Betrayal Is Violence By Way of Unreality

May 06, 2025

Let’s get one thing straight. If you’ve been betrayed—chronically, catastrophically, subtly over time—you don’t just lose people. You lose your perception. You lose your ability to read reality.

That’s the injury. Not the heartbreak. The perceptual distortion that follows.

And no, trust is not about feeling safe. Safety is a feeling. Trust is a system.

If that sounds cold to you, you’ve probably been sold the rom-com version of relational intelligence. But if you’ve ever had to rebuild your nervous system from the ground up, you already know. Feelings lie. Patterns don’t.

So let’s talk about patterns.

Because trust isn’t about love, loyalty, or how someone makes you feel in the moment. It’s about what they do. Consistently. Predictably. Especially when it’s inconvenient.

Trust is pattern recognition.

Not sexy. Not sentimental. But clean. And if your perception has been used against you, clean is sacred.

Here’s what I had to learn the hard way. Your nervous system doesn’t care if a situation is healthy. It cares if it’s familiar. And if chaos is familiar? You’ll call it home. You’ll call it passion. You’ll call it fate. You’ll keep calling it fate until you learn how to read the map.

So how do you reprogram a nervous system trained to trust the devil it knows?

You stop asking “how do I trust again?” That’s the wrong question. You’re already trusting. Just the wrong patterns, the wrong people, the wrong cycles.

The better question is: what am I trusting them with?

You don’t need blanket trust. You need targeted trust. Functional trust. Contextual trust.

There are three kinds I use to filter every relationship in my life now. No exceptions. No sentimentality. Just signal over noise.

1. Can I trust you with my thoughts?

Can I think out loud around you without punishment? Can we disagree without collapse? Can I be curious without you feeling threatened?

If I say something true to me and your first instinct is to correct, debate, or shrink away in fear, I know what time it is. I know I’m not safe. Not intellectually.

And if I can’t be intellectually free in a relationship, I’m not interested. I don’t care how kind you are. I don’t care how much history we have. If I have to clip my mind to keep you comfortable, we’re done before we begin.

2. Can I trust you with my emotions?

This one took me years to untangle. Because I wasn’t just feeling my emotions. I was managing everyone else’s in response to mine. I became the therapist. The fixer. The emotional laundromat.

It gave me power. It gave me purpose. But it gave me nothing back.

Now I ask one thing. Can I feel what I feel, and not be punished for it?

Can I say “I’m overwhelmed” without you needing me to coddle your reaction to my overwhelm? Can I say “no” without guilt being the consequence?

If not, then you don’t get access to my emotions. Period. Because that access is earned. And if you weaponize my boundaries, you don’t belong anywhere near them.

3. Can I trust you with my growth?

This one’s quiet. But critical. Because sometimes the most dangerous people in your life are the ones who loved your older version and resent your upgrade.

I’ve poured tens of thousands into my own development. Not to fix myself. To master myself. I want depth. Range. Evolution. And if your instinct is to see that as a threat to the dynamic we used to have?

Then we’re done.

Because if I have to shrink to stay connected to you, the connection is counterfeit.

Here’s the truth no one tells you. Betrayal isn’t just interpersonal. It’s neurological.

It corrupts your internal compass. It warps your signal detection. And if you want to heal, you don’t need vague affirmations. You need precision tools.

These three questions are my tools now. And no one gets access to my inner life unless the answer to all three is a clear, embodied, nervous-system-level yes.

Trust, real trust, isn’t earned through feelings. It’s earned through consistency. Through pattern. Through the data you collect when no one’s looking.

Rewire that. You don’t just learn to trust again. You learn how to see again.