Betrayal (Part 2)

Author: Rebecca Pena Hikal

Betrayal (Part 2)

Betrayal Part 2

for every betrayer | Islamic quotes, Muslim quotes, Quran quotes

What Happens When We Are the Betrayer? 

The other day we discussed some of the things that we should do in the event someone close to us betrays us. However, what happens when we are the betrayer? What happens when we are the ones who have in fact hurt someone close to us? Whether it be a spouse, family member or good friend, what would we do if we found ourselves in this position? It seems a little different when we are on this side of the fence. 

If you’ve betrayed someone, it’s imperative that you learn how to understand the patterns and triggers that bring you to your worst impulses. Stop hurting the people you love and start getting honest with yourself and the world, in order to create a future you can actually be proud of. You’ll never be happy until you learn how to trust in yourself and others, but you have to make a commitment and put in the work to get there.

What is Betrayal?

At its most basic level, betrayal occurs when we take advantage of the trust and confidence of others. We can betray the trust of our friends, our family members, our co-workers, our spouses and our children. Betrayal can take place in a number of different ways, and in any interpersonal relationship where two or more parties find themselves sharing secrets, confidences or a certain level of mutual respect of trust.

Part of avoiding betrayal is knowing what betrayal looks like, but it can take place on a number of different levels, in a number of different ways. If you’ve betrayed someone’s trust, the first step in getting back is not only knowing what betrayal is; it’s also about learning how to spot betrayals before you fall into their traps. There are a number of different ways in which we can betray the ones we love, and not all of them are as cut-and-dry as cheating on a spouse. 

Different Types of Betrayal

When we think of betrayal, we often think of marital affairs or long term friendships that come to a drastic end. Betrayal isn’t always that simple though, and it isn’t always that black-and-white. Sometimes, we betray the people we care about most without ever realizing what we’ve done.

Emotional Affairs

Emotional affairs are betrayals that take place without sexual infidelity. These affairs can be both brief or long term, but they are especially damaging because of their complex nature. While a physical infidelity is generally easy to end (with limited attachment), an emotional affair is a deep one, and harder to walk away from than something that’s strictly physical.Relationships are all about giving and taking equally, with a flow that keeps us in check while keeping us in sync with our loved ones. Betraying that give and take isn’t just about bringing a third party into the relationship. It can also be about putting yourself and your needs (selfishly) before your partner’s. When you lose sight of your compassionate love and develop a “me, me, me” mentality — you’ve betrayed your loved one and what you once promised them, whether you realize it or not.When we truly love someone or care about them, we don’t expect them to change; we love them regardless of their flaws. Pressuring someone to change, or bullying them into doing things in a more convenient way for you is toxic. More than that, it’s a betrayal of the common trust that friends and partners should share between one another: the confidence of knowing that you can be yourself, no matter what.

Not Being Completely Honest

Committing an act of betrayal never feels good. Not for long, anyway. For that reason, many who engage in a betrayal of trust engage in withholding information, as a means of justifying their behavior. Withholding information from your friend or spouse is the same as lying, and the consequences and effects are just as damaging (if not more so). Lying is the age-old standard when it comes to betrayal, and it is the act that we engage in most often when it comes to stabbing the people we care about in the back. Telling a lie is the most basic violation of basic human decency, and it’s one of the most damaging and painful things we can to our loved ones and relationships — no matter how we choose to look at it.

Sticking Up For Our Loved Ones

Our friendships and our romantic relationships are all about teamwork, and that means sticking up for one another when the going gets tough. If you can’t stick up for your friends or loved ones when they need you, then you’re betraying their trust and ultimately, their confidence in you altogether. You have to take a stand for the people you love, and you have to make sure their boundaries are as honored as you’d honor your own.

Taking Advantage of Our Loved Ones

Every partnership or friendship comes with the understanding that you will both respect the boundaries of the other person. When you stop respecting those boundaries and start taking advantage of your friend or love, you’re betraying their trust in your and the mutual sense of respect you both should share for one another.

Why Do We Betray the People That We Love

Betraying the trust of those we claim to care for is a complex concept. While sometimes betrayal occurs on the back of a false friendship, most betrayals occur between individuals that actually care deeply for one another. Why? Why do we hurt the people that we’re supposed to care for? Well, there’s a number of reasons and some are more surprising than others. 

Self Sabotage

 There’s no denying the fact that we commonly lie to and betray people that we actually care for. While this might seem self-defeating (and it is) it’s also an extremely common form of self-sabotage that occurs when one person is struggling from low-self esteem. Cheating, lying and deceiving are some of the oldest forms of self-sabotage in the book, but it takes some inner-reflection and honesty to accept that. 

Unresolved Grief/ Loss of Identity

Grief is a normal and natural reaction to loss or change of any kind. It is not pathological and it is not a personality defect. It does not occur only when we lose a spouse, a child or a parent and it most definitely does not make us weak or less worthy for experiencing it. Grief occurs in a number of ways, and if you don’t resolve it, you’ll quickly find yourself looking for self-destructive outlets to alleviate your pain. When we lose our sense of self, we start to look for it in strange and unexpected places. We can lose critical pieces of our core identity when we go through major life events like death, marriage or even the loss of a career. These major upheavals cause shifts in our personalities and the way we see ourselves, and we reach blindly into the world in search of something that can reconnect us with our meaning again.

