Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Cheating!

Culturally and psychologically, we have reached a problematic resting place in our exploration of relationship formation and destruction.

In historical terms, it’s not all that long ago that divorce was a social horror show. Membership of that particular club saw you catapulted into disgrace, socially ostracised.

These days, we are comparatively free to come and go as we please, and relationships have been repurposed: no longer an expression of “till death do we part”, wedlock is — for many — but a chapter in life’s “journey”.

Which leaves us with a major problem, for in almost all scenarios when a relationship ends, one party is left very, very hurt.

How are we to deal with all the collateral damage?

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Some parts of our culture are (quite heavily) collectivist, but this aspect of relationships is a bold expression of individualism. We must be allowed to do as we please, and affairs of the heart must be allowed to self-articulate.

We tell ourselves we must be careful with the feelings of others, and for the most part we do try, but ultimately it is our *own* feelings which triumph.

So all the guidance out there to help us handle rejection is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is the rise of the “reject rejection” mindset — that we can train ourselves out of feeling its sting, that we can reframe even the concept out of existence.

Reject rejection, and be free. Its goal is admirable enough — it’s trying to help people feel better — but does it actually work?

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“It’s not a rejection, it’s a redirection to something different.” If you can trick your mind into thinking like this, then good for you. But there are sound neurochemical reasons why most of us cannot.

Our need to be accepted is part of our evolutionary function. Even the most solitary creatures are social animals. The lone wolf and the party animal have more in common than meets the eye. Humans are a tribe, and expulsion from the group historically meant certain isolation and probable death. We are programmed to avoid it at all costs.

Which is why it makes little sense, surely, trying to convince ourselves that rejection doesn’t really exist, that it is in the eye of the beholder.

Rejection, from the etymological root “to throw back”, is a foundation of the human condition, and it causes physical pain. When we are rejected, our brain reacts in the same way as when we experience physical trauma.

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The “reject rejection” mindset is on more convincing psychological terrain in its attempts to dislocate feelings of inadequacy (on the part of the rejected) and assumptions of disdain or contempt (on the part of the rejector) when we find ourselves on the receiving end of a rejection.

It’s about retaining a sense of self-worth.

What people do says so much more about them than it ever does about us. Sensibilities, preferences, choices, upbringing: all of it is beyond our control, a lot of it is carefully shielded from our knowledge. A surprisingly large number of competently functioning people are positively dystopian in their brutality.

It’s worth repeating: most people’s behaviour is a reflection of their own shortcomings. It might have its roots in their childhood, or their genetically wired compulsions and anxieties.

It makes sense — even if only as a matter of logic — that we shouldn’t connect the rejection with everything we fear and dislike about ourselves.

And yet the lingering doubt remains, that if we were somehow different or better or hadn’t said the right thing at the wrong time, that they would still want to be with us.

Because it is about us. They’ve seen us up close and what they have seen is something they do not like, or no longer like.

And a commonly reported feeling from those on the receiving end of a rejection is the sensation someone we once knew very well now holds us in contempt.

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Cheating is a betrayal (from the Middle English word bitrayen — meaning to mislead or deceive), but people get over it. It’s just sex, after all. Or sometimes sex plus emotions, which is worse, but it’s not insurmountably terrible.

What really kills people is when betrayal is dished out with side servings of rejection and abandonment, all three courses served at once, banquet-style. Now that is the full English of psychological warfare, and it is commonplace.

People who have affairs which then become full blown parallel relationships, building up something new on the sly, then announcing to their partner (and sometimes also to their children) that they’re off. They’ve set up shop with someone else and the trading is brisk.

That’s what really gets people. And it’s not hard to see why. It offends a sense of fair play. There’s been wrongdoing, but where’s the punishment? There is no punishment. Well, not quite. It’s the “victim” — the person left behind — who is being punished.

Betrayal, a complex form of interpersonal relationship conflict, summons the opportunity to forgive, but what if forgiveness isn’t sought? What if someone stands by their decision no longer to stand by you?

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It’s problematic territory, to which there is no obvious solution.

Left to their own devices, some people sometimes behave not all that well. Which wouldn’t matter all that much if they didn’t take others down with them.

We’re no longer willing to use the sociological levers to shame people out of doing it. And standing in puritanical judgement, though a common pass time of many a nation (the UK included), is not — generally speaking — a good look.

The compassionate view is that the people who do such things deserve our pity. It rarely works out all that well for them, and they are usually blind to their own disgrace.

But we also need to remember: “you hurt my feelings” — so banal, trivial even, a taunt almost of the playground — is also an epic calamity.

Yes, it’s not that they set out to hurt, but they knew that their actions would cause damage, and they did it anyway. It takes a certain type of person to be comfortable enacting that sort of violation, a person with a capacity for cruelty, a nonchalance in the face of scarring another’s soul.

It’s premeditated behaviour — it doesn’t just happen — and it is also a power play, a form of dramatic irony, the person doing the betraying is in on it, but the receiving party is not.

That’s why people get blindsided by betrayal.

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Here’s the thing, though. We should never waste the opportunity a painful experience represents.

Rejection, abandonment, betrayal are the three core wounds of major trauma. Our basic needs are threatened.

Better, I think, to recognise the full horror of it than to embark on an (ultimately futile) attempt to dress it up as something pretty and opportunity-ripe.

To do that, I would argue, doesn’t give sufficient dignity to the consequences of being spurned. It imposes a comedy-of-errors backdrop onto a visceral sense of hurt. It condemns us to a skewed sense of healing and with it the risks of a repeat. It will not do.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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