Dear Hella:

I may not get more answers from you, so I re-read your posts and formulate my best understanding of what is happening. Reads to me that the main thing that has happened is that you experienced a deep, emotional/ physical connection with him that meant a whole lot to you, that has been very special to you. What followed was your experience of him betraying this very special connection.

The extent of your hurt over this betrayal is enormous, and so  is your anger. It feels like a great injustice that keeps happening, an injustice that goes on and on and on.

It is “as if things never happened between us”- your experience of a very intimate, very special connection is being ignored, discounted. This is infuriating.

“he doesn’t offer any kind of clear explanation or even empathy”- he allows this great injustice, this betrayal, to go unexplained, unattended  to. Not even deserving empathy.

In his presence and in the presence of the group of  people, you “have kind of been blurred out and disappeared”, your innermost, most intense feelings ignored, discounted, unattended to, as if they meant nothing to anyone.

Your “visceral anger towards him” is about being ignored, discounted, as if “what (you) are going through is not important”.

“Even though I hate him now, he was once very close to me”- the intensity of your anger toward him is proportional to the extent of your connection with him, the connection, or love that you felt with him.

It enrages you that he categorizes you “as an ‘other”‘ in front of the members of the group while you remember so well and still feel that deep connection with him, those times when you were close to being almost the same person, not two others.

You “feel insignificant… weak.. too weak because of him” in his presence and in the group. You wish “someone else had the guts to stand up to him and support me instead of  silently supporting him”, support him in silencing you.

My closing thoughts for now: I believe that there is only one relationship that produces this intensity of betrayal that you feel, and that is the relationship of a child with a parent. The child’s connection to the parent is real, pure, honest, and complete, unconditional and uncompromising.

Oftentimes, the parent does not reciprocate and betrays the child. It is a heart breaking experience, one that many never overcome. What you experienced with this man, that connection, I believe,  was similar to the connection you felt to a parent, minus the sexual element.

With him you re-experienced that very painful, yet common betrayal, that  of a parent betraying his or her child.

anita