You Have Every Right to Outrage
“When it comes to abrupt endings related to love, the experience is very similar to being the victim of a blunt force trauma. The symptoms are the same, and your functioning drops to the level of someone who needs to be hospitalized and treated for injuries.”—Dr. Andra Brosh, The Huffington Post
Several years ago my long-time partner left me shortly before our wedding. Blindsided, I went reeling from the loss, but primarily from the deceptions and betrayal of trust involved. For a long time afterwards, I was in shock and did not know it.
During those dark days of bewilderment—and what turned out to be PTSD—I felt lost and alone. Nothing made sense anymore. The unbelievable pain, outrage, shame, humiliation, hyper-vigilance, flash-backs, and obsessing blew my world apart. Mostly, I could not figure out why I could not pull myself out of it. What was going on?
My well-meaning friends and family were not much help either. Most tended to dismiss and downplay what had happened. Not only that, it was pretty much assumed I must be implicated in my ongoing distress. How many times did I hear: “Calm down, let it go,” “You must have provoked him,” “Surely you saw it coming,” “You chose him, after all,” along with, “Just get over it!” or “Move on!”
These common judgments, also known as blaming the victim, added to my humiliation and the stigma of having been abandoned. They also seemed to absolve my partner from responsibility for inflicting this shock. Most everyone, including myself, was turning a blind eye to the trauma, the emotional violence, and the power dynamics involved.
Blind to Betrayal and Powerlessness
It took a long time for me to realize that we live in a world that is blind to betrayal. In our culture, we not only reject emotional pain, but revere power and control, and disdain victims and losers. Platitudes that blame you for your pain and brush off the emotional abuse you have endured barely hide a contempt for powerlessness in any form.
It helps to realize that these common attitudes go beyond reactions to you personally. They reveal a collective wish, a wish to “exorcise the specter of the rejected individual.” (A. Carotenuto, To Love, to Betray, 1996, p.95) As mortal human beings, we simply do not want to acknowledge our essential powerlessness. So, we turn away when we see it so blatantly revealed in others or ourselves. In this atmosphere of denial, we run the risk of never acknowledging what has happened and getting the help we need to recover.
The simple fact is that when someone you have deeply trusted turns overnight on you, going from devoted partner to contemptuous or indifferent stranger, you have been violated to the core. Regardless of the intentions, childhood wounds, needs, defenses, complexes or excuses of the betrayer—you have been psychically assaulted. Such an abrupt turnabout inflicts real pain, tears apart your world, renders you powerless, and shatters native trust.
You are left with emotional injuries that will impact the quality of your life going forward. Yes, your injuries are invisible, internal, but just as debilitating, if not more so, than a physical blunt force trauma—as if you were run over by a proverbial bus, not just metaphorically either. We now know that the tormenting interplay of pain and longing rejection causes has measurable physical counterparts. (See my post “Rejection in Love” or M. Laskley’s, “This Is Your Brain on Heartache.”)
Add the fragmenting of your identity, heart and soul the trauma sets off; and you understand why you have every right to outrage and indignation at this violation. These reactions are the psyche’s first line of defense against this massive threat to your well-being. The life-threatening distress it causes—a threat to the life of your soul—is one reason some go so far as to call betrayal emotional or spiritual rape.
To be continued in the next post….
Adapted from
“Love and the Mystery of Betrayal” —now available in print and ebook.
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