Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (4 page)

As a young child, Kevin had a strong motivation to remain blind to his betrayal. During childhood and adolescence, we are learning who we are, how we fit into the world, and how to be accepted. We all remember how challenging this time can be. If Kevin had acknowledged to himself that he was being excluded and marginalized for reasons (such as skin color and facial features) he was powerless to change, it could have been a realization of devastating proportions. Living in a community without other Asian American families and without resources for minorities, he had little to gain and much to lose from knowing the true reasons for his rejection. Knowing about the prejudice would have meant Kevin might have felt alienated and thus behaved in ways that made him even less accepted by others. His alienation might have caused him to withdraw from the very community in which he needed to get along.

Knowing about the discrimination would have undermined Kevin's ability to meet at least some of his social and educational needs. Furthermore, it is likely that Kevin's blindness supported his parents' approach, and if Kevin had seen things more clearly, he might have alienated not only his peers and teachers, but his parents as well. Seeing the truth would have rocked the boat so much, it might have failed to float.

Kevin's experiences involved betrayal because he had a deeply held belief that he would be treated fairly. This belief grew naturally out of a value system that stresses equality, equity, and fairness; these values are taught repeatedly throughout grade school in this country. From reading Horatio Alger to learning about a grading system based on merit, Americans are socialized to value justice and equality.
^2.
The catch is that often injustice and inequality exist all around us, but we don't recognize them. Injustice and inequality are a kind of betrayal because they are reneging on a trust; they are breaking an initial promise that we all are free. Equally free.

Another version of Kevin's experience was described by author and lawyer Frank Wu, whose parents came to America from China:
^3.

I am about as American as you can be. You know, I don't speak Chinese. I'm really bad with chopsticks.

I held up my end of the deal. When I went to school as a five-year-old, thirty years ago, teacher said to me and the kids said to me—and if they didn't say it, they made it clear—that if I assimilated—the deal was, if I assimilated, they'd accept me. But if I didn't assimilate, they wouldn't. If I continued to eat funny-looking foods, if my English wasn't good, well, then, their view was it was right for them to pick on me because then I would be different. But if I became like them, they'd accept me.

So I did. I learned how to shoot marbles. I collected baseball cards. I built model airplanes. I knew nothing about Chinese culture. I went to college; I was told “You have to study the Western canon.” So I did. I know Shakespeare. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan. I can recite for you the opening 45 lines of
Richard III
from memory. And I have no accent. I can pick up the telephone; I could pass as a Smith. I could tell you my name's Frank Smith, and until I showed up and you look at me and say, “Smith? How did you get to be a Smith?” I could, for all practical purposes, if I were invisible, be a Frank Smith.

So the irony here is the more I fit in, the more I realize there's a dichotomy. I'm not bitter about it, but I realize others—they reneged on the deal. The deal was I'd fit in, you'd accept me. And yet sometimes I'm still treated as if I'm fresh off the boat.

Both Frank Wu and Kevin Nakamura did the best they could to fit in as children. They lived as if they were white Americans, rather than Asian Americans. This was a survival strategy. Kevin's blindness to this betrayal helped him survive his childhood by allowing him to remain connected with a community that provided some positive benefit, despite the injustice. Had Kevin seen the unfairness and reacted with anger or withdrawal, he would have risked disrupting the tenuous positive connections with his community that did exist. As a child, Kevin was probably powerless to change the prejudice and discrimination in his community through any direct confrontation. In contrast, once Kevin was in a different environment, a college community that had more diversity and that was less discriminatory toward Asian Americans, Kevin had less to risk and more to gain by becoming aware of the reality of discrimination. Indeed, Kevin's growing awareness had many benefits for Kevin and the world. As he recognized the parallels between his own past and the history of discrimination he was learning about in college, Kevin experienced intellectual and emotional liberation, despite the pain of accepting betrayal. As college progressed, he found he was able to seek out and find more open-minded friends who did not discriminate against him. Kevin's deeper understanding of these issues inspired him to pursue a career in social justice, so that future generations would suffer less discrimination. His contributions to society would not have been possible if he had not survived his childhood with so much of his sense of self intact; betrayal blindness might have been his best option. Kevin would like to help create a world that does not put children into such a bind.

