Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (17 page)

When we asked Rebecca whether she thought that the betrayals affected her ability to have relationships, she said, “I did not have any friends whatsoever for about twenty years. Except, however briefly, maybe three or four months, and then I would just fall apart and storm out. I still don't have any people I call friends, because friends are trustworthy, and they'll do anything for you, and they're not in it just for themselves. I have some really good acquaintances, but I really don't have any friends. So when I have to put down an emergency number, I put down my most recent therapist's. As a friend. Because . . . it's enormously harmed my ability to be in any kind of relationship.”

She went on: “I try people out; I semitrust a couple of people. Actually, three, besides my most recent therapist, whom I do trust. But yeah, I've just been let down so deeply, from infancy, that it's really hard to trust myself. And now that I have a peaceful life where I have myself, for the first time in my life, I don't like people messing that up. I feel as if I have to have some control because most of my life I really didn't have any control. Or I didn't feel like I had any control.”

Rebecca has faced her betrayal and is doing better now, and we say more about that in chapter 9, but she still suffers from the effects of her early betrayals: “I try to stay out of situations where I'm going to get scrambled brains. That means I'm almost agoraphobic, people might call me agoraphobic. But I just prefer my own company; I'm very introverted, and I like myself—finally! So my neighbor, who I'm friendly with, just loves to talk about other people negatively behind their backs—so God only knows what she's saying about me—but never to their faces. I don't trust that. So, I do things with and for her, but she's not my friend. I give that gift of friendship very sparingly. And . . . I know several wonderful people who I can call on, if need be.”

Rebecca agreed that was definitely a change: “I mean, I really never knew anyone because I was just trying so hard to survive and having most of a master's degree and another full master's degree and college teaching experience and having to be a secretary because I couldn't cope with anything else. It was very, very hard.”

Rebecca's problems with relationships can be traced directly back to her early betrayals. She did not develop trust in herself or in other important people and was left to try to figure it out on her own. She was aware that she was unstable and reactive to betrayal, and her adaptation to this was to stay out of relationships, for the most part.

Cathy's adaptation was different and perhaps more common. Cathy needed to be in relationships, but she had no idea how to pick partners or friends. Her first husband turned out to be a pedophile. She says of that relationship, “This was the improved life, this was the first upgrade. I had no clue. I had no clue of anything normal or normalcy or stability or safety.” She was then married two more times, to men who emotionally abused her. Finally, she is currently with a man who does not abuse her and whom she describes as her best friend.

Betrayal and Revictimization

Cathy's pattern was one of revictimization. Individuals who were abused in childhood are at higher risk for later sexual, emotional, and physical victimization than are people who were not abused in childhood.
^27.
For instance, Anne DePrince found that the presence of betrayal trauma before the age of eighteen was associated with revictimization after age eighteen.
^28.
She also found that individuals who report being revictimized in young adulthood following an interpersonal assault in childhood perform worse on reasoning problems that involve interpersonal relationships and safety information, compared to individuals who have not been revictimized.

This cruel aftermath of abuse is a puzzle. Why would early victimization leave one more vulnerable to later victimization? Robyn Gobin and Jennifer Freyd have investigated this perplexing phenomenon. They studied revictimization within a betrayal trauma framework among a sample of college students. They found that individuals who reported experiencing high-betrayal trauma at any time point (childhood, adolescence, or adulthood) were more likely to report experiences of trauma that were high in betrayal during adolescence and adulthood.
^29.
The effects are strong. Those who experience childhood trauma that was high in betrayal are much more likely to be victimized in adolescence and even more likely to be victimized in adulthood.

Revictimization may be related to the awareness of betrayal. We wanted to investigate this possibility. One of the difficulties with doing research on betrayal and betrayal trauma is finding ways to measure betrayal and the concepts related to it. As we mentioned, the BBTS (Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey) was created to measure exposure to betrayal, but what about measuring awareness of betrayal? It's a sticky problem. That is why, with Robyn Gobin, we created the Betrayal Detection Measure to measure people's ability to detect betrayal accurately and to be aware of it.
^30.
The Betrayal Detection Measure includes measuring participants' adult history of common betrayals (such as having a friend betray a secret) that are not necessarily categorized as traumatic. Their level of awareness for betrayals, accuracy in detecting them, and reaction to them also are assessed. We wanted to examine instances where individuals are aware that they are being betrayed but simultaneously choose to ignore the betrayal, in effect decreasing their awareness of it. We found that individuals with a childhood history of betrayal trauma showed a lower awareness of some adult betrayals.

One other possible contribution to revictimization is the impact that betrayal trauma has on the choice of a partner. Robyn Gobin investigated the possibility that exposure to betrayal trauma might affect the traits that are desired in potential romantic partners. Betrayal trauma theory suggests that social and cognitive development may be affected by early trauma, such that individuals develop survival strategies, particularly dissociation and lack of betrayal awareness, which may place them at risk for further victimization.
^31.
Several experiences of victimization in the context of relationships predicated on trust and dependence could contribute to the development of a relational schema whereby abuse is ordinary. Is there evidence for this possibility?

