel safe because then his life will be better to.
A relationship can’t function without trust. Mistrust creates prickliness. Prickliness causes harsh reactions. Harsh reactions cause more mistrust. But if you put out there what you need to feel safe, only good things will happen. Either you’ll get what you need to feel safe and break the mistrust cycle and feel the other person cares. Or you won’t get it and you’ll know that the other person can’t give you what you need to feel safe. Which means he either doesn’t care or isn’t able to do what will make you feel cared for. Either way you’ll have gotten the answer to your question does he really care about me? If you can’t deal with anger you risk the following as expressed by an unfaithful partner.
“Cheating on my wife was the worst thing I’ve ever done and I hate myself for having done it. And right now, with her not trusting me at all I’m willing to do anything to win back her trust. She can monitor my computer. Track me using my cell phone. I get it. But the thing is, it’s not that she’s so angry. She has a right to be angry. It’s just that it’s like her anger has taken on a life of its own. It’s bottomless. And then I just can’t help thinking, what’s the point? If she’ll never stop being angry, why am I doing all these things? I know I’m the one who made the mess but if it can’t ever be cleaned up then why try?”
In the context of betrayal, anger accomplishes something huge. It enables us to answer the next big question that haunts us as we’re trying to deal with the betrayal: do you really care about me? This deals with the essence of the betrayal and gets at the heart of whether healing the mistrust is possible or not. If you can’t get to the point where you feel that the other person really cares about you, then you probably won’t be able to get back into this relationship. Why would you be in a relationship with someone you know doesn’t care about you? If you do stay, you’ll never feel loved. But when you do realize that the other person cares about you, however ignorant, confused and clumsy he may be, then you’ll have the motivation you need to rebuild trust.
You may be thinking how can someone betray me like this and care about me? Yes, if this person had cared more, and considered you more, they wouldn’t have betrayed you. But strangely enough this doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care. That may be hard for you to believe at this stage.
The person has been betrayed is just a quivering mass of safety needs. This is not a fun person to be with. This is most of us at our absolute worst – quite understandably, of course – and the yelling and storming around making demands can go on for quite a while. But if the person who betrayed you can hang in there while you’re furious, he’s passed the do-you-care test. That’s what we look for: the sign of his commitment to you, to the relationship, and to the healing process. If the betrayer can hang in there, you know that there’s a foundation of caring that can give you solid trust. You’ve gotten the answer to your question: he really does care.
Our anger is not part of a plan, it’s just a response to our pain. But it does have the effect of setting up a situation so that we get a really good answer we can trust to the question do you care about me?
You can be expressing anger without your being aware that you’re putting the other person to the test and without his being aware that he’s being put to the test. Rather than yelling and screaming, anger can come out in the form of coldness and distance. You might be feeling angry, but the other person might think you’re calming down. And although your words are not loud and frantic, they can be brutally cruel.
Another way anger comes out is during the grilling/venting process. And in it, the betrayer is subjected to it seems like an infinite number of questions, and every answer he gives is wrong and leads to a tirade into more questions. Being subject to the grilling/venting process feels like torture. And there’s a part of you that may feel like torturing him.
One of the first questions people who’ve been caught in betrayal always get asked is, “what else are you hiding from me? “But we take this uncertainty further afield. We wonder what dark betrayals other people in our lives have in store for us.
There are answers to our questions. With time and patience and good collaboration, the two of you can tease out an understanding of what went on that led to the betrayal. But this understanding never comes during the anger/impact stage. But the good news is that both people can hang in there and if the anger doesn’t blow the relationship apart, you can communicate well enough to uncover the truth.
