When someone we deeply care about betrays us, it can be devastating. Suddenly, the person we relied on for support and security has caused us immense pain, leaving us feeling shattered and vulnerable. Our once-safe relationship now feels uncertain and painful. This upheaval triggers a primal response in our brain’s fear center, the amygdala, causing us to experience panic and disrupting our ability to think clearly.

In such situations, our brain instinctively reacts in one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze. We may confront the threat head-on, withdraw from the situation, or become paralyzed. As a result, our body shuts down, and our minds go numb, unable to process the betrayal. Consequently, this response hinders our ability to think clearly and make sense of the emotional pain, making it difficult to move forward.

When we combine infidelity with our attachment needs and our inborn response to trauma, it creates the following equation: Betrayal injures our sense of safe connection to our partner. Because of the interdependence that is the heart of secure bonding, these attachment injuries are felt as primal dangers, threatening our sense of survival. The more we feel our survival is threatened, the more we will take steps to try to preserve our attachment in order to preserve our survival. And one effective way to preserve our sense of safe connection is to not know what we know and not see what we see.

This survival-based form of not seeing and not knowing is called betrayal blindness.