Thread: How to deal with betrayal?

Betrayal comes in many forms friendships and relationship.....How did you deal with it to become stronger and move on?

Time is the best healer. Unfortunately how much effort you put on "forgetting" it , you wont . It as simple as that . The more you ponder , the more you remember and it gets much more tougher. Let time do its job , you will forget it eventually.

When I feel betrayed, I usually find something to take it out on, like a stress reliever activity. I also let them know they betrayed me because they might not know in certain situations. Once that's done, I tend to move on fairly easily by ignoring the situation and realizing that there is a bright side to everything and that maybe our friendship wasn't meant to last anyway and I should be glad that it ended because they may have betrayed me in a more serious situation down the line if it continued.
/2cents

Retribution, It makes me feel good for having the power to do the same thing , and of course to teach the person a lesson.( maybe I'm just evil ,IDK )

Well, it's a complicated question. I feel that betrayal comes in a spectrum of magnitudes, and how I deal with it depends on the magnitude; that is what consequences the betrayal caused me. To illustrate: it is different when your sibling betrays you by eating the candy that you had been saving in your desk, compared to when your long-lasting loved one cheats on you with your best friend (in this case two of your close ones have betrayed you in the same occasion, twice the magnitude?).

If the betrayal, and it's consequences are miniscule to me, then I'd rather just ignore it, and think that everybody does make mistakes once in a while. But if I see the betrayal as great, I would choose to confront those who betrayed me, get all the cards on the table so to say, and state my opinion clearly, give a chance for asking for foregiveness, and then forgive (If I am strong enough to?). Obviously if the betrayal is too great, then I would wish to remove the person in question completely (or at least as much as possible) from my life.

Another aspect of betrayal, the way I see it, which must be considered is your previous/current/potential future relationship with the person who betrayed you, if this is an important person in your life, then I would try to work it through and forgive (at least in the end). But if it is a person who only plays a minor role in my life, I might just let it slide, more or less, and try to decrease that person's role in my life even further.

With betrayal..usually extremely violently as its the worst type of attack on my person for me. You betray me you better expect me to come after you.

Well, I'm guessing you're referring to situations where there's no other option than to say goodbye and go your separate ways.
All I can say is that such situations are extremely hard, especially if you were close friends or had a relationship. It makes you feel so helpless, powerless, angry and sad at the same time. The hard part is to accept the situation for what it is and say goodbye to the person you loved and to the many good times you shared, but there's nothing else you can do. It's painful to realize you've come to a point where you will both go your separate ways, that all that's left are memories of times that will never come back, and that you're probably going to forget many of them in the not so distant future, but you need to accept all this and let it all go. Don't ignore the pain or run away from the hurt feelings, but allow yourself all the time you need to get over it. There's also absolutely no shame in crying, it's a natural thing and can help you to get it all out. Don't bottle it all up. Try to talk about it to someone you trust, get it off your chest - it really helps, but at the same time you need to accept the fact that the wounds will take time to heal, so don't force yourself to forget asap or move on as if nothing really happened, telling yourself you don't really care. It's good to try to take extra time to do things which allow you to let off some steam and concentrate on other things, like playing sports (I play tennis, and when I'm feeling bad it really helps to hit that ball extra hard :) ), playing music (so nice to bash away on the guitar) or listening to it, watch some movies with some friends, etc. There's no magic formula though, and we're all different. It takes time to learn how to cope with all this. After some time the pain will wear away, and become less and less. This is just what I've learned so far. Violence, tirades, revenge, and all that, they don't solve anything, they only make things worse and completely destroy what was already broken in the first place.

That's a very tricky matter...

As far as it concerns to me, unfortunatly, i'm a hard person to forgive. And betrayal is the worst thing that anyone can do to me. Actually i'm not good dealing with betrayal...

:s

For me I think betrayal is always the most painful of attacks. That feeling you get when someone you cared about stabs the knife in and twists it is enough to give you shivers just thinking about it. I had to deal with betrayal a lot last year, I find one of the most useful coping methods is to remind yourself of a simple fact.
Was the person who betrayed you really worth having in your life? Were they really worth having around if they are so ready to stab you in the back?
Most of the time-there are excepts-you really do get a sense that nothing was lost with that person because you realize that they may not have been all that you thought them to be. In the times when the person who betrayed you really did mean so much to you there is only one thing you can do and that's grieve, bottling up emotions only causes destruction and it's always on the inside. It doesn't show, even to you it may not be obvious but if you keep bottling things up it eventually shows.
The best thing to do is let out what ever emotions you feel, don't run from them and then allow time to take the sting out of it.