From the point of view of trying to feel safe, anger is a very smart tactic. Angry people are scary people. You don’t want to mess with an angry person. You want to hunker down and stay out of their way. And so, anger destroys relationships and it doesn’t allow for trust to rebuild either. You might say, what do I care if the person who betrayed me trusts me? I want him to be scared of me so he’ll never hurt me again. But just the way you can’t trust an angry person, you can’t trust someone who is trying to cope with an angry person. The fact is that if someone is really angry, or always likely to become angry, we’re more likely to lie to that person or to hide things from them. We don’t want to deal with the anger!
So if you want to rebuild trust, anger is a big mistake. Yes, it makes you feel safer to get angry but it also makes for distance and resentment and undermines loyalty and these are the last things you want if you want to get to the place where you can really trust each other again. The less anger we indulge in, the faster healing happens.
You might say something like, “I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust you again.“ This is a way of saying, “please give me something that will make it possible for me to trust you again.“ But our partner is likely to hear it very differently. They may hear, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust you again.“ So if you stay angry you may get a note from your partner like the following.
“I love you, and I will always love you. I’m so sorry for what I did. If chopping off my arm could turn back the clock and make it solid what I did never happened, I would do so. In spite of this, I don’t see how I can keep going on with you. You keep making it abundantly clear that you will never be able to get past this. I know you’ve been incredibly hurt and angry, but I thought it would’ve started to die down by now. It hasn’t. I don’t know what you want for me. I do know you’ve told me over and over that you will never be able to trust me again. So, I guess at this point I’m going to have to take you at your word. I would give anything for us not to be in this place, but I just don’t see any point in my hanging in there any longer. You’ve told me there’s no point.”
Too much anger is toxic. It damages the relationship and prevents trust from being restored.
The anger cycle
You’re unfaithful partner gets it that you’re going to be angry. He knows he’s really hurt you and pissed you off. He’s expecting a period where there’s going to be a lot of anger. That’s your window. But it’s a smaller window than you might think or than you would like. After all no one likes to deal with rage so well he recognizes your need for anger is not so keen on letting it boil for an extended period of time.
In a perfect world, what anger should be is information. Anger is a gift nature gave animals and us so we could signal to each other say, “this is a really big deal for me.” But when we’re on the receiving end of it we experience anger as control and abuse. No one likes to be yelled at, even when they realize that the anger is justified. So, when your partner gets angry back at you he’s not responding to your legitimate need to let them know what a big deal it was that you were hurt. He’s responding to feeling controlled and abused. And you’re going to respond exactly the same way. Even if you accept that it’s been tough for him living with an angry person, you’re going to feel controlled and abused by his anger and you’re going to get even angrier back at him. They’re only two ways the anger cycle ends. One way is when it kills a relationship. The other way the anger cycle ends when it brings you to such a crazy place that you have to stop and say well this is just crazy what are we doing to each other?
And be aware of what this anger is all about. By being betrayed you were made to feel very small, almost like a nothing. And now you want make yourself seem big, someone to be reckoned with. And of course, you’re doing this to feel safe. The scarier you are, the less like really you think anyone’s going to mess with you.
- You can keep an anger journal and vent to your hearts content there. You can vent about the betrayal to a friend or therapist.
- Express why you’re angry to your partner but do it in a way that does not hurt them.
- Limit the anger venting sessions to a short period of time. Anger might trigger something you need from your partner. Be specific about what you need.
Message to unfaithful partner
“Look, I know this is hard on you too. And I wish I had some kind of timetable a roadmap that would tell me when my anger will start to die down. But I just don’t know when that will happen. I do know that I want it to happen. I want to find a way to trust you again. And I know you want to be trustworthy. But here’s the thing. When you hurt me, that gave me the message that you don’t care about me. That I wasn’t worth your caring about me. But if you can hang in there with me while I’m still so angry, that will tell me that you do care, and that means everything to me.”
You probably need your partner to be open for you to feel safe. But if you’ve been pretty angry for a long time, then even if you’re within the timetable for what’s normal, he may not feel safe opening up to you because he doesn’t want to deal with your anger. You’re unintentionally preventing yourself from getting the very thing you need. His knowing what you need to feel safe is something you need to collaborate on. It’s in both of your interests. You want to feel safe and he wants you to feel safe because then his life will be better to.
