If you haven’t experienced betrayal in a relationship, you might think that if someone truly betrays you one day, they will surely apologize and show remorse.
But only when you’ve been betrayed will you understand how naive such thoughts are.
Many times, there is a huge gap between reasoning and reality. When someone makes a mistake and harms others, they should take responsibility—that’s common sense. However, if someone can take responsibility for their actions, there are only two ways: taking it upon themselves or being forced to by external factors.
The latter, like the law holding criminals accountable, is understandable. But emotions don’t fall under the law’s jurisdiction. When someone betrays and hurts you, the law is powerless.
In such cases, the first way remains—the person who hurt you must willingly take responsibility. But what are the chances of someone who chose to betray you actually doing so?
So, the naive continue to be naive, and the innocent remain so. Their efforts each day are just attempts to make the other person realize, “You hurt me! You must take responsibility for this!”
If you keep thinking this way, you’ll never truly solve the problem. Even if they turn back, and your relationship continues, without realizing the root of the problem, you must learn to rely on yourself and take responsibility.
It may sound cliché, but only those who have been through this and come out of it understand: this is the core issue when facing betrayal.
In a relationship, people often form an unconscious dependency. Without betrayal, you may never realize the depth of this reliance or think of yourself as strong. It’s only when betrayal occurs that you realize the extent of your reliance on the relationship and the person.
Moreover, once you realize this, breaking free from dependency becomes challenging. Habits die hard, and changing them is painful because you’ve grown accustomed to this “comfort zone.”
When you try to rebuild self-reliance, you might feel powerless or too comfortable to endure the pain and suffering independence requires.
Many people see the issue clearly but struggle to change or make a choice because the other person lacks the “heart” to take responsibility, and they lack the “strength” to do it themselves. Consequently, your life is filled with anxiety, never feeling settled or happy.
Life is like that. When hardships strike, if you refuse to endure the pain, you’ll have to face it. You can’t escape or avoid it.
Those who eventually emerge from the shadow of betrayal understand which suffering is worth it, meaningful, and face it bravely.
Don’t expect the person who betrayed you to take responsibility for their mistake and your pain—if they had the ability and kindness, they wouldn’t have hurt you in the first place.
This topic has been discussed many times, yet people still ask me, “If I can’t rely on them anymore, why continue the relationship? I might as well get a divorce!”
You see, you’re stuck in a mindset: self-reliance and divorce are completely separate matters.
This mindset traps you, making it hard to break free because the usual logic is: can’t (don’t want to) get a divorce—so, I hope they’ll cherish and treat me well, take responsibility for me…