Everyday Canvas

On Betrayal

Prompt: What is betrayal to you? How many faces does it have? Who is to blame, the betrayed or the betrayer?

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A betrayal is a violation. It means the betrayer has violated a written, oral, or presumed confidence, contract, or trust. Its worst result is the psychological conflict, distrust, and cooling of relationships or negative retaliation.

Betrayal takes many forms. At times, it means supporting a rival or a rival group. It may also mean breaking a social contract, airing a secret, wrongful accusation, etc.

It is not only the people who betray one another but also the institutions. When a government does secret illegitimate acts behind its people, it is the worst form of betrayal.

There is a kind of betrayal, which may be innocent. It is the kind when a person unknowingly or forgetfully discloses a secret without any intention of wrongdoing. Sometimes, we even do this to ourselves. For example, we may decide not to show anger and hold our tongues in certain situations, but then, when such a situation arises, we cannot help ourselves. Not trusting oneself has to be the most hurtful result of such a betrayal.

More often than not, the betrayed learns of the betrayal much later than the action of it or, because it feels too painful, he decides to ignore the situation or acts as if it didn’t happen.

As to the question of blame, I guess it goes both ways. If someone is betraying our confidence many times over and we go on spilling our secrets to them, then we are to blame for placing our trust in the wrong person. If we’ve betrayed someone’s confidence due to forgetting what they told us was a secret, we can be gentle and compassionate to ourselves for such an unintentional mistake, and save ourselves extra stress and inner alienation.

To wrap it up, our examination of a betrayal depends on its size. For lesser betrayals, nobody is perfect. Maybe the betrayer is just desperate, looking for understanding, and wants to seem knowledgeable by throwing other people’s secrets into the open. Surely, we can loosen up more because things will go wrong sometimes. After all, it is the big picture and the long view of our relationships that matter the most.