A relationship can’t function without trust. Mistrust creates prickliness. Prickliness causes harsh reactions. Harsh reactions cause more mistrust. But if you put out there what you need to feel safe, only good things will happen. Either you’ll get what you need to feel safe and break the mistrust cycle and feel the other person cares. Or you won’t get it and you’ll know that the other person can’t give you what you need to feel safe. Which means he either doesn’t care or isn’t able to do what will make you feel cared for. Either way you’ll have gotten the answer to your question does he really care about me? If you can’t deal with anger you risk the following as expressed by an unfaithful partner.
“Cheating on my wife was the worst thing I’ve ever done and I hate myself for having done it. And right now, with her not trusting me at all I’m willing to do anything to win back her trust. She can monitor my computer. Track me using my cell phone. I get it. But the thing is, it’s not that she’s so angry. She has a right to be angry. It’s just that it’s like her anger has taken on a life of its own. It’s bottomless. And then I just can’t help thinking, what’s the point? If she’ll never stop being angry, why am I doing all these things? I know I’m the one who made the mess but if it can’t ever be cleaned up then why try?”
Can my partner really see me and understand how his betrayal has hurt me?
We need to know if the person who has betrayed us really understands how much pain they have caused us
The betrayer needs to understand all the ins and outs of how he’s hurt you so that he can appreciate the full measure of what he’s done. If he won’t make an effort to see you and show you that he sees you, then you know he doesn’t really care. If he can’t see you then you’ll never feel you can trust him. Only when you see him seeing you can you have the confidence that is not only good enough, but clued in enough to never hurt you like this again.
Say something like this:
“If we’re going to get past this and I’m ever going to be able to trust you again, I need to know that you know what a big deal this has been for me, and still is. And that means you need to listen to me when I talk about it. It’s going to take a long time and you’re not going like it. Nobody wants to feel blamed and yelled at, and I know it’s going to feel that way to you. And maybe part of it really will be that way. But even if I seem like I’m blaming you, even if I really am blaming you, I need you to know that that’s not the point of this. The point is for you just to know. And I’ll know that you know when you show me that you know. After I’ve told my story I need to hear you telling my story. You can’t just say I hear you. You have to really say what you’ve seen and heard. I don’t need you to defend yourself. I don’t need to talk about how sorry you are. And I don’t need you to explain yourself unless I specifically asked for an explanation. I just need you to say what you’ve heard me say.”
We need to know if the person who has betrayed us really understands how much pain they have caused us
The betrayer needs to understand all the ins and outs of how he’s hurt you so that he can appreciate the full measure of what he’s done. If he won’t make an effort to see you and show you that he sees you, then you know he doesn’t really care. If he can’t see you then you’ll never feel you can trust him. Only when you see him seeing you can you have the confidence that is not only good enough, but clued in enough to never hurt you like this again.
Say something like this:
“If we’re going to get past this and I’m ever going to be able to trust you again, I need to know that you know what a big deal this has been for me, and still is. And that means you need to listen to me when I talk about it. It’s going to take a long time and you’re not going like it. Nobody wants to feel blamed and yelled at, and I know it’s going to feel that way to you. And maybe part of it really will be that way. But even if I seem like I’m blaming you, even if I really am blaming you, I need you to know that that’s not the point of this. The point is for you just to know. And I’ll know that you know when you show me that you know. After I’ve told my story I need to hear you telling my story. You can’t just say I hear you. You have to really say what you’ve seen and heard. I don’t need you to defend yourself. I don’t need to talk about how sorry you are. And I don’t need you to explain yourself unless I specifically asked for an explanation. I just need you to say what you’ve heard me say.”
Can the relationship survive?
