Trust isn’t just essential to relationships it’s necessary for a happy, meaningful life. This is why it is urgent for us to learn how to trust again, even if one’s relationship is destroyed. What’s more, it limits the strength and the number of our social connections, often leaving us isolated from the rest of the world. Indeed, studies reveal that going through a divorce reduces trust in other people as well as institutions. It creates a suspicion of future betrayals and tempts us to look for lies elsewhere-in other family members, co-workers, or spiritual leaders. It exists primarily to put the individual on global red alert that danger is afoot. © Comics from the collection of Jenny Miller (Unfortunately, hyper-vigilance is not a great discriminating device. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, in that the hyper-vigilance may protect us from haplessly wandering into another psychological injury.

One of these changes is the development of a hyper-vigilance to further assaults. In fact, studies show that psychological traumas like discovering an affair have the capacity to affect brain functioning long after the event occurs. It’s as if one’s entire view of the world has been proven false. This is, in part, why betrayals can be so psychologically traumatizing. As children, we will even irrationally blame problems on ourselves instead of our parents as a way to make the world feel more orderly and predictable.Īnd to a degree, trust always entails the suspension of disbelief. A great deal of research suggests that when a baby’s need for predictability is not met, that baby can grow into an anxious and distrusting adult.

The roots of these feelings stretch back to childhood, when we need predictability in the care we receive. A betrayal can shatter that trust and open the door to the possibility that things in one’s small, intimate world may not be as they appear. This is because our relationships are built upon the fragile agreement that those about whom we care most deeply will behave, in large part, as they have always behaved. It can cause the betrayed person to doubt their own attractiveness or judgment in people, and it can raise fundamental questions about the inherent goodness of the world. Discovering a partner’s affair can be devastating because it strikes at so many aspects of one’s identity.

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