Robyn Gobin asked study participants to rate the desirability of several characteristics in potential romantic partners. She found that participants who reported experiences of revictimization (defined as the experience of more than one trauma perpetrated by someone close to them) differed from participants who reported only one experience of high-betrayal trauma, in their self-reported desire for a romantic partner who possessed the traits of loyalty, honesty, and compassion.
^32.
Preference for a partner who uses the tactic of verbal aggression was also associated with revictimization status. In other words, people who had been betrayed and then revictimized actually preferred partners who used verbal aggression. These findings suggest that multiple victimizations perpetrated by others who are close to us may affect our partner preferences.

How desirable are these characteristics in a mate? For most people, loyalty, honesty, compassion, reliability, and understanding are highly desirable. Yet for people who have been revictimized, they are not quite as preferred.

How undesirable is verbal aggression in a mate? For most of us, highly undesirable. If you have been revictimized by betrayal, apparently it is not so undesirable.

The seeds of revictimization start in childhood.
Indiscriminate friendliness
is a term used to describe a behavior pattern in young children, in which the children are overly friendly and trusting with strangers.
^33.
This pattern has been well documented among children who are adopted internationally and also among some maltreated children, including foster children. Researchers assume that inconsistency in caregiving has led to this indiscriminate friendliness. From a betrayal trauma theory perspective, however, we can understand this in terms of damaged trust and attachment mechanisms. In a healthy environment, young children learn to test the waters before being overly friendly or trusting. This learning helps protect them from victimization. If children don't develop this ability, due to early abuse, they are at a much greater risk of being revictimized later because they trust people they should not.

The Toxic Effects of Betrayal on Society

The intergenerational transmission of trauma is a well-known fact in the psychological literature.
^34.
Studies have found that children of Holocaust survivors are more likely to develop PTSD in stressful situations than are children of people who did not go through the Holocaust.

This intergenerational transmission of maltreatment, also known as the cycle of violence, refers to people who were maltreated as children and later become maltreating parents. Using the National Family Violence Survey, researchers found that men exposed to childhood domestic violence had a 13 percent increased risk of perpetrating child maltreatment.
^35.
Other researchers documented a 24 percent rate of childhood incest in mothers of maltreated children and 3 percent in the nonabused comparison group, suggesting that mothers of abused children were eight times more likely to be survivors of incest than were mothers of nonabused children.
^36.
A recent study demonstrated that mothers with a childhood history of multitype maltreatment were at an increased risk of either (a) directly perpetrating multiple types of maltreatment or (b) creating unsafe environments, which put their children in danger of being victimized.
^37.

Annmarie Hulette, Laura Kaehler, and Jennifer Freyd looked at the short- and long-term consequences of betrayal trauma in a sample of sixty-seven mother-child dyads.
^38.
The mothers and the children came to our laboratory at the University of Oregon. We found that experiences of high-betrayal trauma were related to higher levels of dissociation in both children and mothers. Furthermore, mothers who experienced high-betrayal trauma in childhood and were subsequently interpersonally revictimized in adulthood were shown to have higher levels of dissociation than mothers who were not revictimized in adulthood. Moreover, maternal revictimization status was associated with child interpersonal trauma history. These results may indicate that dissociation from a history of childhood betrayal trauma involves a persistent unawareness of future threats to both self and children in the environment. This study provides evidence that betrayal trauma can be passed through generations.

The societal effects of betrayal do not stop at the generational, individual, or relational line. Those effects extend to our institutions as well. Remember chapter 4? In that chapter, we talked about the wide range of institutional betrayal and even the recent research by Carly Smith and Jennifer Freyd showing that institutional betrayal exacerbates the harm of sexual assault. This research shows that institutional betrayal can hurt individuals. We believe it can also hurt societies. When institutions can no longer be trusted, the social fabric begins to fray.

“A time comes when silence is betrayal.” . . . Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. . . .

[S]ome of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. . . .

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. . . .

I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
^39.

This quote from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., given in 1967, called and still calls us to action in speaking up for those who have been betrayed, ourselves included.

Betrayal blindness is dangerous not just to individuals but to whole societies. By not being aware of our past betrayals, we not only are at great risk of repeating them, but betrayal blindness can result in wider betrayals. The best recent example of this is the happenings in Nazi Germany. There were betrayals on so many levels that led to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Germans felt betrayed after World War I and attempted to deal with that betrayal, not by facing and disclosing the betrayal they felt, but by turning to what looked safe on the surface—a government and a regime that established power by increasing suspicion and distrust among its citizenry. Neighbors betrayed neighbors. Children betrayed parents. Aryans betrayed Jews. The pain of all of these betrayals and the inability to face them led to a society based on fear and paranoia. This was the atmosphere that created the soil for the Holocaust—secrecy and blindness. As we shall see in the next chapter, later in the twentieth century South Africa took a different path to deal with betrayal, one that ended blindness to betrayal and resulted in healing and forgiveness.