When it comes to betrayal, there’s never a period when anger is 100% completely gone. No matter how many years go by there’s always a residue of anger however small. A fleeting memory of the betrayal will bring a fleeting pairing of anger. But the anger itself pretty much does come to an end after about six months.
We all need help to be able to continue putting out effort, no matter what it is we’re working on. If you can’t get to the point where you feel that the relationship can’t survive, that means you lost hope. So why would you put out effort? And, of course, if you don’t put out any effort, you’ll never restore trust in the relationship will die. But if you answer this question by having the feeling that the relationship can survive, then you’ll hang in there, and that effort you put in can buy itself restore trust.
Things can still feel terrible while the healing has begun. It’s like you have an infection and start taking antibiotics. You won’t suddenly be all better after you swallow the first pill? But that doesn’t mean the medicine isn’t working. It’s the same thing with restoring trust. It stinks to go through so much anger. But that doesn’t mean your relationship isn’t healing. In fact, a lot of healing might be happening. You just don’t feel it yet.
At some point you may quietly realize that your relationship will survive. There are no trumpet fanfares when this happens. It’s like when your headache goes away. You never know the moment when it passes. You just realized that for some time now it’s been gone. You will realize that you haven’t left in spite of all the times you thought about leaving. It’s not the same as knowing you’re going to stay. It’s just the knowledge that you’re not ending it yet. This is good and healthy moment. It’s an important step in restoring trust and healing the relationship. But it’s not necessarily a happy moment. After all, you’ve been terribly hurt and you’re still very vulnerable. And yet now you see yourself may be staying.
A lot of people hate themselves for thinking of staying like this. Perhaps they feel that if they were braver, they would choose to leave. Sometimes staying feels like being beaten down emotionally. It’s like having nowhere to go. Nothing better to do. It can sometimes feel like being trapped.
It’s painful to feel this way, but we need to be realistic. You’re going to be incredibly wary about wading back into the relationship. How else would you feel about a relationship where you’ve gotten so badly hurt? But in spite of being hurt, in spite of being wary, your heart is open to the possibility that your broken trust can heal and that your relationship can be made new.
After the anger has died down and there’s the beginning of a belief that the relationship can survive there is a danger to think that everything is OK. But this is really the beginning of the beginning. Now the work of rebuilding trust really begins. Both of you are sick of the anger. Things start to feel better and you as the betrayed partner may hide your continued mistrust. And your partner who has betrayed you decides not to see the mistrust. He’s tempted to say, “I’m really, really sorry for what I did to you. I’ll never ever do anything like that again. Can we just put all this behind us?” And then you, exhausted yourself, are tempted to say, “sure.“ And this would be a mistake. Again, the need for safety has trumped the need for trust. The anger had scared everybody and to feel safe both people are tempted to run away from anger, particularly now that the decision to stay has been made. But this won’t build trust. It will drive the mistrust underground where it never changes, never heals. Politeness in a neutral atmosphere may feel safe, but they are no substitute for trust. And so, the mistake here is doing nothing. The mistake is being so glad the anger is died down a little, so glad that the threat of leaving is less ominous, that you want to pretend that everything is OK.
When it comes to betrayal, there’s never a period when anger is 100% completely gone. No matter how many years go by there’s always a residue of anger however small. A fleeting memory of the betrayal will bring a fleeting pairing of anger. But the anger itself pretty much does come to an end after about six months.
We all need help to be able to continue putting out effort, no matter what it is we’re working on. If you can’t get to the point where you feel that the relationship can’t survive, that means you lost hope. So why would you put out effort? And, of course, if you don’t put out any effort, you’ll never restore trust in the relationship will die. But if you answer this question by having the feeling that the relationship can survive, then you’ll hang in there, and that effort you put in can buy itself restore trust.
