I can tell you something about the raw workings behind it all, both for cheated and cheaters.
I will make my best attempt to not over complicate, but for the reasons right below, in the opposite from vis a vis conversation where I use words sparingly, here I have to hit you with walls of text to convey the thoughts.
Let’s begin first with labels and definitions.
Words have meanings, they are a tool to communicate thoughts and emotions outwards, along with tone and body language. We miss the 2 necessary companions to words here, because the limitations of the medium, to fully receive your communication as you feel it originally, hence I do get your struggle in getting understood.
When you use this tool a lot, there is a natural tendency of words turning from vehicle of meanings into labels, which are a energy saving shortcut to quickly direct your audience towards a point you try to make. The negative of labeling is individual and emotional dehumanization and misinterpretation merged with insecurity projection, and tribalistic performance.
As they are a energy saving shortcut for the speaker, they often become a effortless replacement for deeper self awareness for emotionally uncentered individuals, who seeking to regain their balance but afraid of the consequences of a real internal deep dive, take the shortcut of identifying into a "close enough" label, maybe without having even properly understood it first, and the ego soothing deriving from this obfuscates and quiet for a while the still unresolved issues hiding inside them.
This is a rooted need because we all are seeking our balance, and when you are vulnerable such a quick fix or patch seems very attractive, attractive enough to become identity , through the very push of one self ego desperately trying to silence the internal dissonance that imbalances you emotionally.
Though it is a projection of your ego taking a shortcut, for its self preservation, instead of taking the label’s meaning as a starting point for a deeper reflection on your inner self.
Give it some time and visibility and this perfectly human tendency becomes tribalism, obscuring your healing rather than helping it, so a well meant useful linguistic shortcut can get quickly twisted from a useful tool into a superficial, stereotypical and distracting social mask.
This is bad for a person with issue, as most people here can tell you, the general descriptors can heal you or devastate you, if you don’t do the work using them as a starting point for your unique individual life experience.
(I kept it as short as I can, but I believe you should see the starting point.)
You use a lot of labels, likely because of your profession they are an efficient tool to share ideas and knowledge within your circle. But you being used and able to decode can blind you to the effect of what I explained above. Is like when doctors speak with colleagues and non medical people, they need to get back to layman terms even if it is energy taxing, if they want to be understood.
I get it, but as you see it is causing confusion, because here you are touching into matters that hurt people at a deeper emotional level and at an identity shattering level, that is difficult to comprehend until you get the unfortunate reality of living it.
It was explained to you well, that the trauma of betrayal is one of the worst kind of trauma that a human being can inflict upon another human being. It’s worse than violence and war ptsd, loss of loved ones, and I agree it’s just below the loss of your child, adding that this loss was chosen planned and executed by a close person who you trust. It’s not a tragedy it is an intentional and gratuitous act of choice , performed for a dopamine high.
That should give you the magnitude and help you to understand why you came off as insensitive to the BS and WS who replies here.
About your curiosity:
Betrayal is a kind of abuse that stems from a deep rooted unresolved issue of the betrayer, often tied to childhood trauma, that seeks for outside validation to soothe the emotional chaos those unresolved issues stirs in the wayward partner.
It is not a breakup or heartbreak, that’s just nothing in comparison, it is relational shock, attachment wound, identity annihilation. It changes your brain and body chemistry often for the rest of your life unless you manage to recover, and is way more sneaky and subtle than other kinds of abuse and violence, because it comes from your inner world, not an external threat.
This is devastating.
Mind that the betrayed partner is not the only victim here, you may call them the innocent or sacrificial victim, but the cheating partner is the one that often digs a deeper hole, a darker abyss for themselves. Is just matter of time before they fall into it too, time bought by pushing in their betrayed partner first. But the WS has betrayed themselves as well, and you cannot run or abandon yourself, once you choose that, it will haunt you forever.
What is the common thread for a betrayal to happen?
You will find that the most common issues are about a deeply rooted emotional chaos seeking for order through external validation of a fantasy that gets "realized" through another emotionally unstable and broken person (the affair partner), it’s all based upon lies, deception, selfish and self sabotaging performance and projected fantasy of a different "you " someone who a broken ego sees as stronger, happier and powerful in its Fantasy, but turns out to be weak, incredibly sad and repulsive right after the dopamine induced chemical high fades.
The common traits are most often, low self worth, people pleasing, perfectionism, emotional unavailability or avoidance, compartmentalization.
There are others but those are very common.
