Auditioning for Betrayal

No one talks about how hard it is to love someone who does not love themselves. (~yung pueblo)​

There is a common misconception that narcissists love themselves. That is a fragile facade, a self-image their ego creates to avoid facing their inner chaos. Beneath the surface, and behind their narcissistic behavior, are deep feelings of insecurity, emptiness, and anger. Unlike genuine love, which is founded on empathy and compassion, a narcissist’s love is driven by fear and a strong need to self-protect. And their lack of self-worth seeps through the cracks of their need to control and feel superior to others. This lack of awareness in them is what leads to dangerous and destructive behavior; it ultimately leads to severe pain and trauma in you.​

him: There’s not a single doubt in my mind about you. Maybe I should just be more confident in myself.​

you: Definitely be confident in yourself. I’m confident in you. Because there’s no doubt how I feel about you.​

him: I’ve never trusted someone’s intentions as much as I trust yours. Hard to believe sometimes. Probably always will be.​

It was nearly a month into your new romance when this exchange took place. You hadn’t said it out loud yet, but you were in love. And so was he. At the time, this felt like a confession between two lovers professing their affection for one another. You remember thinking, and saying out loud, that this new romance made you feel like a teenager. You were giddy with excitement to hear his voice and see his name pop up on your phone. You stayed up late talking on the phone with him for hours. And you’d text him immediately upon hanging up, just for one last interaction before bed. He reciprocated all of this, drowning you in affection you’d never experienced before. Finally. The love and man of my dreams does exist, you thought.​

You’d never been loved this way. And you’d never felt love like this. The stuff of teenage dreams. Only this time it was better, or so you thought, because you had the luxury of enjoying those youthful butterflies while having the wisdom of years in your age. Wisdom. How ironic.​

The words in that conversation say more than what is on the page. So much is hidden between the lines. Maybe I should just be more confident in myself, should have told you something then. It didn’t. Or at least you ignored any inkling of caution. And if that wasn’t enough, the Hard to believe sometimes. Probably always will be was another signal you failed to notice. Doubt. This was but one of many times he made statements like this, expressing how hard it was to believe what you said was true or that the love you offered was real. Despite your sincerity, the doubt he brought would cast a dark shadow over the relationship. The warmth of the sun was brief. We staved off the darkness as long as we could, but its inevitable claws would soon take hold and bury the golden light we once basked in.​

This is never going to work if you don’t trust me. ​

Hindsight is 20/20. For you, your feelings were palpable and sincere. At the time, you brushed off conversations like this, reminding him in the moment that this was, in fact, very real. But you had no idea that the lack of trust would become a front-and-center demon that ultimately destroyed the relationship. And looking back now, it showed up immediately, within the first hours or days of the relationship. No amount of your gushing over him with your words and reminding him of it throughout the relationship could save you from what would transpire. You believed you could love him through the hard moments, and that just being you would be enough to get you two through anything. You had no idea how naive you were.​

The writing was on the wall. And you ignored every word.​

i thought we would have more time

the end was not just unwanted;

it was completely unexpected

when trouble arose,

i hoped things would quickly return to normal

(~yung pueblo, the way forward)

Nobody warns you about the invisible labor of loving someone who is at war with their own reflection, someone who has more self-hatred than they realize until it becomes too much to contain, and so they release it onto you. Nobody tells you that this brings a kind of loneliness and heartbreak so painful that it will bring you to your knees and take all of the life out of you. Nobody talks about it. It’s as if the person you love is gripping sand, and you are continuously pouring tiny grains back into their palm, only to watch them slip through the cracks of their fingers. No matter how much you give, and the tighter he grasps, the more the sand falls out of reach. A stream of love and hope disappearing onto the earth.​

You started to notice patterns. A fear of abandonment. A fear of losing me. A fear of me being taken from him, by something or someone else. These thoughts started to build within you, brick by brick. You had no idea that over time these bricks would eventually become an impenetrable wall between you and him.

​It started off in one of the first few months of the relationship. An instance in which, while he was visiting, you were in a lighthearted conversation with his brother. To you, the dialogue was meaningless. Jokes were exchanged. Laughter was shared. You had thought it would be important to build a positive relationship with the person he was closest to in his family. Suddenly, as you were sitting next to him when this took place, and he could see every innocent word you typed, his body language and facial expression changed. He stiffened, grew rigid, and became cold. This shift confused you. When you asked for an explanation to better understand this shift in him, he met you with silence or little information. You were being punished with silence. From that interaction, your attention was momentarily elsewhere. Even though you and your heart were still his, he perceived this as a threat. He focused on the intentions of other men and what they might want or think from interactions like that. But it’s your brother, you thought. I’m not interested in your brother like that. Again, you repeated, it’s your brother. Bewilderment knocked the wind out of you. From that interaction, you learned it was safer to keep your distance from his brother, a concept that seemed foreign to you. You thought that someone as important as his brother was someone you should befriend. But this experience taught you otherwise.​