Things can still feel terrible while the healing has begun. It’s like you have an infection and start taking antibiotics. You won’t suddenly be all better after you swallow the first pill? But that doesn’t mean the medicine isn’t working. It’s the same thing with restoring trust. It stinks to go through so much anger. But that doesn’t mean your relationship isn’t healing. In fact, a lot of healing might be happening. You just don’t feel it yet.
At some point you may quietly realize that your relationship will survive. There are no trumpet fanfares when this happens. It’s like when your headache goes away. You never know the moment when it passes. You just realized that for some time now it’s been gone. You will realize that you haven’t left in spite of all the times you thought about leaving. It’s not the same as knowing you’re going to stay. It’s just the knowledge that you’re not ending it yet. This is good and healthy moment. It’s an important step in restoring trust and healing the relationship. But it’s not necessarily a happy moment. After all, you’ve been terribly hurt and you’re still very vulnerable. And yet now you see yourself may be staying.
A lot of people hate themselves for thinking of staying like this. Perhaps they feel that if they were braver, they would choose to leave. Sometimes staying feels like being beaten down emotionally. It’s like having nowhere to go. Nothing better to do. It can sometimes feel like being trapped.
It’s painful to feel this way, but we need to be realistic. You’re going to be incredibly wary about wading back into the relationship. How else would you feel about a relationship where you’ve gotten so badly hurt? But in spite of being hurt, in spite of being wary, your heart is open to the possibility that your broken trust can heal and that your relationship can be made new.
After the anger has died down and there’s the beginning of a belief that the relationship can survive there is a danger to think that everything is OK. But this is really the beginning of the beginning. Now the work of rebuilding trust really begins. Both of you are sick of the anger. Things start to feel better and you as the betrayed partner may hide your continued mistrust. And your partner who has betrayed you decides not to see the mistrust. He’s tempted to say, “I’m really, really sorry for what I did to you. I’ll never ever do anything like that again. Can we just put all this behind us?” And then you, exhausted yourself, are tempted to say, “sure.“ And this would be a mistake. Again, the need for safety has trumped the need for trust. The anger had scared everybody and to feel safe both people are tempted to run away from anger, particularly now that the decision to stay has been made. But this won’t build trust. It will drive the mistrust underground where it never changes, never heals. Politeness in a neutral atmosphere may feel safe, but they are no substitute for trust. And so, the mistake here is doing nothing. The mistake is being so glad the anger is died down a little, so glad that the threat of leaving is less ominous, that you want to pretend that everything is OK.
Can we repair the problem that got us into trouble in the first place? Can we make the relationship better?
All you have to do is figure out what led to the betrayal and deal with it. If you can’t do that, not only will you never feel safe, you’ll never be safe. But if you can make things in your relationship better in a way that makes betrayal less likely, that makes all the difference. It’s like having water come into your house, figuring out where the leak in your roof is and then fixing that leak. Then you can both feel safe and be safe. And trust can come alive again.
Real solutions, real safety, real trust
It’s not your fault that you were betrayed. However, recovering from a betrayal crisis must involve looking at the entire relationship. This process can’t be done until things calm down emotionally. You’ll need to be in a place where you can have normal conversations about normal things. A place where you are at least beginning to feel that the other person does see how difficult this has been for you.
Say something like this:
“I’d like to prevent this from ever happening again. This has nothing to do with our blaming each other. No blame OK? But let’s see if we can figure out if there isn’t something about you and about me that led to this happening. Please tell me if there’s anything I did that somehow led to you’re doing what you did. And then let’s talk a bit to see if there’s anything I can help you with so you don’t ever have to do anything like that again.“
This is a problem-identifying and problem-solving conversation. Blame is a fundamental mistake people make in trying to find forgiveness and restore trust. Whenever there’s been a betrayal there are problems on both sides and both people need to take responsibility for the part they played.
If you can come together in the spirit of understanding that you both contributed to what happened and there are things you both need to work on to repair the relationship, they you will heal the problems in your relationship and, ultimately, be in a position to restore trust.
