Betrayal. This word was thrown at me this week by a beloved partner, in his own fear and anger that my actions could bring the virus into our home. The details are less important—he said, she said etc.—than the power of that word for both of us. The word has lived amongst us in our marriage for nearly two decades, after all, though neither of us likes seeing how each has betrayed the trust of the other. The rupture this week seems to have passed over us in these holy days, yet I’m left with wonderings that beckon…
At root, without judgment or accusation, ‘betrayal’ points to a rupture in expectations and need, dependence and impermanence. From within the story, one person’s actions do not meet the expectations or needs of another. A sense of rupture arises because the one who is surprised thought the other shared his/her assumptions, need, expectations. In the throes of fear or anger, it feels like trust has broken, an agreement has been ruptured. An assurance or dependability feels torn open, like a wound.
Place this into the context of a healthy and determined marriage between two very different people who yet embody a love for one another in the best ways they know. What does betrayal mean in a container of determined and lived trust, for decades? As I wrestled with my own feelings from this encounter, I found myself smiling with a quiet, wry thought: Who has been married for nearly twenty years and not betrayed his/her partner? We betray each other all the time.
Some of the betrayals have been large, requiring ongoing decisions of steadiness to stay the course of union. On the one hand, making a big promise at engagement that is then refused fulfillment in the early months of marriage or on the other, emotional investments in spiritually intimate companionships that nourish one but threaten the other in the marriage bond. Both can be considered big betrayals of the primacy of the marriage.
Then there are the small betrayals, like… You said you were going to go on a walk and keep six feet apart….and you didn’t. or You left the basement window open again…or You said tonight was our night and now you say you have to work? or All I wanted was one hour of your undivided attention and time, and you forgot to show up. These ‘betrayals’ are the natural complement to living in close proximity with another person, in a deeper intimacy than the kind that feels good all the time. These small ones can take the form of ‘felt large ones’ if the stress level is high enough. Say, in a global pandemic.
Both ‘large’ and ‘small’ betrayals can be considered necessary choices, if they are indeed conscious and intentional choices. Many of our betrayals are not conscious choices, but actions made from wounded places needing healing. Many betrayals are unconscious actions, made by living in worlds and assumptions not shared by the other, not needing to be shared by the other. In this sense, the conscious discernments can be made to preserve the marriage, amidst family dynamics and spiritual growth. A committed, devoted marriage can actually grow and expand to envelop the divergences in the needs of each. I would even argue that a healthy marriage needs to expand in this fashion, in order to stay alive, to thrive.
So how does one sustain the steadiness of devotion when s/he feels betrayed by the other?
For myself, the first thing I’ve learned to do is breathe. Count to ten, or twenty, to welcome the feeling of being accused…or desiring to accuse. Anger and rage may be the best energy to welcome, to release in healthy ways, outside of the immediate relational spaces.
Speaking as a woman in a historic tradition of Christian faith, I have spent probably 5-6 years enraged at the betrayals of my own faith communities and our institutions—betrayals of neglect and silencing, shaming of bodies and dissociations of spirit, utter refusals to awaken to the hidden and overt pains of women’s experience, wisdom. The God I was traditioned into ultimately broke herSelf open to awaken me to a deeper and more profound Way of Restorative Wisdom; yet I am now deeply suspicious of any ‘new’ God language at all. Such is the depth of my being betrayed by what/who I was told was Sacred.
My task in these years has been to find the fidelity in betrayal, to use Peter Rollins phrasing…to search for the deeper Story, the implicit Way, the healing Path of wholeness and restoration. I chose for years to stay in a kind of relationship (marriage) and a (male-normed) worldview that has betrayed me as a woman for centuries. Unconsciously and in my situations, without malice, but no less genuinely and deeply betrayed. Alongside this raw enraged journey, a Way of Wisdom did find me, in such abundance and overwhelming fruit of Spirit that I/we could not but surrender and receive. I surrendered to its Invitations, diverging from all I had known before. I breathed through the incongruities and the potential threats that could implode a life. All the while, I knew that my surrender into this restorative Wisdom way could and even would be experienced as betrayal by many in my life. And it was. It was experienced as rupture, incomprehensibility, and worse, complete with refusal, requests for no contact by those who said they loved me, and attempted interventions to coerce me back into previous norms. It still appears in my marriage sometimes as felt-betrayal…
…because my beloved partner and I no longer share his worldview, his commitment to the church, his need for security and dependability in his own eyes. I respect his worldview, as it is so present and collaboratively created by so many in our world today. But I no longer share it. The world has grown so much more mysterious and interactive, energetic and inviting for me, for those with whom I do share a worldview. My work is being in my own world, now, here, at home, alongside his world, all without triggering rage and hurt. I honor his commitment to the church, as it is his calling and joy. I even offer my gifts within his setting, when invited. But the church as it is conceived and embodied today is no longer where I spend my time or energy, but for my commitment to him. I am no longer committed to the institutional church the way he is, though I (for now, and for as long as Spirit seems to desire it) remain credentialed within it. I even observe and honor his need for security and dependability, watching him be who he is acquiring supplies and groceries that benefit us both in this pandemic. I breathe into this need of his, except when it confines my need for wide open spaces or attempts to interrupt the connection within which I thrive.
At root here, it seems to me, each of us is fiercely loyal and faithful to the other in our years of marriage that have placed the Sacred as our primary loyalty. Each of us also regularly betrays the other, though not with the sense of immorality or malice. Each of us is way too cognitive and articulate, too highly functional-intentional for the offhand unconscious acting-out kind of betrayal. But with a Sacred that has betrayed me as a woman, and the Sacred that has found me as woman, you can see the train-wrecks that will indubitably happen—in these past years and in the years to come. I can get seduced into wanting him to approve and legitimate who I now know the Sacred to be, and he can yearn for the time when Sacred meant the same things to both of us. But neither of those things need happen for the Sacred to be precisely how the Sacred is.
As a Loyalist, a particular Enneagram type, my beloved will chafe at this statement of assured betrayal in our us. Another difference, we see. J Our consistency does illustrate, however, the diversity of worlds and choices both of us have had to make to continue to mature, spiritually, relationally, with love. We are blessed to be in union as One, always changing, always remaining One with all, conscious or not.
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