So you began to self-censor. From then on, you hardly engaged or spoke to his brother much at all. If he was on the phone with his brother while you were around, you remained quiet, unsure what to do or say. Your natural inclination was to say hi and engage in banter and conversation. But you stayed quiet and held back. You learned it was expected and safer to remain silent and small.​

Tiny grains of sand slipped out of his grip. He squeezed and held tighter.​

A few months later, when you began mending a broken relationship with your sister, you noticed more shifts. Each time you traveled to visit her, or you and she grew closer, coincided with a massive fight with him. On your first visit back to see your sister, the trip started with a girls’ spa day filled with cocktails by the pool and the kind of girl talk only sisters can have. It ended with a late-night phone call in which you defended yourself for a crime you didn’t understand or commit. This was a new side to him now. This was also the first time you felt betrayed by him. You felt betrayed by his doubting you and your intentions, with no foundation or reason to the contrary. What had I done? You posted a picture of yourself in a one-piece bathing suit by the pool from your spa day. An unsexy, candid moment with your sister that he accused you of posting for male attention on social media. Tell me, how many guys liked and commented on that picture? Shock slapped you across the face, hearing his remark: I…I…I don’t…what?​

This unleashed a flood of deeper accusations from him about how you “weren’t in reality” and “were seeking attention” because you were “obsessed with social media.” You were being scrutinized in ways that baffled you and didn’t align with how you live your life or who you are. He began mislabeling your actions and the intentions behind them. And no amount of your explaining the truth would convince him otherwise. The quotes you posted that inspired you or resonated were assumed to be hidden messages to the world about your hate for him. (The irony in that now is laughable. A fate he created for himself.) The photos you posted of yourself were accused of wanting male attention and validation.​

I’ve never trusted someone’s intentions as much as I trust yours. When did that become a lie? Was it just something he said that sounded good in the moment? Your intentions had never changed. Your feelings had never waned. The only thing that changed was him, or maybe that’s who he was all along? You were the constant while he attempted to spin and unravel your truth.

​Being so deeply misunderstood in this moment, in all of these moments, felt like a deep betrayal. You’d never considered it would be possible for someone to misunderstand you and mislabel you so severely, especially when you had so clearly laid a foundation to the contrary. I’m yours. I have no doubt about you or how I feel about you. I’ve never felt so sure about something. Your words obviously fell on deaf ears, lost in the void. Or, more likely, they were no comparison to the doubt and distrust he carried into the relationship.

​The times you needed or wanted to travel anywhere but to him became a source of contention. A trip to your sister’s for just a visit or to take care of the home you owned created anxiety in you. You began noticing your vigilance around these topics and trips. Your nervous system began working overtime. Fights erupted before, after, and during. You tried to address it beforehand to create assurance and to avoid the inevitable fight that would ensue. During your trips to see your sister, you began hiding your suffering and broken heart from her. A futile attempt to muffle the cries you let out late in the night. You even noticed that you started asking for permission to visit her, which he gingerly granted once or twice. Go. I won’t be mad. You accepted this with caution, only to be met with the inevitable outcome you suspected to be waiting in the shadows.​

Each one of these occurrences broke your heart and your spirit a little more. Tiny cracks in the pavement eventually led to a massive shattering of the foundation. The doubt he had in you, the increased disbelief, and the ultimate lack of trust felt like severe betrayal to you. It was utterly incomprehensible that he made the accusations he did about you and your character, when all you intended was to love and be loved. You had no interest or time for anything else. Before him, you had put in great effort to find a committed, serious relationship. And with him, you thought you had found it. All the searching, all the games, all the bullshit that came before him, who cared, you thought. I found my person. I found my forever.​

It’s like he doesn’t know you at all, your best friend responded after you confided in her following one of these fights. And, honestly, it’s starting to be disrespectful to those of us who do know you. She was always calm and level-headed as she listened, able to stave off judgment and opinions. She became a beacon of safety in the never-ending chaos. But most of all was this gift she gave you: she, in essence, was saying, I still see you. I believe you. I know you, and I know who you are. The sanity and stability that she awarded you as you were starting to crumble during this time were a true gift. A hand that held you while the ground beneath you was disintegrating. A warm hug in the cold.​

Eventually, a partner’s lack of trust can inadvertently become a form of emotional unavailability, leaving you, and him, feeling lonely within the relationship. It creates a wedge between you two and cuts off all life force for meaningful connection. The result is utter chaos in you for the mental and emotional gymnastics you’re required to do in order to manage this insecurity.​

This was your fate.​

The things lurking around inside the mind can be just as dangerous as tangible threats. (Colleen Hoover, Verity)​

