The greatest obstacles to healing and growth following intimate betrayal: abuse, infidelityor deception – are also the cruelest because they seem so unfair. Guilt is a primary example.

Whether hidden or overt, guilt permeates the initial wound of intimate betrayal and insidiously undermines recovery. It affects all areas of life, especially other family relationships.

Why those who experience intimate betrayal are likely to experience overt or covert guilt has less to do with personal psychology or relational experience than with the evolved function of guilt in intimate relationships. Most evolutionary anthropologists agree that early humans would not have survived without strong emotional bonds that drove them to cooperate in gathering food and defending against predators. It is not surprising that modern humans are equipped with automatic, preverbal, prerational, and highly developed reactions to behaviors that threaten emotional bonds. Chief among these is guilt.

In intimate relationships, guilt acts as a distance regulator. Get closer and the guilt disappears; build walls, no matter how justified, and it gets stronger underground.

The evolutionary function of guilt has nothing to do with moral judgments of good or evil. So we cannot moralize our way out of it. Nor can we escape it by blaming others, as in the immature assessment of a “guilt trip”, an invention that has its roots in childhood, when we felt “punished” by guilt.

Guilt is a motivation, not a punishment

If guilt looks like punishmentrather than a motivation reinvest in attachment ties, there is an impulse, inherited from childhood, to blame the person who stimulates it – “bad mom!” » The impulse to blame is rarely interpreted for what it essentially is: a tool to reduce guilt or culpability. shame. To this end, blame is self-validating.

If I want to blame you, you must be bad, so I will only consider incriminating evidence and ignore anything that might be exculpatory. Blaming guilt on those who remind us of it does nothing to alleviate it. On the contrary, it makes us more helpless and, therefore, more irritated and angry.

The association of guilt with anger is inevitable for non-psychopaths. Guilt induces a state of vulnerability, which makes the brain hypersensitive to possible threats. (The more vulnerable mammals feel, the more likely they are to perceive threat.) Threatened ego turns into defensive resentment or anger within milliseconds, far too quickly for awareness, let alone deliberate regulation .

We may know that we are irritated (usually not) or angry (usually), but we are unlikely to understand that we also feel guilty. Others are even less likely to see behind our displays of resentment and anger, and even less likely to be sensitive to the vulnerability lurking there. (They are far too busy defending themselves against the sharpest edges of our anger and resentment to notice what lies beneath.) Guilt cannot function as a motivation to love better when it is obscured by the blame. Instead, it becomes fuel for the eternal flame of resentment.

If you have suffered an intimate betrayal, most of the guilt you feel is irrational, mere remnants of the early days of the species’ development, when the preservation of attachment bonds, however poor they may have been, was necessary for survival. But you’ll also feel some rational guilt about simple human mistakes you’ve made and some personal failures like everyone occasionally makes in intimate relationships. Even if they have nothing to do with your partner’s betrayal, they will prevent healing and growth if they are ignored, explained away, or blamed.

The best strategy for regulating guilt is to convert it into compassion, first for yourself, then for the important people in your life.

OK, that’s good advice, but guilt is usually masked by resentment or anger, so how are you supposed to know when you’re feeling guilty? The goal of the following exercise is to uncover the guilt that may be hiding beneath your anger and resentment. Once you identify the causal guilt, you are free to follow its motivation to heal, improve, and connect. At this point, anger and resentment become useless.

Briefly describe an event from your recent past that triggered your anger or resentment. (Example: my ex suggested, once again, to our children that I am no better as a father than as a husband to justify leaving us for someone else.)

I’m angry, but what am I feeling so guilty about? (Example: I make the same kind of slander about him, sometimes by saying it and other times by just thinking about it, which I know hurts my children by dividing their loyalties.)

This is what I will do to improve, appreciate, connect or protect. (Example: I will focus on the best interests of my children, recognizing that my behavior toward them – not what their mother tells them – determines the quality of our long-term relationship.)

If you do the exercise above, you should notice that regulating the hidden guilt that lies beneath most anger and resentment allows you to move forward in healing and growth. When you feel empowered, anger and resentment are unnecessary.