LIFE after BETRAYAL

Broken trust can take on many forms, but there's always one common denominator - a feeling of hurt that can last for decades

- FAYE M SMITH

When you hear the word ‘betrayal’, is infidelity the first thought that comes to mind? That punch-in-the-gut emotional blow when life as you know it changes forever. It’s no wonder – affairs are a lot more common than most of us would like to think. One in five adults admit to infidelity, while one in three say they have considered it**.

Yet these feelings of betrayal are not always caused by just one catastrophically painful event or by a romantic partner – sometimes the disloyalty and broken trust can be in the form of numerous small hurts that slowly build up over time, and can often come from where you least expect.

This could be the confusion you might have felt as a child when left out of a game, the teenage angst when some innermost secrets were spilt by a best friend, or the crushing disappointment that was felt after finding out that someone you trusted had lied to you.

Sadly, this ‘death by a thousand cuts’ through life can have just as much of a lasting effect as a case of infidelity. And these seemingly small betrayals can, in some ways, be more insidious than large ones, says coach and therapist Danielle Baron. ‘This is because they can be easy to dismiss or rationalise away, but they can still cause significant emotional pain,’ she says. ‘Plus, they can be made worse by those on the outside being more unsympathetic, compared to a larger, more “socially accepted” betrayal.’