As you go through life, you will experience what you see as betrayals, of all depths and sizes. Some as small as your barista giving you decaf instead of regular, some as large as your partner cheating on you. You are not alone; feeling betrayed happens to everyone.
If you are betrayed by someone close to you, someone whom you trust completely, your very idea of trust can be shattered. This is not an excuse to give up on life or relationships. If your idea of trust has been shattered, you must change your idea.
Before anything else, you must first learn to trust yourself. Your relationship with others is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. Until you can trust yourself, your own motives, your own desires, your own choices, you won’t be able to have a trusting reciprocal relationship. The first step in building self trust is learning to fully accept yourself for who you are. Letting go of who you are going to be when you achieve your goals. Letting go of your idealized version of yourself and accepting yourself for exactly who you are, right now, at this very moment. Until you can see yourself truthfully and objectively, until you can see and accept your own positive attributes and those that still need work, you won’t be accepting your true self. Until you can see and accept yourself for who you truly are, you won’t be able to see and accept other people for who they truly are.
If you expect something from a person that they aren’t capable of giving, you are responsible for setting up your own betrayal.
Faye is part of a group of 10 women friends. They celebrate special occasions together, mourn their losses together and enjoy shopping, lunch and conversations together. As is normal in groups there can be an occasional falling out of favor. Twice, when Faye entered the cafe to meet her friends, she realized that the conversation stopped. There were a few awkward moments of complete silence before the group started talking again. Then she sensed a distance between herself and some of the women. She immediately knew that one of the woman had been bad-mouthing her and she knew who it was. How did she know? Because over the previous few years, Gina had taken turns bad-mouthing several of the other women. Faye had witnessed it and sometimes allowed herself to be dragged into it. She believed that she and Gina had a good relationship and never dreamed that she would become the next target.
She was devastated and felt as though something had died in her heart. Not sure of how to handle it, Faye retreated for a couple of months, using her busy schedule as an excuse for not being available. As her pain subsided, she began to accept responsibility for her own part in the situation. She had witnessed successive bad-mouthing of their friends. She had participated. She had witnessed misunderstandings and said nothing.
Faye knew that to maintain peace in the group, she had to maintain a relationship with Gina. To do that, she had to find a different way of interacting with her. She chose to accept Gina for who she was: an entertaining, fun-to-be with person with an energetic spirit and flaws. Faye chose to see Gina as a teacher, and to use the experience as a lesson in standing strong in her own values and beliefs. When the bad-mouthing started again, which of course it did, Faye didn’t participate. She would say something positive about the target and then either try to change the topic or leave the room for a few minutes. She accepted that she couldn’t change Gina’s behavior, but she could change her own, and she did.
By consciously choosing behavior that reflected her beliefs, Faye stopped betraying herself and learned to trust in herself again. Not all relationships should be saved. But, the relationship that you have with yourself is sacred. Every time you choose to let go of needing to belong and of needing to be accepted and then behave according to your own core beliefs, you deepen your connection to your true self.
Dead people say; No one can trust you, if you can’t trust yourself.