Dealing with Betrayal

How do people deal with being betrayed? I was really close with my sister at one point. We told each other absolutely everything and she was someone I knew I could always trust. But I told her something about my life and she didn’t know how to handle it, so she ended up telling my mother, who literally tried to ruin my life because of it. (She freaking rolled into town at 6 am, threatened to call the cops on me if I wasn’t at my house by the time she was, demanded to see my housing contract because she didn’t want my boyfriend living with me, and overall just chaos. She is extremely Mormon if that helps give you a picture of how crazy she is.) & ever since I have really, really struggled with trusting my sister again. I went from talking to her multiple times a day every single day to never talking, ever, for almost a year. My family was very wary of my situation and thought I hadn’t made changes in my life because I hadn’t forgiven her yet, so I recently acted like I forgave her just to get everyone off my back. But I just can’t help but feel so betrayed every time I think of the situation. She knew this would happen if she told my mom and she did it anyways. I know everyone will say “she was just trying to help!” & I know she was, but there were very many other ways she could have handled this whole situation without making me want to die first, and for that I can’t help but feel the way I do.

Hey Hope_Less this sounds like a really tough situation! Thanks so much for reaching out! Feeling betrayed can be really tough and it can be really hard to forgive someone who you trusted. It sounds like this inability to forgive your sister is really hurting your heart, and I would challenge you to try to forgive for your own wellbeing. You said you know that she was trying to help so you know that she is coming from a place of love! I hope you can find comfort in that fact. Also, could you talk to her about how you are feeling and how you both can move forward in the future? Maybe talking to her about how she will need to earn back your trust and then slowly beginning to test that trust. Betrayal really hurts and I’m sorry you are struggling with this. Thinking about you!

Taylor

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Hope_Less, I know exactly how you’re feeling and I know that it sucks. Really it does. But like Taylor said-- try reaching out and telling your sister just how your feeling and let her know that while you know she was just trying to help, it made things worse for you. If she doesn’t understand, ask her to step in your shoes for a moment and look at things from your perspective. You definitely need to sit down and talk with her about this, because your feelings will continue to eat away at you and just make you feel worse. I hope you start to feel better!

Jess

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Did this affect your relationship with your boyfriend? If it did then I probably wouldn’t have forgiven your sister (unless your relationship with him was unhealthy). I think you shouldn’t trust your sister and obviously now they’re going to use her to spy on you because family does that from my own experience. So if there are things you don’t want you family to know don’t tell your sister.

There are ways to avoid family drama. Yet if there is no way to avoid it then I think you should stand you ground.