Betrayal
Betrayal has always seemed like a very melodramatic word to me, but sometimes it can be the only word to perfectly describe a situation… as I recently discovered. Thing is, betrayal can look like different things to different people. I hadn’t blogged about it until now, seeing as I hadn’t fully processed the pain—it was too fresh. I didn’t want to put out on the internet (which is basically the same thing as chiseling something in stone) things I didn’t really mean—anything that was not said in love. But having sat on it for a while, having cried and cussed and contemplated, I think I’m ready to talk about what I’ve taken away from this and in so doing, perhaps help someone else who’s going through something similar.
Addiction is powerful, and should be respected. Not respected as in honoring, but rather given recognition as the force that it is. Like when as a kid you’re taught to respect a firearm and not play with it. Or, if you prefer, like a venomous snake. You respect its space. Ideally you would neither fear it nor underestimate it. When someone you love deals with an addiction, don’t let your love-tinted lenses blind you to the extent of its hold on that person. They can turn and hurt you, not because they don’t love you (they may love you deeply), but because it’s not them that’s in control. The addiction comes first and puts blinders on them to anyone and anything but itself. Try to be as honest with yourself and that person as possible. Only then can you sometimes see clearly what exactly a healthy boundary looks like and how to implement that.
You can’t help someone who isn’t ready to be helped. If they’re still in denial, then your “help” isn’t helping anyone and is only draining your resources. Sometimes you won’t know the person is in denial until the facts finally punch you in the stomach and you turn to look at them and they still seem clueless. You may feel stupid, embarrassed, and ashamed in hindsight as though you should have seen the signs, but you know what? Don’t. Don’t waste any more time churning up negative energy. Don’t turn the anger in on yourself. You tried because you saw a need and wanted to step up to the situation, not because you’re stupid.
Accountability is important. When this person would call me, the first words out of his/her mouth would be, “The worst thing in the world has just happened to me.” Sometimes I can be very slow to catch on, but eventually I wised up that some of these things happening “to” them were consequences and not entirely the worst luck in the world.
We are all addicts. I guess I can’t say all in the present tense, but I’d venture to suggest we’ve all been addicts at one point or another in our lives—for some that may have been a TV series and for others their job. Regardless of what that thing was, it was overreaching and you felt compelled to do that thing to the detriment of other things, as though you really had no agency, as though the power of choice had been abdicated.
When I was still reeling from the betrayal, I found myself saying, “I just don’t understand how they could do that.” My husband was wise enough to point out that even though I may never have had the same particular addiction as this other person, I had enough experience dancing with my own demons that if I look closely enough I would see the same basic modus operandi holds true. Yes, he was right. In my unhealthy relationship with alcohol, for starters, I had been secret about my problem in the past because I wasn’t ready to give it up. Some people’s addiction has been a relationship.
Sometimes, a relationship addiction can come across as true love—a real life romance. But the addiction can be easier to spot when one of the parties involved is a “bad apple.” We all know of someone who’s been head over heels for someone who’s not good for them. You label the relationship as “toxic” and put in your two cents. Does the love-sick person heed your advice? No, if anything they distance themselves from you because you’re trying to distance them from the thing they most desire.
An addiction taps your resources, changes your behavior, and causes you to make poor/risky choices. Yeah, I think I can safely say we’ve all been there. Using my own experience with addictive behavior and some imagination, I realized I could indeed put myself in the betrayer’s shoes and understand how they could have done what they did. He/she is a human being after all, like myself, not some alien race that’s wired completely differently.
I didn’t make a mistake. I’ve caught myself several times since this all went down almost saying, “I’ve learned my lesson,” or “I’ve learned from my mistake,” but I’ve stopped myself in time. It wasn’t a mistake to love that person, it wasn’t a mistake to try to help to them, it wasn’t a mistake to try to do something real and immediate in a superficial internet world of “likes” and crying emoticons. Honestly, faced with the same facts that I had at the onset of all of this, I can’t say I wouldn’t make the same choices over again.
Allowing myself to feel angry at first, allowing myself to grieve the loss of trust and friendship, and trying to love myself and the betrayer through it all has been quite a process. A painful one, but one from which I’ve reaped some personal rewards. Because you know all of those take-away points I’ve just recounted? I was able to reflect and apply them to myself, and hopefully grow as a result. Let me recount the main points, but this time turn them inward.
Addiction is powerful, and should be respected. If I can identify the parts of my life in which I don’t feel agency, I can then work from there in recognizing what addictions I may have. Then, mindfully I can approach these areas in my life. Not hailing myself a savior and swooping in blindly thinking I can do a instant, quick “fix” of myself, but rather recognizing the power of ingrained habits and beliefs and committing to the work ahead.
You can’t help someone who isn’t ready to be helped. If I’m still enjoying parts of an addiction, I’m not going to be ready to give it up. All the reading of self-help books, all the listening to podcasts—it’s not going to do a bit of good. I’ll just be wasting my time and energy in hating part of myself and try to “fix” that part when it’s simply not going to change.
Accountability is important. Since this drama started, whenever I find myself cursing my bad luck, I find it easier to check myself and ask if I didn’t, even in some small way, contribute, put myself downstream of this bad “luck” or amplify its ripple effects. Now some horrible things are just rotten, unfair, unchosen, and undeserved. But, you know, there are those times… I need to hold myself accountable.
We are all addicts. I’ve already pretty much written about how I was able to apply this to myself.
I didn’t make a mistake. I’ve asked myself some painfully direct questions as to my motives. Whether I helped this individual out of some savior complex or whether I needed to prove something to myself or if I wanted to show the world at large that I was a good person—a real friend. I am satisfied that my intentions and heart were in the right place, but just going there to that place of introspection and taking an honest inventory was a necessary part of the healing process for me.