The tragedy is not having sex with strangers, but living estranged with the person you share a bed with. This is often the greatest betrayal that society blesses far too easily.
At the deepest core of what we call "betrayal" is not always the real search for another body. What can be present instead is a desperate, almost self-destructive attempt to reclaim the Self, buried beneath the structures of marriage, fatherhood and constantly repetitive responsibilities. In truth, we often betray not so much our partners, but rather the prison we voluntarily lived in until it became our second skin. When a man in his sovereign consciousness is reduced to a mere administrative function, to an ATM, a home care person or a gear in the family machine, then the unconscious can begin to dig an emergency exit, marked by a screaming instinctual sign: Here I am still alive, here I am a desired person and no tool to be used.
I wouldn't fast forward this to any non-exclusive relationship form either. Multiple partners are not automatically betrayal. The real question is deeper. Not only in whether there is exclusivity, but from which inner place a form of relationship is lived. From freedom, truth and common clarity. Or out of restlessness, avoidance and fear of being really fixed or being really touched. Open relationships can also be an honest expression of desire. And they too can become an elegant bypass of depth. It's not the form that decides itself. But the level of awareness, responsibility and inner voice that lives within her.
Behold the chemistry of this forbidden shower. His power does not necessarily come from the other person's ability, but often from giving us the illusion of rising from the dead. In the cage of marriage, you become an open book, learned by heart to nausea in your boring details that killed amazement. In betrayal, on the other hand, you reinvent your being. You put on a fresh face that is not yet tainted by the demands of the community, the smell of the kitchen and the noise of the children. It's a blatant theft of time, a robbery of seconds of your life that has become the commodity of others so you can sacrifice to the self in you that hungers for uniqueness.
But the existential tragedy is that betrayal is often a double illusion: an escape from a wide prison only to seek shelter in a tight hiding place, and that hiding place can end up becoming a smaller cell. You seek freedom through the pores of a foreign body, only to bitterly discover that you carry your misery with you wherever you go. The third person in this absurd equation is often a temporary chemical sedative that numbs the pain of emptiness for a few moments, and then confronts you even more fiercely with your naked truth: that you are a broken being, incapable of mending your crumbling life, and so you reach for it. Destroying the ruins, hoping that in the glow of the fire there might be some false sense of existence.
And yet it would be too easy to read every collapse as a failure. Sometimes it's not life that breaks down, but a way of life that hasn't been worn inside for a long time. I would not romanticize that. Not every fracture is wisdom. Not all destruction is rebirth. But some breakdowns are the first honest interruption of a long-managed untruth. They are not feeling uplifted. More like raw. Embarrassing. Disorienting. And yet, right there, something can become visible, which has long been buried under functioning, duty and adaptation.
And here we reach the height of devastation: the emotional betrayal, or what I call the silent divorce within the walls. That extreme alienation when you're sitting next to your partner sleeping in their bed while your mind and heart live in a distant space far away. You're doing some kind of professional acting as a precautionary measure to avoid total collapse, but you're slowly destroying your inner truthfulness. Worse yet: the collective norm often blesses this emotional hypocrisy and baptizes it in the name of sacrificial willingness and patience, when in reality it can become a form of organized moral rot.
So what to do with it. First, do not continue to manage the split, as if it were somehow still portable. Do not immediately approach the next solution. Not yet on to the next affair. Not yet on to the next explanation. Not too fast for the spiritual interpretation of the whole thing. But look closer. What is no longer alive inside you. Where did you begin only to function. What truth are you avoiding because its consequence would be uncomfortable. Because it could mean the end. A confrontation. A loss. Only there does something that can be called dignity, clarity or change begin again.
This terrible divide between mortal duty and impossible desire is one of the inner fields where depression can take shape. Depression is not a temporary sadness. But she's not the only thing either. It can be the collapse of the whole soul after a long journey of little betrayals on your own self. It can be the moment when a person realizes that he is trapped in a life story unlike him, and that he has exhausted every trick of escape, including betrayal, only to reach the end of the tunnel... Finding emptiness.
Joe Turan
I wouldn't fast forward this to any non-exclusive relationship form either. Multiple partners are not automatically betrayal. The real question is deeper. Not only in whether there is exclusivity, but from which inner place a form of relationship is lived. From freedom, truth and common clarity. Or out of restlessness, avoidance and fear of being really fixed or being really touched. Open relationships can also be an honest expression of desire. And they too can become an elegant bypass of depth. It's not the form that decides itself. But the level of awareness, responsibility and inner voice that lives within her.
Behold the chemistry of this forbidden shower. His power does not necessarily come from the other person's ability, but often from giving us the illusion of rising from the dead. In the cage of marriage, you become an open book, learned by heart to nausea in your boring details that killed amazement. In betrayal, on the other hand, you reinvent your being. You put on a fresh face that is not yet tainted by the demands of the community, the smell of the kitchen and the noise of the children. It's a blatant theft of time, a robbery of seconds of your life that has become the commodity of others so you can sacrifice to the self in you that hungers for uniqueness.
But the existential tragedy is that betrayal is often a double illusion: an escape from a wide prison only to seek shelter in a tight hiding place, and that hiding place can end up becoming a smaller cell. You seek freedom through the pores of a foreign body, only to bitterly discover that you carry your misery with you wherever you go. The third person in this absurd equation is often a temporary chemical sedative that numbs the pain of emptiness for a few moments, and then confronts you even more fiercely with your naked truth: that you are a broken being, incapable of mending your crumbling life, and so you reach for it. Destroying the ruins, hoping that in the glow of the fire there might be some false sense of existence.
And yet it would be too easy to read every collapse as a failure. Sometimes it's not life that breaks down, but a way of life that hasn't been worn inside for a long time. I would not romanticize that. Not every fracture is wisdom. Not all destruction is rebirth. But some breakdowns are the first honest interruption of a long-managed untruth. They are not feeling uplifted. More like raw. Embarrassing. Disorienting. And yet, right there, something can become visible, which has long been buried under functioning, duty and adaptation.
And here we reach the height of devastation: the emotional betrayal, or what I call the silent divorce within the walls. That extreme alienation when you're sitting next to your partner sleeping in their bed while your mind and heart live in a distant space far away. You're doing some kind of professional acting as a precautionary measure to avoid total collapse, but you're slowly destroying your inner truthfulness. Worse yet: the collective norm often blesses this emotional hypocrisy and baptizes it in the name of sacrificial willingness and patience, when in reality it can become a form of organized moral rot.
So what to do with it. First, do not continue to manage the split, as if it were somehow still portable. Do not immediately approach the next solution. Not yet on to the next affair. Not yet on to the next explanation. Not too fast for the spiritual interpretation of the whole thing. But look closer. What is no longer alive inside you. Where did you begin only to function. What truth are you avoiding because its consequence would be uncomfortable. Because it could mean the end. A confrontation. A loss. Only there does something that can be called dignity, clarity or change begin again.
This terrible divide between mortal duty and impossible desire is one of the inner fields where depression can take shape. Depression is not a temporary sadness. But she's not the only thing either. It can be the collapse of the whole soul after a long journey of little betrayals on your own self. It can be the moment when a person realizes that he is trapped in a life story unlike him, and that he has exhausted every trick of escape, including betrayal, only to reach the end of the tunnel... Finding emptiness.
Joe Turan
