His betrayal was my fault

Dear Empress Editorial Team, dear readers,

I know how difficult this sentence is to accept. His betrayal was my fault. It sounds wrong. It sounds unfair. It sounds like I am taking responsibility for something that was clearly not mine to carry. After all, betrayal belongs to the betrayer. He is the one who lied. He is the one who crossed the line.

In our minds, he should live with it forever, perhaps even suffer for it, carrying the weight of what he did.

But life rarely works that way.

I know this because I was betrayed three times, by three different men. I am not saying all men cheat. I am saying there was a time in my life when it felt like they did. Not because the world was full of unfaithful men, but because something inside me kept repeating the same story.

The answer did not come gently.
It did not arrive dressed as wisdom or insight.

It came to me on a bathroom floor. Not in a moment of clarity, but in complete collapse. I was crying the kind of cry that leaves you empty afterwards, when your body hurts and your thoughts fall apart. Somewhere in the background, It’s All Coming Back to Me Now by Céline Dion was playing. I remember thinking, almost absurdly, that of course it was that song. When everything falls apart, subtlety usually goes with it.

I asked myself why this had happened to me. Not angrily. Not dramatically. Just quietly, because I had no strength left to lie to myself. And the answer came.

“Because you allow it”.

I stayed there for a long time, letting those words sink in. And then another thought followed, slower and heavier, almost unbearable.

“In truth, you betrayed yourself long before he ever did”.

That sentence hurt more than his betrayal. Because it shifted everything. Suddenly, what he had done was no longer the centre of the story. It became a consequence. A result of something I had been doing to myself for years.

For the next year, I began to dismantle my own patterns. Slowly. Honestly. Without mercy. I started to see why I attracted men who betrayed me. Why I tolerated blurred boundaries. Why I accepted half love and called it devotion. Somewhere deep inside, I believed I did not deserve more.

My father humiliated my mother.
Later, he humiliated me.

There is not a single healthy relationship in my family history. Not one. This pattern goes back generations. It was not my fault, but it was my inheritance. And at some point, I realised I had a choice.

I could carry it forward.
Or I could be the one who stopped it.

I chose to work on myself.
Not on him.
Not on men.
On myself.

That difference changed everything.

I cannot change anyone. I cannot save anyone. But I have full control over who I allow into my life and under what conditions. If someone cannot meet those conditions, they simply do not stay. No drama. No speeches. No second chances given in the name of hope that this time it will be different.

I stopped rescuing. I put my mental health first.

And something unexpected happened. My world became smaller. Much smaller. But it became safer. Quieter. Kinder.

Five years have passed since the last time I was betrayed. Including the last time I betrayed myself. And I can say this now with complete certainty. Life becomes infinitely more beautiful when we stop betraying ourselves in exchange for crumbs of love.

Do not look for love outside of yourself when you do not yet stand firmly on your own ground. That is when we become easy targets. When you know who you are, when you respect your own boundaries, you become remarkably difficult to break.

No one can hurt you deeply enough to leave you crying on a bathroom floor, with Céline Dion playing far louder than it ever should.