The Broken Ones

Relationships are dynamic – they themselves don’t “break” – rather it is that one of the parties in a relationship “breaks”. Breaks faith, breaks trust, lies or withholds essential information, the time-honoured ways of abdicating responsibility to working through life’s challenges with the other stakeholder in the relationship. Perhaps it’s because the ‘broken one’ has exhausted his vital energy, has became cynical or bleak – yet perhaps it is simply a ‘power issue’ – there is a ‘break’ for no other reason than betrayal at hand is simply what one wants to do, and that one has coldly evaluated the situation as being such that the other is vulnerable and defenceless. So with the simmering desire to hurt another, plus some pretext, and the calculation that ‘so-and-so can’t or won’t retaliate’, the broken one proceeds. And that which has been broken by (and within) the perpetrating one, can not be ‘fixed’ by the other. The recipient of the act – the innocent party who suffered loss because of the broken one’s craven spite – cannot possibly ‘fix’ the damage. Often it is a miracle if the injured one is even able to maintain emotional balance, let alone effectively do anything to help the broken perpetrator – for let us be clear here, the one who breaks faith and trust with another, is the ‘broken’ one. Broken in sanity, in reason, in compassion, in humanity. Broken in any grasp of karmic consequence, that what goes around comes around. The perpetrator has no understanding of the ancient warning “Live by the sword, and then die by the sword”. It has been taught by countless masters of old – “treat others as you would be treated” – and universal experience confirms what the traditions teach, that if you betray others’ trust and persecute them, seemingly all too soon you will experience, first-hand, your own meanness mirrored back into your own life.

‘If you are not yet at ease with your father and mother,

then go away. I cannot help you.’

(sign on the office wall of Gurdjieff – the Armenian master-teacher)

The following is a story related to us by very close friends of ours – it is the story of a tragic family breakdown. The couple – to the best of our knowledge – are themselves of highest integrity, straight shooters and survivors. They have agreed to have their story posted in the hope that others in similar circumstances will know that they are not alone, should such misfortune befall them.

“Our eldest son has been a policeman for 20 years. Thirteen years ago he calculatedly and maliciously betrayed his parents and then over time he was guide and enabler to his two brothers and his sister also breaking away. Shamelessly he and his wife undermined the family, and even formally threatened – and then engaged in – ‘grandchild blackmail’ [Either we would be controlled by their immature reasoning and standards, or we would lose right of access to our beloved grandchildren.] This policeman son and his wife cold-bloodedly destroyed our family, and later, when matters of principle (and interest) came up between his brothers and their parents, his elder example was followed by them and each domino in turn cut us off. And even our daughter was co-opted against the parents for several years. What can parents do in such circumstances?? We wrote letters to all, and tried to contact all to reason with them but there was no possible way for us to ‘fix’ what others had intentionally broken. The more we tried, seemingly they were more convinced of their cause. The circumstances behind our family’s destruction still weigh heavily on the conscience of the eldest son to this day, and to varying degrees his guilt is also shared by his two brothers and his sister, all of whom played the part of ‘cross-enablers’ in colluding with each other, in justifying themselves.

“After 6 years of this unremitting parental abuse, one day we learned from a former neighbour that the eldest son – the policeman – was seriously ill with Birkett’s lymphoma – a non-Hodgkins cancer of the abdomen. That he was in the hospital, had undergone surgery, chemotherapy, and bone marrow extraction and re-investiture after total body irradiation. That he had lost 40% of his body weight and was in very serious condition. As stated, we heard all this from a former neighbour that we hadn’t heard from for several years, this neighbour having read about our son’s affliction in the newspaper, in connection with a police benefit for cancer-patients. No one from our immediate family had let us know, so it was painfully clear to us that our presence was not wanted. Through extensive checking with the many hospitals in Toronto, we were finally able to track down our son’s treatment centre, and after many repeated expressions of our deep concern to the duty nurse, the latter apparently arranged for the son to call us. Heavily sedated, he indicated that his physical prospects were improving, he acknowledged our letters and attempts to contact him, but our request to visit him was rebuffed as “politically the timing was bad. The wife would not like it”. We initiated telephone calls to this son’s wife, to his two brothers and to his sister. His wife in effect told us to stop bothering them; one son (who had walked away from his financial indebtedness to his parents) never returned our call; the youngest son appeared to sympathize with our circumstances but couldn’t be seen as supporting our cause; and the daughter gave her father a whole shit-load of incoherent telephone abuse and then hung up on him. One might conclude that the family members were in trauma.

