Dear Risha:

I didn’t understand this part of the betrayal before and just realized it: it is not that he betrayed you only by ending the relationship with you and starting one with a woman that his parents  chose for him, but he himself chose the woman and he introduced her to his parents, not the other way around. He lied to you telling you his parents chose her for him and that he had no choice but to obey his parents. And he kept this a secret from you, meeting her and choosing her while still in a relationship with you.

And so, his betrayal is leaving you to marry another woman, having initiated a relationship with another woman without telling you, introducing her to his parents, and then telling you they introduced her to him.

Dishonesty and betrayal hurts, it brings about suffering and this is what you are experiencing, hurt and suffering. It is so important to be honest with others, from the beginning and all the way through, so to not hurt others like he hurt you. I feel sad to think  of you suffering as you do.

As far as much of my twenties and forties being wasted, as well as my thirties… add  to it my teenage years, and  connecting this to the topic of betrayal, I would say that like you, I too suffered from betrayal. The betrayal I suffered is unfortunately as common, I think, as the betrayal you experienced, and that is the betrayal of a child by her mother. She told me that she loved me, she told me that I was the reason for her being alive. She told me those things and I believed her, wanted to believe her even though she also told me that I was “a big zero”, even when she treated other people so kindly but not me. Even though she humiliated me for hours and hours, attacking me with accusations and those humiliation crusades.

The story of my wasted years is too long to tell here, of course. Betrayal though is when you love another person, like I loved my mother, nothing but love, nothing but wanting to see her happy, oh, how I wanted to see her happy, to make her happy… and then  to be hurt by the very person you love so much. A betrayal like that, you don’t overcome it simply because time goes by, years or decades. You have to heal from it.

I hope you heal from your recent betrayal. It is possible, I know it is because I am healing, in the process of healing and made a lot of progress so far. So can you.

anita