Each of you try to reflect on your own role in the problems in the relationship. If you’re not sure you invite your partner to help you understand your role. This is done in the spirit of collaboration and curiosity and not blame. And you certainly don’t want to compare his part was bigger.
You need to accept the following:
Something bad happened and one of you betrayed the other. There are many possible explanations for what happened. But a very useful explanation is that there were things you needed from each other that you weren’t getting that led to what happened. If you’d gotten those things, the betrayal would’ve been less likely to happen. But if you can find a way to give each other those things now, a similar betrayal will be less likely to happen in the future. If you can’t find a way to give each other what you need – – to even listen to each other talk about what you need – – and you should probably look at whether it even makes sense for the two of you to be together.
Top six solutions that prevent betrayal
All you have to do is figure out what led to the betrayal and deal with it. If you can’t do that, not only will you never feel safe, you’ll never be safe. But if you can make things in your relationship better in a way that makes betrayal less likely, that makes all the difference. It’s like having water come into your house, figuring out where the leak in your roof is and then fixing that leak. Then you can both feel safe and be safe. And trust can come alive again.
Real solutions, real safety, real trust
It’s not your fault that you were betrayed. However, recovering from a betrayal crisis must involve looking at the entire relationship. This process can’t be done until things calm down emotionally. You’ll need to be in a place where you can have normal conversations about normal things. A place where you are at least beginning to feel that the other person does see how difficult this has been for you.
Say something like this:
“I’d like to prevent this from ever happening again. This has nothing to do with our blaming each other. No blame OK? But let’s see if we can figure out if there isn’t something about you and about me that led to this happening. Please tell me if there’s anything I did that somehow led to you’re doing what you did. And then let’s talk a bit to see if there’s anything I can help you with so you don’t ever have to do anything like that again.“
This is a problem-identifying and problem-solving conversation. Blame is a fundamental mistake people make in trying to find forgiveness and restore trust. Whenever there’s been a betrayal there are problems on both sides and both people need to take responsibility for the part they played.
If you can come together in the spirit of understanding that you both contributed to what happened and there are things you both need to work on to repair the relationship, they you will heal the problems in your relationship and, ultimately, be in a position to restore trust.
Each of you try to reflect on your own role in the problems in the relationship. If you’re not sure you invite your partner to help you understand your role. This is done in the spirit of collaboration and curiosity and not blame. And you certainly don’t want to compare his part was bigger.
You need to accept the following:
- You will say things that seem perfectly clear to you and yet the other person will not understand.
- You’ll ask for something that seems perfectly reasonable to you and yet the other person will raise difficulties about providing it.
- You will start out from a very simple place and yet before you know it things will get incredibly tangled up.
- You’ll describe something that seems quite obviously and yet the other person will astound you by saying you’re totally wrong.
Something bad happened and one of you betrayed the other. There are many possible explanations for what happened. But a very useful explanation is that there were things you needed from each other that you weren’t getting that led to what happened. If you’d gotten those things, the betrayal would’ve been less likely to happen. But if you can find a way to give each other those things now, a similar betrayal will be less likely to happen in the future. If you can’t find a way to give each other what you need – – to even listen to each other talk about what you need – – and you should probably look at whether it even makes sense for the two of you to be together.
Top six solutions that prevent betrayal
- Learn to listen
- Listening means hearing. And you show you’ve heard by reflecting back what you’ve heard. That means doing anything from repeating the same words to asking questions to show you were paying attention to offering solutions to show that you get with the other person was saying.
- Make each other feel the other matters.
- This is what a relationship is: two people signaling that they matter to each other in some special way. If I don’t make you feel that you matter to me that just loosens the bond between us
- Learn how to make decisions together
- In far too many relationships what you do is this: one of you just decides on your own that it’s easier to go along with the other person and actually work out a good solution that makes both of you happy. Otherwise you decide by not deciding. You just accommodate.