With the imagination of someone who has experienced broken trust, infidelity, and the accompanying trauma, everything and everyone is a potential threat.​

It didn’t take long before you realized that the two of you were starting from very different places when it came to trust. On one hand, for you, trust was generally freely given, only to be taken away by someone’s words or actions. This was akin to the concept “innocent until proven guilty.” Plus, you relied on their character as a determining factor for trust. For instance, “I know this person to be the kind of person to do or not do X; therefore, I have trust in them.”​

In contrast, it seemed that, for him, it was “guilty until proven innocent.” Trust was most definitely not a given and not assumed. Trust was earned, if that. However, it was very unclear how it was you were to earn it. And it became apparent that his trust in you was absent, and presumably never present to begin with. In the beginning, it seemed like you had complete trust in him, while he had only doubt and skepticism for you. This was the foundation your love was built upon. A sinking ground that would ultimately swallow you whole.​

These stark differences led to variances in how each of you interpreted mundane, day-to-day interactions. For instance, your going for a walk with a girlfriend on a random Tuesday night, could be met with a passive-aggressive comment like, “Hope you have a good walk with your ‘so-called friend.’” Every basic, non-threatening action you took was interpreted through the lens of distrust or infidelity. And with that, you would never win. If you were happy without him for an afternoon, it meant you were one step closer to leaving or committing an offense and betrayal he created. You would forever be looked at through the lens of a threat, a character not of your own making.

​Despite your sincerely telling him that you were all his, that you were smitten, a “happy birthday” text he saw on your phone to a former friend that you hadn’t seen or spoken to in years became: you’re talking to all these guys in different cities and states. You keep options open. You’re probably talking to multiple guys all the time.

​To you, what he suggested and accused you of was not only wrong, but also incomprehensible and inconceivable. It wasn’t just simply not possible; it wasn’t in the realm of options you considered or wanted. It wasn’t on the table, let alone in the same pantry. Infidelity. “Keeping options open.” “Talking to other guys.” These aren’t items to pull from your arsenal because they were never present to begin with in your world, and let alone in your mind. These accusations stunned you as much as they hurt you. To be so misunderstood, misjudged, and wrongly accused felt like drowning. It was as though your head was being held underwater, and you dramatically clawed and fought for the surface and fought for air. Every gulp you took only suffocated you more, filling your lungs with heavy fluid when they desperately yearned for the lightness of oxygen.​

Injustice. It was an injustice you felt. And to you, injustice devoid of logic and reasoning felt like it was killing you from the inside out.​

I don’t trust anyone. He once admitted. That was the most honest thing he ever said to you.​

It didn’t matter what was or was not present for you, your mind, or your character. What mattered was what drove his thoughts. The stories he told himself, either in the present or stemming from past experiences of infidelity, broken trust, and abandonment, were far stronger than any truth you told. I get these thoughts sometimes, he would admit later, a mediocre attempt at apologizing for overreacting. Only on one occasion did he ever admit that he overreacted, after an all-night blow-up fight on your birthday in which you sobbed and begged and pleaded for forgiveness to a crime you did not come close to committing. Even so, you apologized until your voice was raw and your eyes could hardly make any more tears. You had succumbed to the offense he so desperately wanted to pin you for. He couldn’t have been more wrong, but you crumbled anyway, desperate that if you showed remorse, he would loosen his grip and soften his rage. It didn’t. Now he had you right where he wanted you.​

Eventually, the stories we tell ourselves become a prison. We become beholden to every flow in the narrative, every turn of events. It becomes the only version we know or want to know, even if evidence of the contrary is sitting right in front of you, asking and trying to love you. I hope one day you can trust and believe that I love you, a whisper that is lost now.​

The stories he told himself had been carved into stone. No amount of “loving him through it” could erase the ending. He looked for confirmation of the events he knew. Anything that came close to its fate was evidence he clung to, evidence that you were a threat and could not be trusted. Sadly, the lack of trust he had in you eroded the trust you once had in him. The sinkhole beneath your romance pulled this relationship down, a grip too strong to fight against.

​He once told you, I hate feeling like I could lose you at any moment, as if your existence in the world was a threat to his peace. It turned your independence into an act of betrayal. Between the lines lies the truth: it wasn’t that he was afraid of losing you; it was that he never trusted you to stay.​

You cannot truly love someone you are trying to control, and someone you are constantly auditioning for betrayal. ​

Please, you are pushing me away, you pleaded. But the words fell into the void between you, unheard or unwanted.

Ultimately, the story ended exactly as he feared it would. Because he slowly backed you to the edge of a cliff where you dangled for longer than your fingers could hold. Until finally, you had no other choice but to let go and fall into the unknown.

i was not ready to have a new chapter forced upon me and to be handed such a heavy feeling of loss[;]

all i have in front of me is the great task of creating a new idea of happiness and home. (~yung pueblo, the way forward)