I’m a strong woman. I’ve lived through complete humiliation in my high school days, survived a rebellion stage that exposed me to the worst qualities in mankind; I’ve been subjected to physical and mental abuse, forced to do things against my will, and coerced into keeping secrets that would have saved me years of heartache had I shared them with the right people. I’ve also been the bad guy. I mistook a childhood fantasy — falling in love with a long lost friend — for real, life-altering, marriage-worthy romance. When reality struck, I was forced to call off an engagement, costing me and my family two best friends (the ex and my best girlfriend), thousands of dollars in deposits, and a stained reputation.

The point is that I am no stranger to troubled times. I’ve survived in stages. I’ve gone through various stages to cope: rebounds, bitterness, unavailability, altered reality, depression, religion, and even solipsism. And although I’ve become a master at hastily moving on, I’ve failed miserably at the coping part.

What I do, in lieu of coping, is put on a false front of appearing to be okay. I try so hard, for appearances sake, to be myself that I forget to deal with the pain appropriately. So even though I move on quickly, I never quite let go of the hurt, which continues to haunt me until it catches up to me.

Now that I’m a little older and hopefully wiser, I’m still struggling with how to cope with betrayal. Betrayal gets me every time. I’m a trusting person. I want to believe that there is good in everyone. I want to believe that people aren’t sick enough to make a mockery out of me for no reason other than the fun of it — that just seems too cruel to fathom. Betrayal still happens despite my efforts to believe otherwise, and when it does I always reflect on the how and the why. Here are the trends I’ve noticed.

Why Betrayal Happens

In my experiences there really isn’t one reason why someone chooses to betray another, but the reasons can usually be broken down to one core idea — an individual stands to gain from the betrayal. Whether the gain is proof of power, improvement in social status, financial gain, personal satisfaction, avoiding exposure/cover-up of other lies, or anything else, betrayal happens because one person is put in a situation where choosing to sacrifice a level of trust with another person becomes less important than doing something that they can profit by.

How Betrayal Happens

Secrets and lies. Those who choose to be betrayers secretly sign their name to the book of liars. Whether the betrayal is well planned, or a circumstance of other shady behaviors, betrayal cannot exist without secrets and lies that beget other secrets and lies. More often than not the one who is being betrayed will see hints of what is happening, and their trust in the friend and secret betrayer is put into question. If you’ve ever been confronted with variations of the truth from multiple parties, you can rest assured that someone or some group of people are in the process of betraying you. If you’re anything like me, however, you choose to believe the lies, and the lies that are concocted to cover the other lies, because it’s easier than confronting the truth.

How to Cope

So what do you do when you’ve discovered that people you’ve trusted have betrayed you? How do you go about healing properly? How do you avoid becoming one of those bitter and angry people that doesn’t trust anyone? How do you go about forgiving? As I said above, betrayal always gets me. I try so hard to recover, so hard to forgive, so hard to avoid becoming cynical, but then another person comes along and betrays my trust yet again; I’m left feeling even more foolish than the last time and finding it a cliff to climb to reach the pinnacle of forgiveness. What’s the right answer?

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