Betrayal as a Violation of Trust

Trusting relationships are the basis for personal well-being and growth, for intimate and loving partner and friend relationships, and for justice and peace at the societal and international level. However, at all of these levels betrayal is ubiquitous. It harms us on a personal level, it destroys relationships and the ability to trust, and it finds its way into national and international relationships and is often the cause for wars. Logically, it seems that when we are betrayed, we confront the situation, deal with the betrayer, and go on with our lives. As we've described previously, though, it's often not that simple. Either the relationship is too important or we are not strong enough within ourselves to deal with the betrayal.

Yet there are other complications. Sometimes we know we've been betrayed—we read a love letter our spouse has written to someone else, or we find evidence that our government has lied to us. Most often, however, the evidence of betrayal is not that clear, as in the case of Kevin, but we know something is wrong. We don't know what it is, but there is discomfort, perhaps guilt, or anxiety. As we've described, children who are abused can't recognize betrayal, so must blame themselves when trusted parents turn on them; sometimes spouses who are cheated on take a very long time to understand what is happening. It is an emotional and cognitive conundrum. We can't live with the feelings and knowledge about the betrayal, yet in some ways we
do
know.

It is important that we come to respect the impact of betrayal and its consequences if we encounter it in our lives or the lives of others. It very likely will affect the degree to which we can give ourselves in trust in other situations in our lives. It can even have an effect on what we call the capacity of individuals to trust that life is good, and to trust that they can make their way and find what they need from their lives. Those who cannot trust cannot grow and thrive.

Notes

1.
This description of Judy, like that of Kayla below, is based on our experience with psychotherapy clients; it does not represent any one person. Many descriptions in this book, particularly where a client's own words are used, are based on actual people. We will indicate in each case whether the description is based on a single person or is a composite.

2.
J. W. Tebbel,
From Rags to Riches: Horatio Alger Jr. and the American Dream
(New York: Macmillan, 1963).

3.
B. Lamb (interviewer) and F. Wu (interviewee),
Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White
(interview transcript, 2002),
http://booknotes.org/Watch/168640-1/Frank+Wu.aspx
.

3

The Wide Reach of Betrayal Blindness

The idea that you or I—that
we—
could be betrayed is off-putting, to say the least. “Not me,” we say. “No one would want to betray me; I am a good person.” Furthermore, most of us like to think that if we were betrayed, we would spot it immediately. After all, we're intelligent people, right? Yet intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with it. Did Hillary Clinton—an inarguably intelligent woman, no matter what your political leanings—know about Bill and Monica? According to her biographer Gail Sheehy, Hillary did not let herself know about the affair: “And so, just as countless times in the past,
Hillary's choice
was not to know what she knew.”
^1.
This unawareness lasted until the betrayal was made so very public that Bill had to confess to her, and Hillary could no longer not know about it. According to Sheehy, Hillary and Bill both relied on a vast amount of studied avoidance of the facts of their marriage and the inevitable consequences of Bill's unfaithful behavior. It wasn't only Monica, but a whole string of women and messy relationships that Hillary failed to see, despite the evidence all around her. Hillary, a brilliant, strong, and exceptionally accomplished woman, was apparently an expert in remaining blind to her own betrayal.

The 2003 documentary
Capturing the Friedmans
examines some of the complexities of knowing and not knowing about betrayals.
^2.
In the late 1980s, Arnold Friedman was accused of sexually abusing more than a dozen boys in his computer classes. Arnold first came to the attention of the authorities after child pornography on its way to him via the U.S. mail was intercepted. This led to law enforcement officials obtaining a warrant to search his house, where large amounts of child pornography were discovered. Much later, during filming, Arnold's wife at the time of the search, Elaine, described her initial inability to see the child pornography lying in plain sight around her house:

Somewhere along the way, I think it was the Nassau County cops, they showed me this magazine. And they said, “You see? Look at this magazine.” And they showed me the magazine. They were embarrassed to show it to me because of what the pictures were. And you know, I didn't see it? My eyes [motions downwards from eyes] were in the right direction. But my brain saw nothing. Because, when it was all over, the lawyers showed me the magazine and then I saw it. For the first time, I really saw it. And, I just, couldn't believe what I saw. [Sighs] I mean, I had no concept that this thing even exists in the world. That this magazine would even exist in the world. I mean, we had a middle-class home, educated, I had a good family, right? Where did this come from?

