The Betrayal Wound: When Loving Him Is Betraying Yourself

Repatterning your attachment to chaos, caretaking, and crumbs

Both men and women carry a betrayal wound — the primal pain of not being protected, not being chosen, being shamed by someone who is supposed to care, or being abandoned at some point in our childhood or even adult life. This wound becomes most apparent in relationships with family or in romantic relationships, particularly during dating.

For women, it often stems from not being chosen, being used, or being left without explanation repeatedly, while for men, it often stems from being criticized, controlled, being told they don’t measure up, or feeling like no matter what they do, it will never be enough. In modern dating, these unhealed wounds fester and collide, breaking hearts and further entrenching feelings of betrayal and pain.

The betrayal wound may begin in childhood for men and women through an insecure attachment to parents, through complex trauma, addiction, or codependency in the household, or through overt instances of abuse and trauma. Frequently, familial emotional neglect or codependent or addicted family systems leave the children in the family feeling their needs don’t matter and their safety is not guaranteed. As these children grow into adults, they seek out partners who feel familiar and reinforce this messaging through their behavior. They are attracted to partners who live in states of trauma, abuse, or survival, states which further bolster the betrayal wound and subconscious belief that being met or having a healthy relationship is impossible. These survival strategies, when played out in modern dating and adult relationships, add layers of new relational trauma to existing attachment trauma.

How men and Women Embody the Wound

Men, who are most often socialized to be self-reliant and suppress vulnerability, often respond to betrayal by becoming emotionally avoidant, self-reliant, or manipulative (subconsciously or consciously.) They may unconsciously others betray first to avoid feeling weak, vulnerable, or betrayed - whether by withholding their feelings and leaving the relationship before it had a real chance, cheating to get their needs elsewhere, or a variety of other self-sabotaging behaviors.

Women, conditioned to earn love and seek being chosen, often respond to betrayal by over-functioning, fixing, or fawning — believing on an unconscious level that their survival depends on maintaining relationships and that if they’re just good/kind/patient enough, they won’t be left again.

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When He Won’t Commit (to Himself)

Deep betrayal in dating doesn’t always happen from big moments - like cheating, lying, or abandoning. It happens in the smaller moments of emotional abandonment, and subtle acts of betrayal (breadcrumbing, ghosting, false promises, ambiguity, lack of value and care), which reinforce the patterns most familiar to women.

Since women are conditioned to offer security through fawning and maintaining relationships, while men are conditioned to be self-reliant, these smaller moments of betrayal are more often invisible to the man who is perpetrating them than they would be to a woman.

When a man says he’s “working on himself,” or “figuring out” what he wants, but is just avoiding (emotional) intimacy and clarification, or says he wants depth or a long term relationship, or guides the relationship towards sex through pressure and subtle messaging, then disappears every time intimacy becomes inconvenient or conflicts with his freedom or unspoken needs; When he uses therapy language and trauma stories to sound self-aware — but isn’t actually accountable, he’s weaponizing insight and spiritual bypassing the emotional reality that is happening in the relationship. He is asking a woman to hold his hand and meet his needs for comfort and connection while he does not see consider her needs in return.

Deep betrayal in dating doesn’t always happen from big moments. It happens in the smaller moments of emotional abandonment, and subtle acts of betrayal (breadcrumbing, ghosting, false promises, ambiguity, lack of value and care), which reinforce the betrayal patterns most familiar to women.

Women often agree to this kind of relationship, betraying themselves and their wants by believing that love, patience, overgiving, and nurturing will somehow call the man and the relationship into their potential.

The way to fix the betrayal here is through a commitment to growth and relationship. The man isn’t wrong for each misstep he made, but the overall lack of intentionality and awareness, the refusal to commit to his own emotional evolution. Not choosing to face feelings and growth creates chaos and destruction in all relationships it touches, and in all open hearts involved.

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The Dance

The later life layers of the betrayal wound often play out through a false intimacy cycle - where a man may “love bomb” or intensely pursue before knowing a woman, and a woman may try to please through over giving, committing, or having sex early on before real trust and emotional intimacy are established. As soon as emotions become real, attachment wounds get triggered and men may be more likely to ghost to protect themselves while women may double down on trying to preserve the relationship. Women are often pathologized for this longing - for connection, clarity, and depth - as being irrational, needy, or codependent, while male shutdown has been framed as strength, stoicism, or “how men are.” However, what if that “neediness” is actually attunement? What if the emotional sensitivity we shame in women is the very thing that makes secure, relational intimacy possible?

Socially, we have reinforced, rewarded, and romanticized male avoidance as mystery, flat affect as calm and control, and withholding “boundaries.” This is the blue pill reality. The true reality is that emotional shutdown is not a conscious boundary. It is a harmful and unkind protective strategy. It is at best a survival mechanism that when left unexamined, perpetrates the neglect he originally experienced on those in his orbit.

