My High School Reunion: Facing a Friend Who Betrayed Me

I recently attended my 30th high school reunion. I was nervous. So nervous, in fact, that I had decided not to go. High school wasn't a laugh-riot for me though I wasn't bullied. My marks were good. I had friends. 
Sadly though, one of those friends betrayed me. After two years of being with the first boy I'd said I loved, the first boy I had sex with, we broke up when I went to school in another city. Days after we broke up and just days before I left, I went to a party. There, on a couch sitting on my now-ex's lap, was my friend.
You could say that what she did was fine -- after all, he and I had broken up. We weren't technically going out. That's essentially what she said.
But I know better.
Friends don't do that to other friends. There are enough guys in the world that, unless you're convinced this one is your soulmate and you're willing to sacrifice your friendship for that, you can obey the law of the sisterhood. She and he broke up a month or two later when she started dating another guy. 
It took me years to get over my anger. Her name made my blood boil. The thought of her having any measure of happiness in life seemed like a bad karmic joke. Eventually I got past it, though I've nursed a simmering resentment for the decades since.
So when she was one of the first to RSVP to the reunion, I decided to just stay home.
At the last minute, however, I changed my mind. 
I'd had a mind-shift. I remembered back to what I knew of her before she dated my ex. She craved attention from men. She was self-absorbed. Almost childish at times. With what I know now, it's easy for me to recognize that she desperately needed validation from others (men!) that she was worthy. She's now on husband #3 so apparently she's still looking.
But I was able to recognize that her dating my ex wasn't about trying to hurt me. It wasn't about me at all. Surely she knew that my still-aching heart would be a casualty of her choice. But obviously I didn't matter more than her need to have someone pick her.
I decided that I would attend the reunion and that I would let go of 30 years of bitterness. That I would note the fact that all of us had undoubtedly changed in three decades, including me. 
So I did. 

She sought me out. Not to apologize – I doubt that even dawned on her – but simply to catch up. In the course of our conversation she made note of another event, when she'd suddenly quit a job that I'd got for her. A good job. I had thought it was because I'd been promoted and she was jealous. Turns out she quit because when she asked for an upcoming night off to attend a school dance the supervisor said she could have it off...if she gave him a blow job.

I was stunned. I'd had no idea.

I realized how often we make assumptions about others' actions based on a piece of information, not the whole story. I asked why she'd never told me what happened. "Because I thought I'd done something wrong," she said. Instead, without the maturity or perspective that comes with age and confidence, she quit.

What my friend did to me still sucks. It's still something that I hope my daughter never does to a friend. But the bitterness has, for the most part, evaporated. I feel sorry for her. For her unquenchable need to be adored. For her own inability to admit her shortcomings. For her continued quest to fill from the outside what can only be filled from within.

She recently had a health scare and she told me that when her third husband came into the hospital where she'd been taken that the look on his face – total panic – made her finally realize how much she mattered to him. In that instant, she said, she realized that this was truly the man for her. Her marriage, she said, changed. It became a priority. 

I was glad to hear. Finally. 

In Ourselves We Trust (Everyone else has to earn it!)

"It's easy to write everyone else off, harder to be responsible for your own judgments about who is and isn't worthy of your trust. It's harder still to tolerate the uncertainty and vulnerability that come from making such moment-to-moment judgments."

The words above could easily have been written or said by me in the months, even years following D-Day. I had trusted and I'd been screwed. And not just by my husband's cheating. At the same time, I'd had a friend betray my trust. Then my mother, who had spent most of my adolescence in an alcoholic fog, went and died on me – just when she and I were finally learning to forgive each other. How dare he! How dare she! How dare all of them!
I was furious with the whole lot of them for letting me down. And it was far easier to direct my anger outward – look what you've done to me! – than really examine the truth, which was that I'd never been very good at protecting myself. That I had a lifetime of trusting people who showed me repeatedly that I shouldn't trust them. But I would simply ignore that part of them that wasn't trustworthy -- that part that I'd seen lie to other people. Or betray other people. Or even, in some cases, betray me. I would quiet that voice in me that pointed out that these people couldn't be trusted, couldn't be counted on. And instead, I would blindly believe in them.
And then? Well...you know the rest.
What's amazing to me about that opening quote is that it wasn't spoken by a betrayed wife or betrayed husband. It was uttered by a war veteran, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. 
The thing with focusing our anger outward, at blaming everybody else for what happened, is that it defines us as victims. It takes away our power.
And it leaves us vulnerable to being betrayed again.
If we insist on others taking care of us, we relinquish responsibility for what happens to us. 
We get betrayed? Well, what did we expect? People can't be trusted, we decide. Then we go ahead and trust them anyway. Or perhaps, we don't trust anyone. Either way, we're not discerning. 
BUT. If we take responsibility, if we insist on only trusting those in our lives who have shown us repeatedly and over time that they can be trusted, we're far less likely to be blind-sided again. We're far less likely to "forgive" until we've seen hard evidence that the person seeking our forgiveness has done the tough work of figuring out why they hurt us in the first place. We're far less likely to overlook things that indicate untrustworthiness. He cheated on his last wife?  He cheated on his taxes? He short-changed the store clerk? He lied to his children about why he was late for their birthday party? He makes excuses to his boss for late proposals. Each and every time someone indicates they aren't trustworthy, our radar should send a clear message to our brains...which should inform our hearts. As a friend of mine says, the distance between our brains and hearts can be the longest 18 inches there is. And we should protect ourselves until we see, clearly and consistently, that he's taking responsibility for his actions and that his word means something.
It's contrary to how most of us think. We tend to trust until we're shown evidence that he can't be trusted. Thing is, in hindsight, most of us were aware of evidence. We just chose to ignore it. Or downplay it. Or assume that it didn't apply to us. (I know he cheated on his girlfriend but what he and I have is special. M'mmm...right.)
If there's one thing almost all Betrayed Wives Club members agree on, it's that we wish we'd trusted ourselves.
But it's not to late to start.