Dear Kiantha: Don’t let betrayal close you off from new relationships

Dear Kiantha,

How do you handle betrayal in a romantic relationship and how does that differ from how you handle betrayal in a friendship?

Dear Friend,

This is something that I personally struggle with. In the aftermath of every betrayal I have experienced, both romantic and platonic, I found myself more cautious and guarded. That tells me that I still have work to do in this area as being guarded is typically a trauma response.

Betrayal tends to hurt more when it is done by someone you have placed value in. When we engage in genuine relationships of any kind, be they romantic or platonic, we do so with an unspoken expectation that we will not be harmed by the person we are engaging with. As a general rule, most people we engage with in our lifetime have no intent to harm us. Of course, there is always an exception to that rule.

For me, betrayal causes me to be introspective. I go into feeling less concerned about the actual betrayal and instead become fixated on what I could have done to prevent it. In other words, I find that all roads lead back to me.

Somewhere along the way, I made a choice to trust, to love and to engage with the person who betrayed me. What I now understand is that when we open our hearts, hurt becomes a possibility. Betrayal becomes a possibility, but on the other side of that coin is the fullness that is love.

While there are many healthy and unhealthy ways in which we can handle betrayal, there is only one way that we cannot and should not handle it, and that is by closing our hearts off out of fear of being hurt again.

Just as betrayal hurts, love heals. It is advantageous for us to continue to engage in new relationships of any kind in which pure love and friendship can be found.

And yes, of course, that can be easier said than done, but what is life without close relationships? May you nor I ever find out.

Soul to soul,

Kiantha

Dear Kiantha can be read Fridays in The Spokesman-Review. To submit a question, email DearKiantha@gmail.com.