Psychotherapy Blogbriefs is about my experiences, learnings, discoveries, thoughts and suggestions as a therapist in Santa Fe over the past 18 years, and as a human during the course of my life.
Seems to me that any thoughtful person would have to be curious about what it is that would allow someone to remain in a relationship when there have been multiple betrayals within that relationship. Why wouldn't that person simply pick up and leave the betrayer behind? Oh, yes, we can assume that there is love in the relationship, on both parts. Yet this clearly isn't enough to either prevent the infidelities, or to create a happy situation. Then, of course, in the aftermath of these betrayals, there is broken trust, and this breach runs in both directions now, since the betrayed party has taken to secretly spying on the betrayer by looking at emails and texts.
So what would allow this situation to continue? Is the betrayed party simply a masochist, addicted to being hurt? Maybe they feel that they don't deserve anything better. Maybe their self esteem is so low that it somehow feels right that they should sustain these injuries, and that they should forgive them repeatedly, rather than taking good emotional and spiritual care of themselves.
In any case, unhappiness abounds, and it becomes clear that something will need to change. How can effective and healthy changes then be made?
