In the face of betrayal, whether to forgive or not has always been a question that has been frequently concerned and discussed, and everyone expects that their choices can lead to a happy ending, and no one wants to go to a worse situation.
So, did anyone who chose to forgive after being betrayed usher in a good ending? Observing life and finding that there are all examples of forgiving the betrayer and living a more miserable life, is there a good result after forgiveness, or at least not miserable, can you share the experience?
Choosing to forgive after betrayal is not impossible to have a good ending, but this good ending is most likely not given by others, but earned by yourself.
Due to the complexity of human beings, we can't actually predict the outcome of any relationship, so there is no perfect choice in the world that will definitely lead to a good ending. In the face of betrayal and cheating, whether you forgive or not, you can be happy or miserable.
The biggest difference between miserable and unmiserable is not whether to forgive the cheating partner, but how much this choice follows your heart, and how much agency you have to guide this choice to the good ending you expect.
Everyone wants a good ending, but what is a good ending?
For example, the partner must first return to the family wholeheartedly and completely cut off contact with a third party, and secondly, he must change his mind and behave well, make all kinds of compensation to his wife with a sorry mood, and then the two of them re-establish trust and return to their previous happy life.
And what about the bad ending? It is nothing more than that the betrayer is still half-hearted after returning to the family, keeping in touch with a third party or re-establishing a relationship outside of marriage, or although he no longer betrays the family, he has become an empty shell with a lost soul at home, and you cannot communicate deeply with him, and even he will attribute his pain to you when he is not happy.
This expectation of a good ending may seem like nothing wrong at first glance, but if you look closely, it is almost always based on the agency of the betrayer, presenting a "stereotyped good ending" that seems to be good but in fact has a bleak prospect.
What does that mean? When you frame a good ending as "no longer experiencing a second betrayal" or "your partner's attitude towards you must change", you position yourself as a passive character who can only expect the other person to change, and expecting such a good ending is like expecting to win the lottery, and you can only leave yourself to fate.
Secondly, the vast majority of betrayed people have experienced various traumatic blows such as emotional fractures, so it is easy to magnify their own needs for security, so that they are obsessed with a happy ending and focus on the acquisition of a sense of security, but ignore many needs that are actually important but have no time to take care of at the moment.
This is why many people, even if they forgive betrayal, still live in fear of betrayal every day, uncontrollably monitoring each other's words and actions, and constantly catching those signals that may indicate danger. When you are still in a series of stress reactions caused by trauma, it is difficult for people to perceive what is the most important part of their relationship, and the more you want to reach the other side of the "good ending", the more you will feel powerless, and the deeper the obsession with the "good ending", so a vicious circle. At this moment, the pursuit of a good ending has become a means to quickly dissolve the feeling of lack in your heart, and it does not touch the core needs that you really care about.
To put it bluntly, the first step to get a good ending must be to define a good ending first, that is, to know what your core needs for a relationship are, to grasp the main line, rather than following everyone to do side tasks, that is, if you want to live well, you must first know what is good for yourself.
What is good for yourself? At the end of the day, the happy ending in everyone's heart can be summed up as nothing more than this: relationships can unfold as we expect them to be, and daily life can make us feel happy and happy, not painful and constrained. Forgive the partner who betrayed the family, and will not regret his decision in the future, but will be glad that he did not give up easily.
So from this point of view, if you want to define a good ending, you must first define your ideal relationship and life, that is, what are your expectations for marriage? Don't think this question is difficult to answer, in fact, these needs can be refined to a series of levels such as the material level, the communication status of two people, and the division of family responsibilities.
Only when you have a specific and clear definition of a good ending can you use this standard to measure whether the choice of forgiveness will meet your expectations, and then look for a breakthrough in the actual relationship.
The reason why many people can't forgive is because they skip the step of "defining their own needs". Either follow the opinions of the people around you, whatever others say, or follow your own emotional inertia, because you can't bear the pain of loss of dependence and the fear of living alone, etc., and rashly choose to forgive the betrayer.
And this kind of forgiveness without self-foundation will soon be knocked down by real life, and those marital problems that have appeared before the betrayal will strike again, and with the element of betrayal, many people are actually even less capable of dealing with these problems, they have no goal and no direction, and can only fall into a repetitive situation again.
