BETRAYAL

I guess many of you have experienced a betrayal of any kind in your lifetime. It could come from strangers, co-workers, friends, and even closest ones in the family. So let us try to analyze the actual subject, as it is reaching an epidemic in Mongolian society.

What is betrayal?

Theoretically, there is no fixed definition of betrayal. There are several attempts to define it, such as:

“Betrayal, as a form of deception or dismissal of prior presumptions, is the breaking or violation of a presumptive social contract (trust, or confidence) that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals, between organizations or between individuals and organizations. Often betrayal is the act of supporting a rival group, or it is a complete break from previously decided upon or presumed norms by one party from the others.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayal)

In plain words, it is one’s action that causes mistrust, hatred, and/or action that leads to negative impacts in one’s life. Most common forms of betrayal in everyday lives are betrayal of love, infidelity at the workplace, and betrayal of trust among family members and friends.

How do you react when your closest ones deceive you?

By theory, we commonly go through several emotions:

1. When we learn about infidelity, the first thing that comes to our minds is revenge.
2. Next, some of us try to find out about the cause and find some justification to the actions
3. When we cannot find rationalization that is sufficient, we start to despise the betrayer
4. On the next step we generalize our experience and start to be biased towards others
5. Sometimes, we even do not trust our own judgments anymore, as we perceive the occurrence of infidelity to be our fault
6. Thus, at the final stage we try to protect ourselves from future occurrences of betrayal by eliminating causes of such matter (women do not trust men, having a suspicion about co-workers, etc.)

What are the motivations of betrayal?

An array of motivations could be indicated. In love relationships, it could be loss of interest in other leading to having affairs. In the office environment, sometimes too much ambition could lead someone to do the treachery against others. In family, as taking revenge you could betray your loved ones. No matter of the behind motivations, betrayal is immoral and disgusting act.

What experience do you gain from such incidents?

In some ways, you gain negative experience by not trusting people around you. In minority of incidents, we could gain eye-opening skills of identifying falseness. No matter of motivation, condition, process of our emotions, the best thing we could do is to forget and go on with our lives. Moreover, remember that we are not the only victim of such immoral actions, and there are millions of others, who suffer from such trauma.

Conclusion: One day I might become a betrayer and hate myself to guts or become once again the victim of infidelity and cry my eyes out. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, we only hope for better tomorrow. So, I’ll be prepared to battle out all the obstacles, in whatever form it might come. Peace!

Note: I have found very interesting article about infidelity in love life: having an affair.

BEYOND BETRAYAL: LIFE AFTER INFIDELITY (By Frank Pittman)

If you interested, please read it at http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=19930501-000027&page=1