Betrayal!
Betrayal the very word is emotive. For me it conjures up images of shady characters, devious motives and metaphorical knives plunged into backs. For most of us at least once in our lives we have felt betrayed by someone we trust.
The key element in betrayal I believe is that we trust someone to act in a certain way, they are trustworthy because we can rely on them acting with our best interests at heart. It is this belief that leaves up exposed. For me, there is one experience in particular when I felt at the time I was utterly betrayed.
I remember I got a call from my manager and he told me that I needed to go home to the flat that I shared with four other friends who were also colleagues of mine. I didn’t question why my boss would be ringing me. I was a loyal and hardworking employee who believed that the organization I worked for would always look after me and reward me for my dedication and work effort.
I jumped in my car headed back to the flat, as I walked through the door I was met by Police who ushered me into the living room, isolated me from my other flatmates and began questioning me about what I knew about one of my flatmate's activities.
I just sat on the couch a swirl of emotions rolling around in my head, confusion, anger, shame and fear. At the same time as I was being questioned colleagues that I worked with at this organization were searching our flat for evidence of wrongdoing. I felt violated that people I had had lunch with the week before were now rifling through my belongings and were unable or unwilling to even look me in the eye as they did it. Most of all I felt like a criminal even though I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, I just felt guilty. Over the course of several hours of searching by my colleagues and questioning from the Police it became apparent that my flatmate had been stealing from work, something he admitted to straight away in an attempt to try and lessen the blow on the rest of us he later told me.
The result of this event were criminal charges and dismissal for my friend and a lengthy workplace investigation for the rest of us. In total I spent about 9 months on paid suspension, people I had called friends no longer spoke to me, I was moved from a role I loved to a role I hated and I developed a massive chip on my shoulder that caused me to wage a cold war against my employer. Eventually feeling so aggrieved, disillusioned and betrayed I quit my job as I could no longer stand to go into work.
It wasn’t till I had moved on and given myself some distance from the whole event that I was able to reflect on what had happened and the betrayal I felt I had suffered at the hands of organization I had worked for. What I found really interesting looking back was the fact that I didn’t feel that my friend had betrayed me, I thought he was an idiot for doing what he did but I knew deep down he hadn’t meant to inflict suffering on me or the other flatties. Why is this story relevant to dealing with betrayal you might be asking? For me, it highlights a fundamental flaw in my thinking and one that I think many people suffer from. I also believe it’s the reason I was so angry, at the organization I worked for but not my friend.
That idea is that people/organizations will behave in a way that I expect them to and that I can predict behaviour based on my expectations. I believed as a loyal, hardworking employee I would be protected and supported at all times by my employer. Based on my knowledge of my friend it didn’t come as a major surprise he had been stealing from work my expectations of him were more in line with the behaviours he displayed. I placed my trust in both parties, one behaved contrary to my expectations and I felt betrayed the other not so much and all I felt was a little bit of anger and then apathy. The conclusion I drew from this is that placing your trust in others is the fundamental reason we feel betrayed as it is impossible to predict others actions. I know some will point out that people can build up fairly reliable patterns of behaviour that give us evidence to base our expectations on which is true. However, I have lost count of the times when someone around me has surprised me with a certain behaviour or action that was totally out of character from their past behaviours. I think the difference in these situations, the reason that I didn’t feel betrayed as I did in the example above was that none of these had a negative impact on me it was just people around me behaving in unexpected ways.
If this is going to help you overcome the feeling of betrayal I need to clarify my current thinking so you can understand how to apply my suggestions:
After much reflection, I now believe that the feeling of betrayal has nothing to do with the other person’s actions. It’s simply whether the outcome of their unexpected behaviour has a consequence I perceive as harmful and is outside of my normal expectations for that person.
People’s behaviour no longer surprises me. If I don’t try and predict what they will do then I don’t burden myself with expectations.
I trust myself to deal with the behaviours others demonstrate regardless of what they may be.
You might have got the notion that I am suggesting that we shouldn’t trust people and in a way, I am. Instead of expecting people to behave in a certain way I now hope they do, but I don’t time travel, I give them room to behave in whatever way they will and focus on strengthening myself to deal with it. In order to support them as much as I can, I am as honest as I can be about the way I hope they will act around and towards me but I know that it is their choice.
I do believe that in general humanity is not out to harm each other. If you take out psychopaths, the rest of us have some level of empathy for each other. What I accept though is that there is a certain level of self-interest in all of us. This allows us to act in ways that hurt other people even if we wish it didn’t. This means when a guy cheats on his girlfriend but says he never meant to hurt her I believe it. He's still being a selfish prick acting in his own interests but not with hurtful intent. If you accept the notion that whilst people are self-interested they are in general not deliberately hurtful it becomes easier to accept their behaviours regardless of what they are. I know for a fact as I have done it myself, sometimes we act believing what we are doing is actually the best thing for a person even though we know it will cause them to feel hurt, a cruel to be kind type situation.
In summary, if you can accept the following then I know you will grow your ability to deal with the feeling of betrayal:
Trusting yourself is more important than trusting others.
If you choose to place the burden of your expectations of others behaviour then you are doing yourself and them an injustice that is eventually doomed to failure.
Others actions are often motivated by some form of self-interest that has nothing to actually do with you and is not malicious in intent.
How we perceive and respond to others behaviour is our own responsibility to manage.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe that by applying the above you will become immune to the feeling of being betrayed. Rather I hope that you will be able to move on much quicker than I was able to do so and not invest so much time and effort into the feeling. If you have stories or tips on how you have managed a situation where you felt betrayed I would love to hear about it.
If you a question on a current situation your in feel free to contact me and maybe I can help.