How Can We Move On

Most articles and ideas are meant to help the victims of betrayal to move on. It can be difficult to rebuild after you’ve betrayed the trust of someone you care about. Learning how to build open and meaningful relationships is hard, but it’s even harder to rebuild them after betrayal.Here are some tips that may help:

1. Open up

The first step in regaining the trust of anyone we’ve violated is opening up to them with the entirety of our truth. Whether we’ve snooped through our best friend’s things or committed the most heinous of acts behind our spouse’s back, if we want to get back on the right track, we have to start by opening up and it is better if we are able to do this before we get caught.

2. Make a commitment to be Honest from here on out

Once everything is out in the open, start dealing with it by committing to an honest and open future. It’s going to take time to prove yourself again, but that’s what an honest commitment is all about; doing a little each day to prove that the relationship is a beneficial one. Make a commitment to be honest with the person that you’ve hurt and commit to a more honest channel of communication in the future, even if those truths are hard to speak and even harder to swallow. We can generate more honesty in our lives by being ready to hear the truth ourselves. Be patient, and be open with your feelings as they’re happening, rather than waiting for them to fester in the darkness. Be honest with your needs as much as you’re honest about your emotions, and remember that you’re not a mindreader nor a body language expert. Guessing games equal disappointment every time, so be honest about what you need out of your commitment to be honest. 

3. Answer the questions

When we’re confronted with our betrayal, it can be hard to hear it let alone hear all of the pain that we’ve caused as a result of our poor choices and behaviors. The problem is, although we have hurt someone, we don’t get to choose how they resolve that pain. If you’ve hurt someone and they have questions, answer them, and don’t shy away from the truth. Part of being in a relationship whether it be a friendship, romantic relationship or work partnership, is having a mutual and understood level of trust. It also means owning up and helping our friends resolve their grief; especially when we’re the cause. Even if you think the question is stupid or repetitive, answer it, and don’t get sharp and don’t shift the blame. Rebuilding starts with answers, and you’re the only one who can give them.

4. Stop invalidating the feelings of others

One of the most toxic behaviors patterns of those who betray the people around them is their constant invalidation of the feelings of those people. In order to live more comfortably with their own guilt, betrayers often dispute and downplay the feelings of those around them. When their partner starts to question their behavior, they’ll change the topic or jump and flip things around, absolving their guilt and turning the conversation into something else entirely. You don’t have to agree with what your friend, spouse or partner says. You don’t even have to entertain it as a reality, but you do have to listen to it, and you do have to give them time to express the way they are feeling, as well as the needs they might have. 

5. Be Patient

Patience is key when it comes to healing not only our relationships with others, but also our relationships with ourselves. Coming back from betrayal is a process, for you and the person that you’ve hurt. Therefore, you have to be patient and understand that it’s going to take time for both of you, and not everything is going to be as smooth as you might like. Understand that regaining trust might take longer than you think. Understand that you may never regain that trust at all. Apologies are rarely the end of a matter, rather, they’re just a starting place. Be patient with yourself on your journey toward honesty, and be patient with the injured party too. It took time to get you into this mess, and it will take time to get you out. None of us is perfect, but all of us can be better…when we make the conscious decision to be.

6. Stop Making Excuses and Start Taking Responsibility

We use excuses to rationalize our actions and justify the poor choices that we have made.The problem is, however, that these rationalizations and excuses make it impossible for us to tap into true healing or recovery from these poor choices.Taking responsibility starts with accepting our personal role in the way things happen around us, and it ends with the realization that you alone are responsible for the way you react to the stressors and obstacles that life chooses to throw your way. Stop blaming others for the poor life choices you make. The only person who can choose to betray the trust of your loved ones is you.

7. Focus on recovery, rather than results

When we’re trying to fix something, we want to see instant results. But that’s not how recovery works. Coming back from living a life full of betrayal and deceit isn’t easy, but it is possible with time. If we want to become better people and we want to stop lying to the people around us, we have to keep focused on our journey back to honesty, rather than the direction we’re moving in. A breach in integrity is a hard thing to overcome. It’s a humbling experience and one that has lots of ups and downs, despite our desperate efforts to force things back to normal. Betrayal is a complex subject, and a complex and damaging event from which we have to find healing. Losing the trust of our friends, family and loved ones can be one of the most painful experiences we can endure, but it’s up to us to fix the wrongs we’ve created and find our way back to healthy and balanced relationships. That’s a journey that takes time. If we’ve betrayed someone we care for, we can’t invalidate their emotions or demean their expression of emotion. We need to take some time to understand what we’ve done and why we did it, and communicate that with our loved one when we’re ready (but before you get caught). Commit to an honest future, answer their questions and start taking responsibility for the pain that we’ve caused. Though we may not mean to injure those we love with our behavior, we do, and we don’t get to choose how they heal and find their resolutions. Focus on your recovery and have patience with the process. This pain wasn’t caused overnight and it won’t heal overnight either. Give yourself the time and space you both need to heal, so you can find a path to a better tomorrow.

May Allah heal all of our broken relationships, and make them stronger. InshaAllah. May we all realize any wrongs that we have done and have the patience to contribute to any healing. Ameen 

Sister Rebecca is a SAHM living in Houston Texas. Married for 13 years with two children, and a revert since 2014,  her hobbies include cooking, reading, and spending time with family.

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