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How Do You Handle Betrayal?
Ask the Collective
Recently someone I have been close to and confided in showed themselves to be… unsavory. I have trusted this person but no longer do which means I now have to mop up.
“Well, I imagine he’ll ask if I’m mad. If he made me mad,” I told a friend.
“Are you mad?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea how I feel. I think it’s more like I no longer exist. There was a relationship and it’s just… erased. I can’t see bothering to figure out how I feel because I am not going to communicate it anyway. I’ve thought about this for days and determined there is no way to go forward so..? How could I possibly trust this guy again?”
“No, you definitely can’t trust him. He is not to be trusted.”
“Right. And I have no time or energy for hobbled relationships… friendships. What time do I have for something like this? People just don’t understand how hard it is to be a single parent if they think you can deal with things like this.”
“You can say that again,” she said. She’s a single parent too.
“So anyway, I don’t know that I feel anything other than I’ve left the building. Where I used to be a human being he could relate to, and I used to share myself and my life with him, I am now a ghost. And I am sure he will try to engage me. Or reengage me, I guess it would be, but it’s not going to work. He will be talking to air from here on out. And I wonder what that is like. What’s it like when your hard-core friend you could count on turns into an apparition? You try to talk to them the way you used to and you find they just aren’t home anymore in any sense of the word. Because this is what it’s going to be. I just have no other thing I can do. He’s made it impossible for us to be friends so I relent. I retreat into nothing and there is no way to bring me back because I cease to exist in any form.”
I consider my response, Neptunian, because I erase myself. How would you characterize the action you take?
23 Responses to “How Do You Handle Betrayal?”
gone baby gone. Sadly it still leaves a hole in my life. The eclipses have hit my 11th house and my venus there.
There is a buddhist thinking that you must make space in your life for something to enter your life. So I hold hope that something better for me, more happiness, more pleasure, more support will fill that hole in due time.
I think it’s interesting that you don’t give an option of simply dumping the friend - something that seems completely obvious to me. Every other permutation of staying friends with them is there but there’s no option to call it a day. In that situation of being betrayed I wouldn’t think twice!
JT - I think that’s what I mean by disappear. Monday, we were friends. Monday night you betrayed me and Tuesday, I no longer know you.
I don’t cease to exist, that person ceases to exist. I can forgive over and over, we all have ou weaknesses, but betrayal is a different story.
My ex-husband read my journals to “see what you were thinking”. Big no-no for this Scorp. And called someone I knew through a work thing and never even met accusing him of seducing me! We actually have a good relationship, but I would never trust him emotionally. For practical parent things, yes…the rest..no way.
He doesn’t even realize he did the one thing I cannot forgive..digging into my thoughts uninvited.
Grrr……
I feel devastated and they cease to exist for me. I don’t look at them or wave to them, because they have ceased to exist for me.
I chose ‘other response.’ I was tempted to choose ‘feel devestated but don’t let on’ because I have a Capricorn Moon, and that is Step One (iamfineiamfineiamfine).
Step 2 is Taurean Sun feeling extremely uncomfortable and unhappy with being betrayed. Loyalty and trust is very important to me. Actually, it is paramount. I need to trust you to be loyal to you, and if you are not being trust-worthy you aren’t being loyal to me.
Step 3 is Mars in Aries (3H) opposing Pluto in Libra (9H)producing a shit-fit. Let’s go…
Step 4 is 12H Neptune breezing in and blowing invisible dust all over everything…
Then I gp through life feeling very sad and invisible and I try very hard to overcome my shattered illusions.
it 100% depends on the level of frendship. Most of the time I just wait and see if they show remorse. If they don’t I just walk away. Unless it is a really good friend then I question them about what they did.
it depends what the person did and how close we were. for something relatively minor, i probably simply stop trusting them. i’m pretty good at pulling all of my energy off of people yet managing to co-exist with them. for something serious, something i’d clearly shown or repeatedly defined as something i didn’t want them to do to me… revenge is likely. if someone really hurts me, they’re going to know the pain i felt.
scorpio moon, much?
I grew in a family where betrayal was a serious subject. A very scorpionic family. More sooner than later I realized it is just business,…sometimes. My option was “I continue the relationship….” However sometimes it is not just business, it is true betrayal (mainly in love business ouch!) I feel desvasted I cease of exist and so on: then I realized (more later than sooner) that I found an exquisite pleasure in the martyrdom , very piscean (5th house with chireon trined NEP and conj Sat)
It all depends.
One of my close friends in high school betrayed me and I dropped her like a hot potato (although we’re friendly-ish now).
A BF cheated on me (with two other women, no less) and I gave him a second chance. Then thought better of it and broke it off! *lol*
And recently my three oldest friends did something that I consider betrayal, paradoxically with my best interests in mind, and I’m doing my best to just ignore the whole thing. Not worth fighting over. . . Although I will admit my emotional investment has slackened since then.
So, I suppose the consensus is I disappear. 
Either mentally or physically. Whew!
