Love is whatever you can still betray.
Betrayal can only happen if you love.

Never having been betrayed sets up poor preconditions for remaining faithful. Evolving into genuinely more loyal people requires us to suffer through some properly innoculative episodes, in which we feel for a time limitlessly panicked, violated and on the edge of collapse. Only then can the injunction not to betray our spouses evolve from a bland bromide into a permanently vivid moral imperative.

Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you condone or approve of what they did. Forgiveness is not for the other person at all. It has nothing to do with whether they deserve it or not. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. The best revenge really is a life well lived. While fantasizing about all kinds of revenge was fun for a while, I realized it would only perpetuate what I wanted to be free of, and it would keep me from healing. My advice to anyone struggling with betrayal is don’t let yourself be abused twice. First by the act committed against you, and second by believing it has ruined your ability to experience happiness, trust, or love. Forgive someone who has hurt you so they may receive that gift, and more important because you know it is the scissor that cuts the cord that binds you together. Remember that betrayal doesn’t happen to you so much as it happens by someone else. Forgiveness allows you to release anger. Carrying anger with you is like lighting your own house on fire to get rid of rats. The rats run to safety while you burn yourself down. Forgive. Let go. Heal.

All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.

To be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.

Betrayal is an important word with this guidepost. When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves. When we consistently betray ourselves, we can expect to do the same to the people we love. When we don’t give ourselves permission to be free, we rarely tolerate that freedom in others. We put them down, make fun of them, ridicule their behaviors, and sometimes shame them. We can do this intentionally or unconsciously. Either way the message is, “Geez, man.

But if we betray B., for whom we betrayed A., it does not necessarily follow that we have placated A. The life of a divorcée-painter did not in the least resemble the life of the parents she had betrayed. The first betrayal is irreparable. It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from the point of our original betrayal.

Betrayal converts our innocence to wisdom if we can let go of pain, bitterness, and fear and create enough self-love and safety for ourselves to allow it to do so.

To love without criticism is to be betrayed.

Be grateful for betrayal as it exposes someone who was never worthy of you or further consideration.

We can spend our entire life betraying ourself and choosing fitting in over standing alone. But once we've stood up for ourself and our beliefs, the bar is higher. A wild heart fights fitting in and grieves betrayal.

From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offense imaginable. But what is betrayal?…Betrayal means breaking ranks and breaking off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown.

We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise.
In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.