Betrayal occurs only where trust existed and it signals the breaking or destruction of trust. It’s a word usually reserved for adult experiences such as spousal infidelity, workplace deception and disloyalty from a trusted family member, friend or associate. It is a deliberate act by a trusted person to deceive, mislead and hurt, either by omission or commission. However, betrayal doesn’t begin in adulthood. It’s learned, absorbed and sometimes even perfected in the early chapters of life.
I witnessed this first hand among pre-teen girls and the memories linger on in my heart.
I moved with my family to one of the small islands in the Pacific region for work. It was a remote environment with a close-knit expatriate community. In order to foster friendship among the accompanying children, families with children were housed in the same location, equipped with a playground and other recreational facilities. My terrace overlooked the playground so I watched the children play in the evenings.
There was an 11-year-old girl whose parents arrived the island first. I’ll name her Liv. About a month later, another family came in with their daughter Bea, who was a year younger. The two girls soon became friends. I watched the girls play together; they chatted, joked, and laughed every evening. It was heart-warming to see them settle in happily. All the children went to the same school on a shuttle bus, so they went to school together and came back together. I watched that friendship blossom.
Six months on, another family moved in with a daughter their age. One would have thought with Caroline joining them, the more the merrier. Rather, there was a swift change in the dynamics of the existing friendship. Liv practically turned her back on Bea and latched on to the new arrival. I watched Bea totally alienated on the playground. Eventually she stopped coming out to play and later left for the boarding school.
The two new friends were inseparable. For a whole year I watched a new bond form, right from the comfort of my terrace. Liv and Caroline were exactly age mates, they were in the same class, they went to school together, came back home together. They met at each other’s apartment to do homework before coming out to play. It was a closer friendship with a stronger bond, or so I thought.
Then suddenly, the girls stopped coming out to play. I assumed their parents had taken on a new posting and left the island until I ran into Caroline’s mum in the supermarket. It was a relief to see her again, although she didn’t seem happy. I asked after her daughter, then she pulled me to the side of the aisle to narrate what had transpired between her daughter and her best friend and why the girls no longer came out to play.
The girls went to a preparatory school which terminates in year 8. Thereafter, they would have to apply for admission into the high school. It’s a different school completely, at a different location. Progression isn’t automatic. It’s a long process of application, entrance tests, interviews, offers, acceptance and registration. An entire process that takes months to complete.
It was the start of a new academic year and the girls were going into year 8, the final year of prep school. They weren’t due for high school that year. The night before resumption, the best friends were together as usual gushing about how excited they were to go back to school. There was a lot of excitement and anticipation as they looked forward to seeing their classmates again.
On the first day of school, Caroline and her mum got on the shuttle bus, waiting for Liv to join them on the ride as usual. It was quite a long wait but nothing prepared them for the shock they experienced in the end.
Liv came out with her mum in a different school uniform; the high school uniform. She gave a slight wave to her friend, as she walked past the shuttle bus into a waiting car. Her mum looked away completely, with no greeting or acknowledgement of Caroline and her mum. Liv had skipped a grade and changed school without telling her ‘best’ friend.
At this point, Caroline’s mum’s voice was laden with tears as she described how her daughter felt that morning; the shock and disappointment on her daughter’s face was indescribable as they drove to school in silence. Her daughter came back home devastated. It wasn’t just the sudden separation from her closest friend and companion, but the betrayal entwined in it; the intentional omission of an important fact. The girls were still together the previous night, talking about everything under the sun without a mention. There was no hint in her voice or body language. She was absolutely normal.
The hand wave Liv gave as she approached her car was a final one to their friendship. The days went by and Liv neither called nor knocked on their door again. She never came out to the playground to play either. She gave no excuse, no explanation, as she walked away from the friendship. The separation was sharp, leaving her daughter with a sense of abandonment and distress.
Personal Reflection
As I reflected on this conversation, I realised it wasn’t an isolated incident but a repeated pattern; one that repeated itself with alarming symmetry. Liv had suddenly severed her friendship with Bea the moment Caroline arrived. Then a year later, she dropped Caroline in the exact manner: no conflict, no explanation, just cold detachment. She betrayed her friend by omitting a fact and abandoned the friendship without a backward glance. All these came from someone barely 12 years old.
We do not have the capacity to accurately read human minds, so we may never know the thoughts and reason behind each act of betrayal. There are many reasons why people break trust and many ways it can be done. However, the outcome is the same: hurt, distrust and distress, sometimes total devastation. No one is spared, irrespective of our race, culture or orientation, what is human is human. Trust is common to all friendships and its destruction impacts all.
The events I witnessed on that small island were more than just the natural social shift of growing children. First with Bea and then with Caroline. They were a reflection of deeper values, or a lack of them, that we consciously or unconsciously pass down to our children. These are 12-year-olds whose academic decisions are taken by their parents. Liv’s mum was a part of this plot as was obvious in her reaction. There is absolutely nothing wrong in accelerating her child’s progress. But, in the process, she taught her child that it’s an acceptable behaviour to break trust, and that friends are disposable. One thing I can say for sure is that betrayal is an acquired behaviour, learned through cultural norm, social interactions and experiences.
If betrayal can become second nature by age 12, then we must take a long hard look at the environment in which we raise our children, the behaviours we model and the lessons we allow to take root.
As parents and guardians, we must promote healthy relationships, we must teach openness, honesty, loyalty and sincerity in friendship. Without these qualities, it’s not friendship. Relationships are built and nurtured to grow. In the heart of it is trust. We learn to build trust from a young age; in the age of innocence. Unfortunately, we also learn to break it from a young age. Read https://fullnineyards.com/loyalty-the-soul-of-our-relationships/
Let’s remember this:
The seed of betrayal is sown early, sometimes with a mare turn in the playground or a small, quiet wave of goodbye. When we fail to nurture kindness and loyalty in the sandbox, we shouldn’t be surprised when we find a lack of integrity in the bedroom and boardroom of adults.