Betrayal

It's a funny thing, betrayal. I mean it's an odd word, too. Do a quick Sam Winchestering of Tinternet and you'll find things like in the early 13th century it meant to "prove false" or "violate [something] by unfaithfulness". Skip to the late 15th century and you have it as "unintentionally showing your true character", and a hundred and fifty years later, it turns into "revealing or disclosing in violation of confidence".

Lots of "violating" and treason of confidence, there.

Do the circumstances matter? Is there ever a time when it's ok to betray someone's confidence?

Sure. I mean, the GDPR (2018) and most other privacy ordinances have this written into them. Most businesses or concerns who gather or store your personal information are barred from giving it to anyone else - unless a governmental law enforcement outfit requires it in the course of an investigation or to prevent harm. And that's ok. This can extend to others, too - what if you hear something about your friend and decide that they could come to harm because of it? You may then deem it necessary to tell someone - someone with law enforcement or governmental clout - about this information, in order to protect them. After all, this scenario has been used in multiple movies since the dawn of celluloid; "I did it to protect you", etc. Sometimes it's hard to see from their perspective just how that would have protected anyone, but that's another argument altogether.

How about when the information given out would not have saved any lives, or prevented terrorism, or stopped harm coming to someone? What about when the information shared was not done out of a sense of duty, or altruism, or from a position of wanting to avoid implied awfulness to follow? What about when the information was shared sheerly because someone learnt of it, and didn't like their status in relation to what was happening?

This is where we find ourselves.

When you don't have proof of someone betraying you, only eye-witnesses and suspicion, it's harder to work out where you stand with the person suspected of betrayal. When this person allegedly released certain information to The Powers That Be possibly nearly six years ago, you have to wonder why you care at all. Except the fall-out from that is obvious; how can you trust that person again? How can you know they haven't then told other secrets, in the hope that sharing them would boost their own position, ego, or status with the people they gave them to?

The answer is simple in all cases; you can't. You can't be sure that you can tell them anything in confidence ever again. You can't be sure they haven't been telling everyone about your life without your knowledge.

So there's a choice to be made here. When this person is making overtures of continued friendship, when they seem to want to spend time with you and catch up on old times, it comes down to this: were they ever good times? Or were they an exercise in finding information that could bolster their own status?

The background of this person is complicated. This person was in difficulty and I helped them out, multiple times. Perhaps I'm just too soft when it comes to people who need help and I'm in a position to do that. Perhaps I felt for them because of the nature of the aid they needed. For whatever reason, perhaps I believed too much that people would return the favour later. Most people do - they remember that time you helped them, and they either feel obligated or they genuinely want to aid you in return because what happened between you made you some kind of friend.

This is why I have a hard time reconciling what has happened. And then I read this over and think, but you know they already had mental health issues, so you can't be hard on them.

Can't I?

Does this person get a free pass because they have issues? We all have issues, some greater than others. But why should someone who is aware of their issues and makes no attempt to get help for them be allowed to act like they live in a world with no consequences? I believe the consequences should be tailored to how much responsibility they had in what they did. And let's be honest, in this case it was 100%.

The other fall-out is that I can probably never return to where I want to be. Whether they knew what the consequences would be or not, they still disclosed information that was private in such a way that it would benefit them. It's possible they didn't think it through (few people do, in my experience) and therefore didn't fully realise the investigation they would trigger.

I find myself unable to care. I cannot say for certain if they thought it through to what is an obvious and inevitable conclusion. I can't even say for sure that they did what they said they did - it could be a case of all mouth and no trousers. All I can be sure of is I'm lucky to still have my passport and be walking freely around the streets.

I do count myself lucky, because the circumstances of what happened around that time, and how this person told all to someone who should not have been party to it, is a long, drawn-out nightmare that culminated in me being detained by Immigration for an entire day, and myself, my luggage, and the place where I was staying searched, and me warned in no uncertain terms that the only way out for me was to catch my booked return flight to England on time, and then think very hard if I ever wanted to come back to the country in question.

There are mitigating circumstances in everything, of course. But finding out that this whole machine was set off by someone telling someone something they shouldn't, purely to pander to their own sense of importance, kind of makes me a little angry.

It's a very intellectual anger. I'm not swearing in or outside my head, I'm not closing doors harder than I mean to, and I'm not taking it out on anyone else. In fact I think my friends here (the actual friends) are wondering why I'm not going off on one.

Here's the thing: being an INTJ affords you certain clarity. Yes, I found myself in a bad situation. Yes, I shared that information with a select few, and one of them offered me help and I took it. The other took the information and used it for their own purposes, resulting in me being robbed of years where I could have had a life somewhere, denied the chance to perhaps make something of myself in a place where that was possible, and of course now having an immigration door shut for ever more. But it was all six or seven years ago. The actual betrayal affected something else that happened ten years ago, and I'm only discovering it now. It's hard to be physically angry about something that transpired so long ago.

What I am angry about is the way this person knew that I had no knowledge of what they'd done, and still engaged with me in a way that conveyed friendship and helpfulness. The evidently saw nothing wrong in what they did, and they continued to hang out with me and other friends as if they had done nothing. At no time did they feel the need to tell me what went down, and at no time have they ever attempted to broach the subject.

They have, however, mentioned this to others.

And here's the kicker; finding out they've done this to other people I know, while still being their friend.

It's hard to understand how they reconcile one act with another; how can you profess to be someone's friend and therefore want what's best for them, when you act in direct contrast to achieving that? If I said yes, I support you in buying a car for example, and then the next day call the dealership and tell them that I believe you to be a bad risk and not to trust the credit check, how can I say I'm acting out of friendship and not just plain jealousy that you're ending up with a better car than I'm in a position to afford?

Sour grapes have been mentioned. I'm having a hard time discounting that. As difficult as it is for me to accept, I believe in this case someone has acted purely out a sense of jealousy. Doesn't that mean they don't consider us to be friends? I want the best for my friends, and I want them to be happy. If they have better jobs, bigger cars, more expensive houses, fantastic spouses and lovely kids, isn't that what I want them to have? If it's not, why are we friends? What does 'friendship' mean to you if it's tempered by your status in life compared to theirs? How does that even work?

Where does this leave me? Wondering if I bother getting back to the person who's trying to make contact, that's where. The logical thing to do would be to agree to meet for the day, then sit down and just ask them outright, make some sense of why they did it, weigh up if they're lying about why they did it ("I did it to protect you", etc.) or if they sit there and say "yes, I did it - what are you going to do about it?"

The answer to that is simple.

If this is how they think friends work, then by my own definition we were never friends. And standing up, saying goodbye and please don't contact me again is a neat, concise way to draw a line under this whole thing and move on.

Because unlike some people, I do have the capacity to move on. I don't go back to my school years and say how difficult it was. I don't drag up issues from high school and say how I mostly got everything done off my own back. I don't point to literally all the jobs my friends have with their salaries 3 times mine and say how unfair that is. You get over it or you don't. When I do, they won't be able to come with me, seeing as they'll be trapped in their world of complete unfairness and entitlement.

Put that way, I don't think there's anything to draw a line under. That would be like trying to bring closure to a factory that shut down ten years ago. Why padlock the main gates when the place is derelict? Closure already happened, just without you, and a long time ago.

"Too bad, so sad, move on."

Quite.