Of course, defining the good ending in your heart is not the end of happiness, and how to guide your choices to the picture you want is also an important part of this.
For example, some people define a good ending as two people can reach a deep state of connection, and each other can give each other understanding and support in life, then you should work in this direction after choosing to forgive, whether it is through self-exposure to close the psychological distance between each other, or through patient listening to understand your partner, these are the keys to guide your relationship to a happy ending.
For example, some people define a good ending as being able to completely get out of the shadow of betrayal and re-establish a relationship of trust with the other party, then your direction should be to understand the deep-seated motives of the other party's betrayal, and try to fill this lack together in the marriage relationship, so that the other party can also cooperate with you to repair the relationship.
No matter what specific method you want to take, the premise is that you must first have the subjective initiative we mentioned at the beginning, and to exert subjective initiative is to have the ability to be self-responsible, and you can influence or change the direction of things through your own actions.
Of course, the truth is very simple, but many people may encounter many problems at the implementation level, such as being immersed in the pain of betrayal for a long time, and not having the motivation to make any changes at all; Or once the action is not well received, it is easy to get discouraged and unable to continue to do what you think is right......
So how do we mobilize our own initiative in the face of betrayal?
In fact, whether or not you can have enough agency in the face of betrayal is often related to your narrative mode. In psychology, the narrative mode mainly refers to the perspective from which a person understands and expresses his or her own experiences, inner feelings, and what others think of them. In the specific event of betrayal, your narrative mode is generally defined as the aspect and vocabulary you use to tell the betrayal.
From the perspective of narrative, the narrative mode can be divided into self-narrative and others' narrative, which represent the subjective perspective from self-perception and the object perspective from the judgment of others, respectively.
The reason why many people lack enough motivation and enthusiasm to change the status quo is that they tend to use other people's narratives rather than their own narratives in the face of betrayal. For example, the first thing to consider after being betrayed is not how she feels, but whether the betrayer still loves me, how my family and friends think of me, how the social environment judges me, and other similar questions, and when a person is immersed in the narrative mode of others for a long time, her choice is more likely to be affected by the views of others, thus isolating her own deep-seated feelings and needs.
In this case, the choice of forgiveness can be made in order to maintain the image of a "good wife" in the heart of the betrayer; It can also be made in response to the well-meaning advice of parents in order to avoid the risk of living alone; It may also be made in order to maintain a complete family in the social sense and not let yourself fall into the role of a single mother...... In short, none of these reasons really come from the heart, which determines that they must be weak in the process of implementation, because their changes lack the important foundation of "self".
Therefore, one of the necessary conditions for having subjective agency is to replace the narrative mode of others with self-narrative, pay attention to the series of reactions of the subject "me" after experiencing betrayal, and you can keep asking yourself, such as: What am I feeling at the moment? How do I see my partner and our relationship? If forgiven, what change do I want? What is the most lacking competency in my relationship? Shifting the perspective away from others through the shift in narrative mode and finding your own inner strength is the key to your continued initiative.
In addition, the narrative mode can be divided into positive narrative and negative narrative in nature, and these two modes are also closely related to the play of subjective initiative. Positive narratives tend to use more positive and variable words to define what happened to them, while negative narratives tend to use more negative, fixed words to characterize various events.
Think about how in the face of betrayal, a person likes to describe betrayal as a cognitive renewal, as an opportunity for the emotional relationship between two people to go further; Another, on the other hand, characterizes betrayal as the end point of his happiness, believing that he will never be able to have a purely emotional relationship again. So which of the two is more likely to be willing to make a change?
Positive narratives often give people hope and motivation, while negative narratives can make people feel frustrated and powerless, so being subjective is also about looking at betrayal from a developmental perspective, rather than being stuck in the emotions of a victim waiting for someone else to help.
At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a good ending that comes naturally from a good enough choice, and the key to a good ending is that you can make a choice that suits you on the premise of following your heart, and at the same time have enough subjective initiative to guide it in the direction you want.
When you have the ability to be self-aware and self-responsible, forgiving or not can actually get you the good ending you want.
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This article was first published on the Zhihu platform: Chen Man, Wang Xiao, Zhang Yan
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