The aftermath of betrayal…

I recently shared the above quote to my page. There’s no rhyme or reason to where a quote comes from. Well I mean obviously it comes from internal feelings, but there’s no reason as to the timing. I guess something just sparks feelings that need expressing. And it often takes time to really articulate how you are affected by things that happen in life. Working through the rawness is often done in increments. It takes time to reach a place where a story can be relayed reflectively, from a place other than hurt.

A few years ago, my partner betrayed me.

He didn’t cheat, but it cut just as deeply. To me, it felt the same.

I didn’t find out because he came clean. I found out because I knew. I knew something wasn’t sitting right. I’d asked for the truth, more than once, and was met with denial, deflection, and gaslighting. Looking back, that was the biggest betrayal of all. Not just the initial wrongdoing, but the layers of lies told to cover it. The embellishing, the manipulation, the way I was made to feel irrational for following my intuition.

He didn’t just lie once, he lied many times, doubling down, reshaping the story, twisting it to protect himself. And what hurt the most was knowing that if I hadn’t stumbled across the truth, I’d still be in the dark. But as is often the case, inadvertently deception at some point usually outs itself.

I’ve been betrayed before, we all have. But this time felt different. Because this time, it came from the one person I thought never would. I hadn’t factored that in to our story, so I was really caught off guard.

We had counselling soon after. I don’t think he wanted to, but he knew it was the only way forward. During that first session, I laid out what had happened, half-expecting to be blamed somehow. But the counsellor, an older male, perhaps someone my partner could hear in a way he couldn’t hear me, validated me immediately. He didn’t sugarcoat it. He flatly said, “You’ve got something good here, someone who loves you, something real, and you’re messing with it. Why would you risk that?.” He told him what he needed to do to make things right and to my partners credit he took on board what was said and went about making changes.

We’ve come a long way since then. Things are healthier now, more honest, more open. We communicate better. But it’s not the same.

He’s not the same. I think he felt a quiet shame that I’d seen a side of him he wasn’t proud of.

And I wasn’t the same either. Some of the respect I once held had slipped. I wasn’t angry, not exactly, but I was reacting from a place of hurt. I was protective, cautious, reactive. My responses came more from pain than clarity. I wasn’t always at my best, and I know that created more distance between us. The damage had already been done, but the way I handled the fallout probably made it harder for us to heal. It was like we took two steps forward, only for me to think about the betrayal and take one step back.

So as a whole, we were no longer the same, because we were both learning how to live with what had happened between us. The betrayal shifted something. It fractured the easy kind of closeness we used to share. And it left scars, on him, on me, on us. We don’t love each other any less , we just lost the innocence that comes with the safety of trust.

And here’s the thing people don’t often talk about. When the dust settles, when time has passed, the person who was hurt often becomes the one who’s treated like they’re the problem, especially when old wounds resurface again.

It’s as if the hurt should have an expiry date.

As if bringing it up, not to accuse, but to explain where your pain is coming from, is somehow an act of war. It isn’t. It’s an explanation… “This is where I am. This is how I got here.”

But too often, instead of understanding, what you get is ego. Defensiveness.

“Not this again.”

“How long are you going to keep bringing this up?”

As though the person who made you feel insecure has no responsibility when that insecurity shows up again.

As though your feelings are the inconvenience, not what caused them.

But healing doesn’t follow a timeline.

And if you were part of the breaking, you don’t get to walk away from the mending. Not if you want authenticity. Not if you want true healing.

Once trust is broken, it becomes fragile, it’s not rebuilt by grand gestures or loud declarations. It takes quiet patience, vulnerable truths, and time. As much bloody time as needed. Without that, bitterness and resentment fester and grow.

Every relationship is different, we each deal with things in our own way. But it’s the not dealing, it’s the expectation things will just go back to ‘normal’ in time that is the real problem. You have to find a new normal, together.

This was a hard write for me. To speak honestly about my experience, I had to discredits someone I love. But that’s the thing with honesty, it has to be honest…