#AskMargie: Betrayal (part 3)

MANILA, Philippines – Have you ever betrayed anyone?

After defining what makes a betrayal a betrayal and asking if you have ever been betrayed, we now listen to stories of those who did the betraying.

Watch:

Watch previous episodes on Betrayal:

Betrayal part 1

Betrayal part 2

Script below: 

Last week, I asked: “Have you ever been betrayed?”

Let’s turn the tables this week and look at our betraying someone instead.

To the question, “Have you ever betrayed anyone?” I got the following answers:

Dale Custodio: Betrayed, as in two-timing? Or in general?

Matteo Perez: Betrayal comes in many forms. Can you be more specific?

To which I replied: I’ve purposely made the question unspecific so each person can make their own contributions…that way, I get to see the depth and breadth of the betrayal we humans are capable of doing.

Nice short answer from Trick Mendoza: In my younger years, yes, to get even.

Cliff Ambid: Yes, betrayed someone to save another person’s ass.

Picking up from that answer, Pee Hsee says: Yeah, to save my ass. For my own comfort, because of my inability to keep a secret, I needed to vent because I feel like it isn’t right anymore. Para bang I’m eating what wasn’t supposed to be eaten.

Thanks so, so much, Pee Hsee, for such a candid, up front answer. I so admire that you didn’t try to make excuses for your behavior, but just said it like it was. My feeling is that you blurted these things out so that, as you heard yourself speaking about betraying someone, the magnitude of your behavior became clearer and more distasteful to you.

Someone rationalized our doing the betraying by saying: I think you betray someone because you’re caught in the middle of two choices. Like a secret for example. You get this person to trust you with a secret, that when you deem is harmful to someone else, prompts you to betray that person who trusted you and save someone else by letting that secret out.

But Pee Hsee, who is definitely on a roll today, says it like it is:

Pee Hsee: Betrayal is one sided. Definitely it is all about you, be it for the good of everyone or for your own nasty pleasure.

And that, of course, is the crux of the matter and the reason it makes it so difficult for us to admit our being the betrayers.

Your—our—reaction/our attempts at answering the question of our being perpetrators, instead of victims, of betrayal shows it so clearly. People had difficulty answering the question.

Many more misunderstood and still talked about how they were betrayed by others. Others understood the question but made jokes about it or intellectualized it. We more readily admit—perhaps even to falsehoods like our signatures being forged—our being wrongly done by, rather than our doing wrong to someone else.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all be like Arlene who bites the bullet and says it clearly and unequivocally?

Arlene: I betrayed my present love because of my ex. And it hurts me up to now. My present love shows me he really loves me. We are still together after so many trials.

Another way, sana, we could all be like Arlene is her being able to move on from her act of betrayal and make it the start of something better: Arlene: Yes, I have wronged him. And he continuously proves to me that he really loves me. Kami pa rin hanggang ngayon. I was blinded. Now I know and have seen real love.”

Good for you, Arlene, something tells me you will do all you can to safeguard what you now know is the real deal.

To quote Bong Roxas: “I think what is important at the end of the day for people who have committed betrayal is to sincerely apologize and if there are required actions that need to be done, the person who wronged someone should do it. Halimbawa, binigyan ka ng partner mo ng diamond engagement ring, aba mahiya naman at ibalik iyan sa partner mo! Uy, situational ito ha.”

In other words, take responsibility. It isn’t enough to say: “my signature was forged, but to go to prison. Even if forged, wittingly or unwittingly, if I were responsible for losing 200 million pesos of my fellow Filipinos’ hard earned money, I need to do more than play first victim then, supposedly an avenging angel. You don’t get off the hook by trying to make everyone else look just as bad as you…even if they are.

– Rappler.com