{"id":25508,"date":"2014-10-03T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T15:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=25508"},"modified":"2016-05-23T02:08:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T09:08:48","slug":"how-can-i-trust-after-my-girlfriend-and-friend-betrayed-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/dear-gt\/how-can-i-trust-after-my-girlfriend-and-friend-betrayed-me","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Trust after My Girlfriend and Friend Betrayed Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks for writing in. Gosh, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been through such an emotionally brutal experience. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine the blow of losing a girlfriend and<\/em> an allegedly good friend at once, in this manner. It sounds like you had some suspicion that something was amiss, but when you asked your alleged friend directly, he lied.<\/p>\n

I would not be surprised if you are experiencing some kind of posttraumatic stress<\/a> from such an experience. Because relationships are so crucial to our sense of self and security in the world\u00e2\u20ac\u201despecially intimate relationships<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhaving our trust and emotional safety shattered in this way would naturally be extremely distressing and perhaps traumatic. Sleep, appetite, and other functionality is sometimes affected. Perhaps your other relationships are being affected, in terms of wondering who you can and can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust. Being lied to<\/a> so baldly would completely scramble trust even in our own perceptions and sense of reality since what happened contradicts so dramatically what we thought we were seeing.<\/p>\n

This may account for the self-blame<\/a> on evidence in your question, when you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153feel like an idiot\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for trusting. That harsh self-condemnation is the result, I suspect, of trusting your own self-experience with people close to you\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwho often serve at least in part as reflections of ourselves, our sense of who we are and what we can have faith in\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich, now shattered, leaves you with self-doubt<\/a> over what you thought you were perceiving.<\/p>\n

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However, you are not responsible for the heinous behavior of these two. Taking you at your word (and I see no reason not to), I see no trace of any reason for them to have treated you so shabbily. I imagine this to be another reason for the self-doubt and self-condemnation you express, because our loved ones are often mirrors for us: when someone we trust and love treats us badly, a possible instinctive reaction is, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What am I, chopped liver?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It sounds like these two colluded in deception and abusive behavior<\/a>, and of course such betrayal would be intensely injurious to anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s self-esteem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, being a therapist, I am going to suggest therapy<\/a> in the spirit of seeing this episode as trauma. Often, such experiences will revive historical doubts and losses or previous crises of faith, if we have had other betrayals in the past. I think having a safe place to vent and process all kinds of understandable emotional reactions could be quite healing. Rage<\/a>, grief<\/a>, shock<\/a>, hurt, and fear<\/a> of future betrayals are but a handful of the normal human reactions you might be having, and the safe space of therapy can provide an outlet. You may need to vent about this over and over for a long time, and this is OK; don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153boring\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the counselor or therapist. These losses take time to process and heal.<\/p>\n

You might also want to look around for support groups<\/a>, even online. Perhaps there is a group, either locally and in person or online, that offers support for those who have been betrayed in this way.<\/p>\n

Finally, I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be in a super hurry to start pressuring yourself, or feeling pressure from others, to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153forgive and move on.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Forgiveness<\/a> is a more complicated subject than meets the eye, and often presented in highly idealistic terms. In principle, of course, it is a beautiful thing. But people often rush to forgive others for hurts that aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fully understood or acknowledged, even by the injured person; superficial forgiveness may be espoused while hurts and resentments unconsciously simmer and continue to impact the personality\u00e2\u20ac\u201dexploding when the person is re-traumatized in parallel ways.<\/p>\n

I am not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153against\u00e2\u20ac\u009d forgiveness, of course, and find it ultimately to be liberating (and probably necessary in the long run). But it is not as neat and tidy as presented on bumper stickers and inspirational Facebook posts. There is a nice saying from Al-Anon: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Acceptance is not approval.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One can accept what has happened, without acting vengefully and in a spirit of moving forward, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something to be said for learning from harmful behaviors (dishonesty, selfishness<\/a>), remembering so as not to repeat them. Sometimes others show us what not<\/em> to do.<\/p>\n

Thanks for writing, and I wish you the best in your journey of healing. I hope you find a girlfriend and friend who treat you with the honesty and integrity you deserve. I suggest you treat yourself as a very good friend who is suffering, which is more consideration than you received, sadly, from the two who betrayed you.<\/p>\n

Kind regards,
\nDarren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darren Haber, MA, MFT, responds to our latest reader-submitted Dear GoodTherapy.org question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[522,384,226,25,41,388],"class_list":["post-25508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","tag-dear-gt","tag-infidelity-affair-recovery","tag-posttraumatic-stress","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-marriage-counseling-relationships","tag-trust-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}