Ms. Trust
Q:
Dear Dr. Darcy:
When you suffer an unexpected betrayal at the hands of someone you loved and trusted very much — so much so that you’ve had to cut off all contact in order to save your sanity — who is it that you should remember as you try to process and mourn the loss (in this case, a best friend as well as a LTR)? Is it the wonderful person you thought you knew? Or the one who destroyed you on their way out the door? The good memories seem to be permanently tainted by the bad ones.
A:
You mourn both, because you had a relationship with both. And there’s no easy way of doing that.
We all have parts ~ different sides to ourselves. I’ll use myself as an example: If you’re in my circle, there’s nothing I won’t do for you. If you’re not and you cross someone who is in my circle, there’s nothing I won’t do to defend them. Same Darcy. Different parts.
Your ex has different parts to her as well. And both were real. So it’s really one person you’re mourning. It would be easier to say that she literally turned into a different person, someone who you’d never seen warning signs of, and that since the old version seemed to disappear when she morphed into the venomous bitch who left you, there’s no reason to mourn the woman you loved. But that wouldn’t feel right to you, which is why you wrote to me in the first place.
Don’t let your pain and anger overshadow your right to mourn. The love you had for her was real and it deserves a proper grieving period. After you’re done mourning her, do some work on forgiveness so that you don’t turn into someone who is jaded and doesn’t trust.
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