What Is Betrayal?

Since i've posted my thoughts on infidelity i thought id add the essay i did for Being Bad titled 'What Is Betrayal'

So, what is betrayal? Betrayal can’t be defined as being one specific thing due to everyone having there own opinion as to what it is. Some see it as being unfaithful, being disloyal, infidelity, revealing secrets and turning your back on friends and family. None of these examples are specifically right or wrong although the common thing people relate betrayal with is infidelity. Although not everyone connects infidelity to betrayal, if infidelity has been committed some people may see it as betrayal while others see it in a different light. These different opinions on betrayal may have been formed due to different backgrounds, those with the opinion that committing an unfaithful act such as adultery isn’t a bad thing most likely came from a working class background where affairs were more common within the family due to both parents having to work all day therefore becoming stressed and having an affair to relive this stress, because of these things happening during childhood you would grow up with the opinion that committing an act like this isn’t betrayal. Where are those growing up within a middle class family may see infidelity as betrayal due to there childhoods. With there parents being middle class and being proud of whom they are having an affair would be seen as betrayal as well as it damaging there family name and ‘reputation’.

Betrayal is something that has happened to the majority if not all of the population, statistics show that out of 1500 adults within the age of 20-40 1420 of them felt that they had been betrayed sometime within there life’s. This shows that even before people reach an elderly age they have already been ‘betrayed’, although with everyone defining betrayal as being something different it may be that some of these people may feel betrayal is something as light as someone talking about you behind your back. The word betrayal hasn’t always been used as much as it probably has been within the last 20 years, in the early 19^th century it was uncommon for marriages/relationships to experience infidelity therefore meaning that less people felt they had been betrayed.

Betrayal is something that is seen as something that smashes your world apart. A range of feelings once you have been betrayed can make you feel confused, miserable, depressed, suicidal, stunned and numb which could lead you to doing something drastic such as leaving your partner or even ending your own life if you feel that strongly about betrayal. Some feel that after betrayal has been committed they can’t go back to how things were before with there partner, which in a lot of cases means the end of a marriage or relationship. Although for those that do not feel strongly enough about betrayal they can work around the issues that caused there partner to betray in the first place and in time will forgive them. Although it may seem easy to just be able to forgive a partner for what they have done sometimes people want to understand why it happened in the first place and what they can do to make there relationship work.

To conclude it is difficult to give a clear definition as to what betrayal is. With everyone having there own opinion everyone has a different view as to what betrayal is, although what is clear is that when someone feels they have been betrayed they are certainly aware of it due to a mix of emotions such as anger, distraught and being generally upset surrounding them.