I guess it is the strong amounts of Libra in me, but I usually “confront them”–I put it in quotes, because it isn’t so much about confrontation as it is a desire to understand what their motives were, where they were coming from, why they did what they did, and to get some kind of understanding of their perspective, and to try to also impart to them how they have also injured me.
It is odd, because I can actually remain friends with someone and completely and utterly not trust them. I don’t feel that they are exclusionary. So, in one way, I disappear, or ghost-out, meaning that I’m not the friend I was to them before because I don’t trust them, but I also don’t feel like it has to be over between us, especially if I get some kind of understanding how why they did what they did. If I can’t understand, or they are just a cruel person, then it has to be over.
Oddly enough, the last time someone betrayed me (actually, the second to last time, but the actual last time resolved before the second to last time did), THEY were the ones to walk away because they couldn’t forgive themselves or deal with the fact that I know longer trusted them. I was willing to continue with a “hobbled friendship” as you put it, because I understood why he did what he did, and I still loved him, but he couldn’t handle the fact that I couldn’t forget what he’d done, and I never completely trusted him again. So, he said that in order to move on with *his* life and to forgive himself, he had to walk away. I was okay with that, but I actually miss him.
So, hmm, yeah, I’d have to “talk it out” and see what I decided from there.
I can’t not confront those who have betrayed me. Above all I need to know why and how they could do something like that. Usually the answer doesn’t do much to help, if I get an answer at all, but it satisfies my intense need to know.
I do think everyone deserves to know when they’re being dumped though, even a friend, and you can’t really do that without confronting them and telling them why. I don’t think anything has hurt me more than people drifting away and not knowing why. If I were the betrayer, I’d appreciate being told what I did wrong, so I can not do it again, or at least explain why I did what I did.
Reading this over, I actually think I came to some understanding of why I *still* fixate on the last time I was betrayed by someone, and it has been over a year. I think it is because I never got the opportunity to have a discussion with that person where I understood where they were coming from and why they did what they did. It has all been conjecture on my part. I have a deep need to be able to understand a person’s motives in order to let go, I think. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that and say thanks for asking that question because now I’ve got more clarity on this other issue in my life. 
Funny this popped up, I just had this circumstance happen to me…I didn’t answer before because I wasn’t sure how I would react. In this case, at least, I confronted them and then continued the relationship, knowing not to trust them. Still a bitter pill, my capricorn loyalty is okay with it but my scorpio is still angry.
hmm that’s funny. i put down “other response” but it appeared as “i continue the relationship but know not to trust them”.
okay, so… i think i do some form of this. but, not exactly. i am devastated. really devastated actually. but i don’t react until much much later, when i cry in front of them, inappropriately. or, when i yell at them, irrationally and in a storm of hyperemotion, and then, i leave or i block them from IMing me and the details of my personal life. but before all of that, i just go away for a little while to build higher walls….
when they try to “climb over”, i think i psychologically attack them down. =_= and for lack of better words to describe the defensiveness that i react with. i don’t want them to expect that i am going to be the same way again. i don’t think i could ever truly be their “friend” after that. unless they truly needed help or something. but i’ve usually cut off connection by then. and by then, i would usually say “no”… i know i shouldn’t….. but it’s difficult to forgive truly completely after betrayal. being human is difficult. being a good person is even harder.
Depends on how they are related to the rest of my world, if possible and I cut them out of my life, but so often, they are in a circle I can easily extricate myself, work or pleasure activity that I’m not ready to give up. In that case, I’m just very careful of information that goes out and they get none of my energy.
I don’t ever think I cease to exist…but I do cut them out of my life…so it is more they don’t exist.
I drop the person like a bad habit. I chose “I cease to exist” because there wasn’t a ‘bridge burning’ option which is similiar.
Interesting comments…even though I took the quiz, I would have to say that like some others, it all depends upon the circumstances, the person, how bad a betrayal it was, etc. So even though I answered the quiz with the answer to remain connected but not to trust them, my TRUE response would be dependent upon a number of other mitigating factors.
I’m been immunized by men cheating on their wives or girlfriends, so I would not feel terribly betrayed by this one. However, there are CERTAIN betrayals which would shock, sicken, and surprise me….those are the ones which i would likely respond to NOT in a good way!
All I can think is: “What did this person do that you won’t talk to them again?”
yours truly…
Nosey/Curious Kitty
Me too Kashmiri. Capricorn moon doesn’t like to admit pain, it seems childish somehow.
I always keep my friends, even if they betray me, sometimes especially if they betray me. But I won’t trust them. There are different levels of closeness, and I just move them down w/o comment or much affect. Most of the time things proceed as usual, I don’t do or say anything different than before. It’s impossible to cut off energy once it has been exchanged - there is always a history and you can’t rewrite it. So I don’t burn any bridges, instead I keep an eye on things. They say keep your friends close, and your enemies closer 
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I would confront them - seen that it is a friend I would need to get to the bottom of it, and the bottom would only be in sight if spelled out. Depends on how deep the friendship is though. My tolerance is far higher for long-term friends than for new ones.