Areas of Focus
Betrayal
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“We must concede that adultery cannot be a workable answer, for no one can be its victim and not feel forever cut to the core. A single meaningless adventure truly does have a recurring habit of ending everything. It’s impossible for the victims of adultery to appreciate what might actually have been going through a partner’s mind during the ‘betrayal’, when they lay entwined with a stranger for a few hours. We can hear their defence as often as we like, but we’ll be sure of one thing in our hearts: that they were hell-bent on humiliating us and that every ounce of their love has evaporated, along with their status as trustworthy humans. To insist on any other conclusion is like arguing against a tide.”
Betrayal need not involve sexual infidelity; emotional affairs also count. Acts of betrayal produce difficult feelings in both parties. The betrayed typically experiences anger and confusion. The betrayer may feel guilt and shame, though not always.
Repair requires genuine remorse, atonement, and behaviour change from the betrayer. Forgiveness, however, is unlikely to come easily, and the slowness of it can elicit anger and defensiveness from the betrayer in turn. A central question is whether the betrayal reflects a dysfunction in the relationship or something in the betrayer's psychological make-up.
Remaining in a relationship marked by repeated betrayals may indicate “betrayal blindness”, a largely unconscious defence that uses rationalisation and denial to preserve the safety and connection the relationship still provides. An affair may be excused because "it didn't really mean anything." Betrayal blindness is the refusal to see fully what is there to be seen.
For the betrayed, therapy addresses the loss of trust, the disturbance to one's sense of reality, and the longer task of deciding whether and how to remain in the relationship. For the betrayer, therapy examines what the betrayal expressed about the relationship, about the self, and about what could not be brought into the open by other means. Without that examination, behaviour change tends not to hold.
References
Freyd, J., & Birrell, P. (2013). Blind to betrayal: Why we fool ourselves we aren’t being fooled. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Rusbult, C., Olsen, N., Davis, J., & Hannon, P. (2004). Commitment and relationship maintenance mechanisms. In H. Reis & C. Rusbult (Eds.), Close relationships: Key readings. New York: Taylor & Francis.