When Elaine said, “And you know, I didn't see it? My eyes were in the right direction. But my brain saw nothing,” she was giving an exact description of betrayal blindness. It is because of this inability to see what is right there in plain sight that we use the word
blindness
. Although this word captures our intended meaning, in some ways it is troubling. The fact that this same word—
blindness
—denotes a physical condition and also has a more abstract meaning may both reflect and contribute to “ableism”—an assumption that there is a normal correct body versus a disordered incorrect body. We have struggled with the use of this word for this reason.

We all currently swim in a cultural and linguistic system that conflates having limited eyesight with ignorance. You may have already noticed that it is very difficult to talk about knowing without using vision terms. For example, “I see what you mean.” “My perspective is different from yours.” “Your argument is crystal clear.” This interlocking of vision and knowledge may be an inevitable result of the tendency known as embodied cognition, because a primary way we know things is through our bodies.

In the case of the word
blind
, the connection between knowledge and vision is explicit. The earliest known meaning of the word root was not “sightlessness” but “confusion and darkness.” The word
blind
has evolved over time to have two interrelated primary meanings: (1) unable to see, and (2) unwilling or unable to perceive or understand. We use the phrase
betrayal blindness
to include both of these meanings, although we do not mean to include physical blindness or contribute to a kind of institutional betrayal that sees the idealized body as standard and all other bodies as less able. In addition to betrayal blindness occurring when we don't see with our eyes, it can also happen when we do not hear, feel, or know something that should be obvious to us. Furthermore, a physically blind person could be more fully aware of betrayals than a sighted friend is. We use the phrase
betrayal blindness
because it so closely captures what we intend to convey, and we know of no other phrase that communicates this full meaning. We hope that someday there will be language that more clearly distinguishes between sightlessness and not seeing at a more abstract level.

Betrayal blindness is not a game. There are times when we know about a betrayal and consciously pretend not to know, in order to ease social relationships. Steven Pinker describes games people play when they know or think something that is too risky to say out loud.
^3.
For example, one would not offer a bribe to a policeman in explicit terms but might manage to imply willingness to bribe using more cautious language, such as, “Can I pay the ticket right now?” The quintessential example is the story “The Emperor's New Clothes.” Everyone knows that the king is naked, but no one risks saying it. Once the words are spoken out loud, however, everything changes, not because people learn that the king is naked (they already know that) but because they learn that it is now common knowledge. Pinker points out that when information rises to the level of common knowledge (which means I know that you know that I know that you know, and so on), one can no longer plausibly deny the reality. In the case of betrayal—such as infidelity in a marriage—one conceivably might know about it and decide it is too risky to discuss. Yet in cases where one is greatly dependent on, and attached to, one's partner, it is very difficult to
pretend
that one has not been betrayed. The natural reactions to betrayal are either to withdraw or to confront the person, and these are difficult reactions to consciously suppress, over and over. At a minimum, that degree of pretending would require a substantial amount of attention and effort. Worse, the charade would break down, and the true feelings would leak out, risking the very relationship that needs to be protected. Imagine the plight of a young child who doesn't have the cognitive and social maturity to play these social games. In these cases, we argue, nature has a better solution: remaining blind to the betrayal in the first place removes the need to pretend. Elaine Friedman described this kind of blindness when she was presented with her husband's pornography: “And you know, I didn't see it? My eyes were in the right direction. But my brain saw nothing.” This was not pretending not to see; it was not seeing.

Betrayal, especially by a close and trusted person, can have far-reaching and damaging effects. Psychotherapy clients regularly report sexual, emotional, and physical abuse at the hands of parents—a severe betrayal from those who are supposed to love and protect us, although clients may not use the word
betrayal
or even recognize these events as betrayals.
^4.
Therapy clients also report infidelity, workplace harassment with no institutional support, friends who have turned on them, and a wide variety of major and minor betrayals. Yet with the current psychological emphasis only on symptom reduction and mental disorders, therapists and well-meaning friends can often miss this all-too-common thread in the lives of those who suffer. We instead try to lessen depression or anxiety without addressing the underlying reasons for it—one of the most common of them being betrayal in all of its disturbing forms.

