Emotional Betrayal
Our relationships can make or mar our confidence through the ways we relay our feelings, accept other’s feelings, or getting our feelings accepted. It’s all about feelings. And feelings comprise of love, trust, happiness, hate, fear, anger, surprise, anything you can feel. Feelings embody their emotions which are non-characterized.
In a safe and healthy relationship, we tend to have the good type of emotions and characterize their good feelings. An example would be love — which is characterized by respect, positivity, togetherness, and commitment. And vice-versa for an unhealthy relationship.
Since emotions are formed based on the type of relationship we are in, it is safe to say they are pliable.
But what does it mean when these emotions and feelings get betrayed in a relationship? What are their signs and how do you deal with them?
Betrayal was better defined in this article.
However in my own words, and based on my recent experience with betrayal, I’d define simply it as the opposite of trust. Betrayal connotes the negative aspects to all the positive signs in a healthy relationship and it can turn it sour in a twinkle of an eye.
Relationships entail a myriad of traits and behavior to keep them flourished. Such as trust, good communication, honesty, respect, sound mind, commitment, togetherness, always acting in unison with everything — decision-making, action-taking, you name it.
Emotional betrayal is turning against somebody you’re involved with by intentionally abusing or misusing many of their emotions they entrusted you with. Emotions could be in form of reliance, vulnerability, shared secrets, fear, dependability, even their weaknesses.
A betrayer attempts to use all or some of what they know about you or your relationship with them against you as opposed to for you. They come for you, attack you, and leave you standing alone even while still with them via your emotions.
Effects of emotional betrayal
Trust forms the foundation of any relationship. If there’s no trust, there can’t be love or unison between the people involved. According to the psychological analysis from the article above, betrayal is the vicious sword that not only drives trust apart but touches other forms of emotions adversely. It can lead to anger as opposed to great communication. It can affect our self-esteem as opposed to enhancing it. Betrayal can lead to unexpected turns that give rise to shock and surprise hence, contaminating the mind almost permanently — as coined by Rachman and Behav in the article.
Other effects of betrayal include anxiety disorders, post-traumatic shock disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders. And they all make sense when you sit down to dissect how the betrayer perpetrates the soul of the betrayed.
I recently encountered emotional betrayal where the other party practically used every emotion I built and entrusted him with against me. All my fears were thrown back to my face to relive, reliance on him for certain things was misconstrued for lack of independence, my meekness was demonstrated as weakness, my rawness was converted to lack of self-love. And to worsen it all, dishonesty and insults were not exempted. In essence, all the emotions I built for this relationship were betrayed to make me feel anger, resentment, excessive anxiousness, and loneliness.
This is how betrayal changes the course of things in relationships. But there can be hope.
It can occur in a healthy relationship unintentionally or in an unhealthy one, intentionally.
What do you do when you’ve been betrayed in your relationship?
When you’ve sensed or experienced betrayal in your relationship, the first thing to do is to name it what it is — emotional betrayal. After you’ve done that, make a list of emotions you think have been betrayed and evaluate how it has affected YOU first and then your relationship. Once you have done this and analyzed your experience with the facts, discuss it with your partner. Let them know they have hurt you and how they have hurt you. Don’t leave anything untouched because that could still lead back to resentment from lack of communication. Also, don’t leave room for any arguments or disagreements, because what you feel is valid no matter what the other party involved is saying. You cannot unfeel how you already felt. It’s left for them to listen, understand and you both discuss the way forward. If the relationship is right for you, it always leads to a happy ending. However, unfortunately, emotional betrayal can surmount the end of a relationship — which is a valid reason too. So, make up your mind, take all the time you need to recollect your thoughts, and analyze your facts before pushing forward to communicating them. So that you don’t also become a victim of gaslighting along the way.
Emotional betrayal is a huge dealbreaker in relationships. Relationships with your parents, siblings, partner, colleagues, friends, any relationship. It is paramount that we cultivate a strong sense of self and self-awareness to enable us to be aware of certain emotions we feel and expect, and feelings that we display while in a relationship. Self-awareness would most importantly help us pinpoint the good and nuanced types of emotions and in determining when the line has been crossed.
When we lack this, it becomes hard to understand why we suffer from the after-effects of emotional betrayal, which can send us on a further emotional roller coaster down-spiral loop of more negative emotions and display of feelings.
On the other hand, being aware of the signs of emotional betrayer can help you avert getting into that relationship in the first place. Signs like dishonesty, disrespect, spilling your secrets however little, spilling others' secrets, leaving you stranded with no explanations, both physically and emotionally, are what you should look out for.
Be warned to avert getting betrayed and alone even while in a relationship. For it sucks!
