Anna Fels, is New York psychiatrist and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical School, writes about how betrayals affect the betrayed and the betrayed. In her practice, she addresses many types of betrayals — alcohol, infidelity, spending. The commonality is they they are all hidden. Here’s the article:
Great Betrayals, by Anna Fells, M.D.
“As a psychiatrist I find that friends frequently seek me out to discuss problematic events in their lives; it comes with the territory and I’m usually happy to do it. But I was surprised and shaken to hear from an old friend that her husband of nearly 25 years had long been accruing and hiding from her a huge credit card debt (in the six figures). Even after divulging his secret, the husband had lied about the amount, with the sum increasing every time it was discussed. And right from the start, he refused to document where the money was spent. He left it for his wife to ruminate on, trying to puzzle it out. The disclosure wreaked financial and emotional havoc on their family.
After my initial shock at this unsuspected betrayal, I began to recall patients I had seen whose situations were not that dissimilar. They were people who had suddenly discovered that their life, as they knew it, was based on a long-term falsehood. They were people who might have stumbled across family secrets on the Internet or found old bills from a spouse’s long-hidden liaisons.” To read more, click here.
Art by Anthony Russo, NYT