Meanwhile, a woman’s longing and anxiety for connection actually stems from a healthy but suppressed feeling of inner knowing. The longing is a healthy urge for relationship. The anxiety is a sign that something isn’t right, that there’s an imbalance or rupture. She has been taught to suppress her anxiety until it erupts uncontrollably, when in reaity, she must learn to have unwavering trust and understanding of the smoke alarms coming from her body’s deep wisdom

The cultural myth that women should be endlessly understanding and intuit the words a man is not saying — while men are not expected to know how to communicate is a toxic cultural belief system subtly and systemically reinforced through lyrics in music and advice from friends, family, and pop culture.

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Why a Man’s Betrayal Often Looks Like Disappearance — and a Woman’s Looks Like Self-Abandonment

Betrayal isn’t always a grand overture. Sometimes it’s silence, breadcrumbing, or a shift in tone. Sometimes it’s a withdrawal of initiating, or avoiding clarity while still keeping hope in the relationship alive.

For many men who fear being left, betrayal happens through disappearance — both physical and emotional. They may ghost, breadcrumb, or deflect to avoid feeling the pain of betrayal by leaving others before they can be left. The inability or refusal to sit with their own discomfort has been normalized socially but is an act of self-betrayal felt most by those who are in touch with their feelings. It has a painful impact on the women on the receiving end.

Disappearance becomes a way to avoid the shame of perceived inadequacy and risk of vulnerability, but more notably, to neglect the other person the man has brought into his orbit and to avoid accountability for the impact of his actions altogether. If he’s not there, he can’t see or experience the pain he is causing. While this may not be a conscious act, the choice not to fix this repeated pattern of unkind behavior is a conscious choice. It only takes a few minutes of self-reflection after one incidence of knowing you harmed another person to see that the impact of the disappearance far outweighs the intent.

For many women, betrayal happens internally. They don’t disappear from others, but from from themselves. They lose themselves in overanalysis, in emotional acrobatics, fawning, people pleasing, minimizing themselves into digestible bits they hope will be easy to love. They silence their voice and intuition, rationalizing their anxiety, and accepting the smaller and smaller bits of attention being given to them.

This self-abandonment is the betrayal of their own needs, voice, boundaries, and gut instinct in order to preserve a connection that hasn’t reciprocated their attention. While men leave women to avoid their own shame and feelings, women abandon themselves internally to maintain connection.

Both are betrayals, and both keep intimacy at arm’s length.

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How to Interrupt the Trauma-Bonding Loop

(And recognize when your betrayal wound is being retriggered—not healed)

The familiar dance can feel intoxicating at first: the deep eye contact, the late-night conversations, the way he says “with you, it’s different.,” the way your nervous system lights up, even though something in your gut whispers, slow down.

These bonds are not built on a solid foundation of repair, just the promises of romance and hope of a future repair where needs are discussed, met, and considered, and conflict will be repaired. In other words, the hope of a real relationship - which someone who has not faced their wounds - will not be able to give.

To interrupt the loop, you have to stop asking:

“Does he care?”

and start asking:

“Does this dynamic nourish me, or does it re-traumatize me?”

You have to recognize when your betrayal wound is being triggered—that anxious grasping, the uncertainty or shame after sex, the ruminating, the way your identity starts to wrap around being “chosen”—and to realize it’s not healing. It’s reenactment.

Healing is characterized by clarity, not by constant guessing, uncertainty, shape-shifting, obsession, anxiety, and performance. Healing is characterized by clarity, security, and an exhale.

So next time you’re caught in the spiral, pause and ask:

“Do I feel safe here—or addicted?”
“Am I being met—or just managed?”
“Am I growing—or betraying myself to stay?”

And finally….What do I need right now? Can I give it to myself?

The way out won’t come from trying to be good enough to make him stay, but from being brave enough to hold your center.

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A New Way Forward

To stop enacting old wounds in dating, we need new relational agreements and expectations. Agreements rooted in mutual growth. Here’s what that could look like:

• Men learn to grow emotionally and to give emotions reciprocally — not just apologize after hurting someone and hope that the problem will disappear. They are expected to learn the tools to recognize what they are doing and not just apologize, but also stop doing and repeating it.
  

• Women learn to stop trying to prove they’re worthy of basic care. Women become empowered emotionally as they learn to stop defining their worth by being therapists in the bedroom, mothers to their partner’s needs, or spiritual guides in the relationship. They get to just be and receive as much as they give.
  

• We stop mistaking trauma reenactment for romance:
  No more tolerance for disappearing acts called “needing space.”
  No more over giving mistaken for necessary relationship glue and devotion.

The new paradigm of love must be built on integrity, awareness, and mutual responsibility rather than fantasy, hopes, and promises.

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If this article resonated with you — whether you’re tired of chasing love or withholding it — you’re not alone. We’re building new relational blueprints.

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