- 23/11/2025: One of the toxic characteristics of betrayal is how the mere feeling of being betrayed produces an active desire for revenge. Revenge not because you directly hate the person or immediately wish them harm, but because the feeling of powerlessness demands some powerful action in the opposite direction that, in some way, counterbalances, in terms of pain caused, the pain of betrayal. But we need to be calm here. Why does betrayal hurt? It hurts because, on the one hand, it destroys the image we have of the loved one so that the betrayer can now fit in; because only someone who breaks a commitment that, once broken, is capable of dismantling a certain relational structure from which we draw some vital strength is called a betrayer. So the pain arises because that structure has been demolished and, without it, something inside us is ripped away. We feel that we have lost something, that something has been stolen from us and that we need this something. However, the something needed is some aspect of the relationship with the same person that made the relationship itself unviable. In this sense, there is a double loss: on the one hand, it is no longer possible to value the lost relationship because the relational other is precisely the one who broke the trust, which makes one think that the deception did not occur now, but before, when the trust was first established; the other is a traitor because they always lied and only now do we discover the extent of this lie. This image of the other places us as objects of this other, as idiots, which deepens the feeling of pain from the vital loss we had: in fact, if now we think we need that something – which, due to context, we usually do need immediately – this is also the fault of this other who deceived us all along. However, this is not a fair view, because from it what we question is our own capacity to trust, we moralize it, we criticize ourselves for the other's mistake. Thus, we must recognize that the other, just like us, did not yet know that they would do what they would do when they made promises to us, and the current breach of betrayal only demonstrates a lack of commitment on their part to their own words. However, since we still feel we've lost that something, this idea, although somewhat fairer, creates an immense paradox in our image of the other person. Because we still seek to understand why they would do this to us, especially since this relationship is usually the most important one for both of us. We will continue the search, questioning what we did wrong. This self-questioning allows us to at least regain narrative control, that is, it gives us the capacity to master the meaning of the event, which is better than no control at all. Connecting the dots, researching, inquiring, etc. – as these actions seemingly compensate for the pain, they tend towards psychological obsession, because the appearance persists that, if we could understand, the matter would gain legitimacy through rational thought. Obviously, we fail. But each time there is a failure in this attempt, the repeated pain returns with even greater force, reaffirming the hateful theses that came in our first way of coping. Thus, unintentionally, we are the ones who hurt ourselves again with the same vile words as before, and our perception of the other person's ability to manipulate us grows ever stronger, increasing our resentment. This example implies that we have already relived the situation, its contours, and the characters several times, but our minds do not differentiate, in our imagination, the temporal difference: augmented (temporally) by the abstractions that analysis has allowed us to have, we create increasingly concrete and complex images of the betrayal, and it seems ever greater to us, even though, from the beginning, it has already been experienced as the deepest pain we have ever felt. This ever-increasing concreteness of the image is precisely what increases our hatred for the one who was once so important: now he has become, for us, only the ghost of betrayal, corroded as we are by the feeling. Does his absence still hurt us? Undoubtedly, and it is precisely this absence that serves as a repository for the creation of these images. To avoid feeling the pain of absence, we create the most treacherous traitor for ourselves as a way to justify both the shame we feel at his absence and to try to convert the very rupture generated by the betrayal into our own product. However, since it was not our decision, we cannot sustain this deception for long, and, similarly, the absence still demands to be covered up and healed by us. As, at this point, we have already established the other as the traitor, he seems increasingly imperturbable to the betrayal committed, increasingly greater than us, greater than feelings, greater than everything. To reestablish the power of our ego, more and more of this ego will be needed – and it becomes clear how this axis constitutes an unprecedented competition with this other. Soon the hateful images will not be enough to sustain us, and some practical action will become apparently necessary to restore our lost peace, which is where the desire for revenge arises. And honestly, when you get to that point, it seems like the only way out is to cut off the production of images. Because it's no longer the other person who hurts us, it's ourselves with the endless reproduction of images of pain. At the same time, what this production demands is presence – but presence of what? Certainly not of the other person who betrayed us, which is what we put in the place of the absence generated by the breakup, but the presence of that other person who hadn't betrayed us, the other person in whom we trusted, loved, found x, y, or z things that we loved. Because, although the relationship with the other person has dissolved into images of pain, we must be aware that, although it's sad, it doesn't mean that they have lost the things that made us love them. These things exist in them and confuse and disturb us. However, the temporal difference between these two people remains, a moment that constitutes a gap in the narrative that transformed one into the other. The emptiness of the narrative is identified as the present emptiness, generated by their absence; And it is identified with our own emptiness, which, in some way, was filled by the characteristics we found in that other. At the confluence of the three voids, we are driven mad by nameless anguish, anguish in parallax between distinct images of the same pain: our own incompleteness, now exposed to ourselves. What to do? Well, embrace it, darling.
nov 23 2025 ∞
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nov 23 2025 +