Another example is that of Howard Friedman, Arnold's brother. According to
Capturing the Friedmans
, Arnold wrote a letter describing what he did to his brother:
^5.

This story goes back 50 years to when I was a child. When I reached adolescence I sought out partners for my emerging sexuality. My first partner when I was 13 was my 8-year old brother. I had overt sexual relations with him over a period of a few years.

Howard has no memory of his abuse. In
Capturing
, he explains,

I know my brother has said he messed around with me when I was a kid. And, I don't remember any of it. I don't remember anything. I have nothing up here [covers forehead with hand] that has me yelling or screaming or crying or trying to get away or unhappy or . . . I, I, there's nothing there that . . . Maybe someday a door will open but it better hurry up because I'm 65 and at this point in time I could care less!

We have heard stories of betrayal and betrayal blindness from many women and men. Some of them have told us of horrendous acts of violence that were forgotten or very greatly minimized. Others have spoken about lives relatively free of violence but nonetheless peppered with intimate betrayals. We relay some of these stories of intimate betrayal in this book.

Betrayal occurs in many areas besides infidelity and in many contexts that are not entirely intimate. People can be betrayed at work, in the family, and in society. As we learned in chapter 2 from the stories of Kevin Nakamura and Frank Wu, even social injustice and oppression often involve betrayal and betrayal blindness. The factors that make these society-wide acts ones of betrayal are twofold. First, society-wide acts involve individual human interactions, and many acts of injustice or oppression at the individual level look just like other personal betrayals. Second, we have implicit and explicit assumptions in our society of equality and justice. These implicit and explicit assumptions form a “social contract” between members of society. When discrimination occurs, this is a betrayal of the equality contract. When there is an injustice, this is a betrayal of the justice (or fairness) contract. In this chapter and in chapter 4, we consider these issues further, as we explore some of the many ways humans betray and are betrayed.

Girl on a Plane

In August 2008, we attended a trial in federal criminal court in Portland, Oregon. Jennifer Freyd served as a consultant and an expert witness for the prosecution. She was asked to educate the jury about what we know from research about victims' responses to sexual assault. It became clear to us that this expert testimony was needed only because of the widespread ignorance about the reality of sexual assault in the general public and thus in the population of potential jurors. The experience was a stark reminder of the importance of disseminating research and educating people about societal and criminal justice. Our research can have an impact only when it reaches the right people. In the case of a jury trial, the right people are the jurors. Without this education, victims may be betrayed all over again by the court experience.

Jurors are asked to rely on their common sense and reason. This works well when common sense and reason coincide with empirical reality. However, the criminal justice system is at risk when jurors show pervasive ignorance or, worse, adhere to dangerous myths. Rather than holding accurate knowledge of victim psychology, many individuals endorse some degree of belief in what researchers have called “rape myths” and “child sexual abuse myths.” Rape myths are false beliefs that tend to blame the victim for the rape and absolve the rapist. They are false in the sense that they conflict with scientific evidence. An example is the belief that victims of rape cause the event by the way they dress. Another example is the belief that men cannot control their sexual urges. Similarly for child sexual abuse, an example of false belief is that children cause the abuse by the way they act or dress. These myths can work against justice in profound ways, causing victims—who were already betrayed by a crime—to be betrayed all over again in the courtroom.

The criminal case for which Freyd served as an expert witness involved abusive sexual contact aboard an aircraft. The victim was at the time a sixteen-year-old girl, and the defendant was her thirty-two-year-old coach. The case was federal because the offense occurred on an airplane that crossed state lines.

The defendant admitted to FBI investigators that the sexual acts did occur. There was no prior romance, flirtation, or invitation between the coach and the athlete. They were returning from an athletic event. The victim had fallen asleep under a blanket in the window seat, and the defendant was seated next to her. It was nighttime and dark on the plane. She woke up to him touching her under her clothing. The victim displayed a fairly passive or “frozen” response to finding herself in this predicament.

The age of consent in federal sexual assault cases is sixteen. The defense attempted to portray the events as consensual sex, relying heavily on the implicit question: If she didn't want the sexual intrusion, why didn't she actively object? In closing arguments, the defense attorney suggested that the victim and her coach had together created a “bubble of intimacy” on that plane that was later burst, causing the victim to feel “sexual regret” and to claim the sexual acts were without her permission.