- Don’t belittle
- All anyone ever wants to be treated as if they’re not stupid, not ignorant, not crazy and, not unimportant
- Don’t be controlling
- We hate being controlled and do everything we can to resist it. The more you try to control me, the more likely it is that I’m going to do something to break out of the bounds you’ve set, whether I do it accidentally or deliberately. The difficulty is when you tell someone to stop being controlling it’s like telling them to stop having their needs. If your needs are going to be experience by the other person has control, doesn’t mean you have to throw your needs overboard. Just means you have to have a conversation. So it becomes a kind of negotiation
Can I forgive him?
Forgiveness is a decision that you won’t let what the other person did stand between the two of you anymore.
People will do things to reconnect to what was good in the relationship at every point in the trust restoring process. Even at the very beginning the good things may be hard to access while you do still not trust each other. But the fact that you can retrieve some good things gives you hope the trust building makes sense. When the two of you try to reconnect what’s been good, without realizing it you’ll find it takes you a long way toward rebuilding trust. You’ll have renewed that feeling that it makes sense to be in this relationship, and if it makes sense to be in this relationship, you’re less likely do something to undermine it.
When you start connecting to the good stuff in the relationship it is quite common for the unfaithful partner to think that you have moved on and things are back to normal. But for you, the betrayed partner, you feel vulnerable and don’t want your partner to lose sight of the fact that this was a big deal and things are not quite okay yet.
He will want the good times to be permanent so as not to feel the shame from the pain that he has caused you. And you will want him to never forget that pain in order to prevent it from happening again.
Both points of you can fully coexist. If you can enjoy being together you should enjoy being together if enjoying being together makes you suddenly feel vulnerable because you start thinking we’re forgetting to soon that’s OK too.
The forgiveness that seemed impossible just happens because the groundwork has been laid. The anger has come out. You’ve learned that the other person really cares. You’ve discovered good things in each other again. When the feelings of anger and resentment get smaller it will be easier to decide that you will no longer let those feelings stand between you.
Sometimes the good things that have crept back into the relationship make it seem silly not to forgive. If you’re laughing together, enjoying each other’s company, perhaps making love, haven’t you already forgiven? In this case it’s less of a decision and more of an acknowledgment that forgiveness already exists.
Forgiveness is a decision that you won’t let what the other person did stand between the two of you anymore.
People will do things to reconnect to what was good in the relationship at every point in the trust restoring process. Even at the very beginning the good things may be hard to access while you do still not trust each other. But the fact that you can retrieve some good things gives you hope the trust building makes sense. When the two of you try to reconnect what’s been good, without realizing it you’ll find it takes you a long way toward rebuilding trust. You’ll have renewed that feeling that it makes sense to be in this relationship, and if it makes sense to be in this relationship, you’re less likely do something to undermine it.
When you start connecting to the good stuff in the relationship it is quite common for the unfaithful partner to think that you have moved on and things are back to normal. But for you, the betrayed partner, you feel vulnerable and don’t want your partner to lose sight of the fact that this was a big deal and things are not quite okay yet.
He will want the good times to be permanent so as not to feel the shame from the pain that he has caused you. And you will want him to never forget that pain in order to prevent it from happening again.
Both points of you can fully coexist. If you can enjoy being together you should enjoy being together if enjoying being together makes you suddenly feel vulnerable because you start thinking we’re forgetting to soon that’s OK too.
The forgiveness that seemed impossible just happens because the groundwork has been laid. The anger has come out. You’ve learned that the other person really cares. You’ve discovered good things in each other again. When the feelings of anger and resentment get smaller it will be easier to decide that you will no longer let those feelings stand between you.
Sometimes the good things that have crept back into the relationship make it seem silly not to forgive. If you’re laughing together, enjoying each other’s company, perhaps making love, haven’t you already forgiven? In this case it’s less of a decision and more of an acknowledgment that forgiveness already exists.