Usually the life keeps this in check, silences the inner voices, routine and ego idealization convince you that you are a grown up, stable and loyal person who would never do something that terrible, you are not the villain of your story, you are the hero. When life routine changes or something happens, the checking patterns break, and the unresolved issues resurface. If the person is still refusing to face them, we move to the next step below.
How it starts?
By labels and projection from the ego, at some point the internal emotional chaos pushes you to be soothed by a feeling of needing validation. Since those traits make it hard to give yourself the love and validation you deserve from inside, the easiest way is to find someone as desperate for the same validation (the AP) and you both end diving into a deeper chaos that is initially exciting but raises the stakes of your own chaos much higher and eventually leads to a complete collapse when the reality doesn’t hold up to the fantasy, as it rarely does.
The labels you use are all variations of "I am a good person, I deserve this, I am not doing anything wrong to anyone ", in complete dissonance to your own emotional awareness, your ego creates this performance and persona while lying to yourself as much if not more than you lie to your betrayed partner, about your choices and behaviors.
Most people crack at this, it doesn’t bring them happiness it brings them misery and a soul void that cannot be filled, the emotional dissonance is the very thing that triggers the excitement chemicals in your brain, that just happens to be the same chemicals love produces, only in a different mix, so your ego projects into this fantasy even more, and it escalates.
This is why when the affair is found out, or when the cheater gets abandoned by the betrayed partner and becomes free to live with the affair partner, the house of cards collapses and the shame, regret and guilt replace the hype.
Depending on how the wayward responds to this, there’s people who double down on the denial and begin spiraling into this behavior, protecting their ego because the pain to look yourself in the mirror is just too horrific. Other people learn one of the hardest lessons they will have in life. They begin to look inside, starting the long process of healing the issues that lead them there, becoming aware and better person, capable to love and validate themselves and to receive love without neediness from someone. In short, safe partners. The sense of guilt for what you have done will likely be with you until the grave, and the disgust for your choices will be a trigger that keeps coming back. But you can become a different person, a better, lovable, worthy one, unbroken. The WS heals the WS.
Some very brave even go through the attempt to reconcile with their betrayed partners, and this is a big deal because it demands them to be vulnerable towards someone who they hurt and destroyed beyond what words can express.
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About the Bs . You probably get the idea more easy about this.
It cannot be described, only felt.
I can give you a picture as a metaphor.
Imagine you allow someone closer to you than anyone in your life, including family, could ever be. Your most intimate inner world, reality dreams, memories, present and future. They gladly take what you have to give them, and they convince you that they are indeed part of your world, they deserve to exist there next to the very pillars of your existence and identity.
Then all of a sudden, while you are still living as they are your most treasured thing in your world to protect and preserve, they sneak someone else into your inner world, burn everything to ashes and shatter the pillars of your identity to dust. Then when you are down there bleeding they gladly and cheerfully rape you, your children (real or future) kill you and them in front of your eyes all while laughing and holding hands through the havoc. Then they go to your past, do the same, torture rape and murder, with your childhood you. Then they go to your future and do the same to all your dreams and plans, offspring and so on.
And when your soul dies and cries for justice, you find out the court declares them innocent and presents you with the bill to pay. And delivers you to their mercy, While they are laughing and mocking you.
You end up bleeding, shattered and empty, with no more present, past or future, with a life sentence for a crime you never committed.
Is not that far from the emotional state you will feel in, in truth it might just be worse than this, but again, hard to explain.
You will carry an attachment wound "I am not chosen. I am not enough. I am replaceable " that will mess up your emotional life and future unless you heal it. It does take years and years to survive this trauma, but while not easy, it’s possible to heal in part or sometimes even fully.
The only positive thing about being the betrayed partner, is that if you leave your abuser, you will someday, completely heal. You will have scars but they won’t hurt nearly as bad once you removed the betrayer from your life and memory, they will fade with time, as they never existed.
If you loved your betrayer deeply enough that you give them a chance to reconciliation, you will never fully heal, I don’t believe it is possible, you trade your love for keeping the person who stabbed you alongside your path, blade lodged forever in your heart, you will get used to the pain and will partially heal, but when the road has bumps the pain will always wake up.
This decision of the betrayed is usually painted in the mainstream as a weakness and ridiculed. Your choice what to call it.
@pogre
I know you were worried about me being brief with my replies lately, but whenever I have time I will contribute with the usual wallpaper of text. See?
[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 10:26 AM, Friday, April 10th]