“Eighteen months later, three days before Christmas 1998, the eldest son telephoned us, asking to visit. Hoping that his brush with death had shocked him to sensibility, if not contrition, we acceded. Our son came alone. We welcomed him back into the home with love and hugs, but apparently all he’d wanted to do was to flaunt his recovery in our faces, and flash before us the recent photographs of his two children, neither of whom we recognized after a seven-year lapse – in effect implying “see what you’ve missed by bucking me”. On parting, he verbally committed to do his part in bringing us all together again – but with time this promise was seen to be empty, without substance, merely bait to raise his parents’ hopes. And so the story goes on and on.

“Over the long years periodic attempts were made by us to re-contact and reunite with each and all, with no result. Then one day our daughter, who had returned to Canada, married, and became a mother herself (all without our knowing) responded to one of our periodic attempts. ‘Negotiations’ with her were difficult and her co-dependency ties with her eldest brother and his wife were all too apparent. For instance, any time that we tried to direct our conversations with her to the past, our daughter would superficially endure our concern, but appeared unable to express empathy for our loss and suffering, as to do so would be tantamount to, in her words, “taking sides”. As though there could be any “sides” in issues associated with the breaking of trust within a family, since if the key ‘broken one’ in a family is not restored, the whole family is diminished. “Sides” indeed!! What other side can there be but honest good-will between members of a family – and that the healthy all come to the aid of the broken?!

“Polished disconnect and absence of empathy. No acknowledgement of damage to the parents or to the family itself, since to do so might implicitly admit complicity. Prior to its recent web-posting, our daughter was invited to read a draft of your story “Time, Love and The Dream of Family” and afterward she was speechless and appeared stunned. She later indicated that she had been trying to get her policeman brother to call her father on Father’s Day (would have been a first for him – or Mother’s Day contact for that matter – since his shameful betrayal 13 years ago). By way of excusing him, she said that this beloved brother – now aged 44 - had apparently been feeling tremendous stress lately – Toronto’s whole undercover squad, of which he was a member, had recently been disbanded, with all the undercover officers being under investigation for various acts of corruption. Several officers had already been criminally charged, and some like our son were reassigned to desk jobs while their individual cases were investigated.”

Ironically, our friends’ policeman son was a lucky man. At least if he were charged, he would know what the offences were. His parents still have not heard from him, nor know why he dealt with them as he did, except that he wanted to, he saw the opportunity, and in his ignorant hubris he felt he could get away with it. A person who ‘breaks’ faith and trust will bring breakage into others’ lives. Such a person may appear to be affable enough to casual acquaintances but as Gurdjieff’s admonition implied, corruption at the primal level will manifest into corruption at the physical level, and into the handling of other important areas of one’s life.

Get the flavour, gentle readers? The old, old story of the one who has broken parental trust, having ‘escaped retribution’, and again riding high. Not an altogether unique tale, as we learned from comparing notes with others in our travels.

So, essentially, what breaks?? The relationship and the bereft, of course, bear the heel-prints of intentional damage, yet that is but the external, collateral evidence of the real breakage. The essential brokenness is to the perpetrator’s own self. His very self-image is broken. All his pretexts and justifications are only the deflective prattlings of a fool, fooling only himself. The broken person – the most immediate personage in the relationship psychodrama melt-down, KNOWS in his heart-of-hearts precisely what he has done, KNOWS precisely who he has done it to and why, and he deeply KNOWS that excepting for his own pathological cowardice and self-other hatred, his whole life would have turned out very, very differently. In one’s core self-imaging mechanism, he who breaks it, owns it. And only the one who breaks another’s love, faith and trust, can restore his self-image. No one else can. Enablers, condoners and supporters of the acts stemming from one’s brokenness are only obstacles to one’s own ultimate self-truth, self-restoration and self-realization.

The closer the relationship, the deeper the wound – the damage – when there is betrayal and breakdown. In an imperfect world, we all expect a certain amount of cheating and trickery in the marketplace, in the workplace. And we learn to roll with the punches and take care of ourselves; with a thick enough skin we learn how to deal with reversals and disappointments instigated by outsiders, without losing our sense of perspective and balance. But it is the close-in betrayals that are the most dangerous to our balance. Here, in the betrayal by he who one loved (and still loves), one must not yield to the temptation of taking the betrayal subjectively, of blaming oneself, of giving in to the power-plays of the ignorant, or of seeking revenge. The damage that the one does against himself in betraying another, effectively attenuates his psychic immune defence system – dreading life’s retribution from whatever side, he is like a lightening attractor for life’s karmic payback – life’s own settling of accounts for the suffering projected into others’ lives. Innocence is one’s strongest kevlar.

Betrayal in relationships wherein the parties have shared many years of aspirations, traditions and intimate, mutually supportive life together has the potential for tremendous damage on both sides. It is no secret that people actually do try to overpower – even damage and destroy – each other, and those who have the power to hurt us the most are those who know us best. With full intentionally and malice aforethought. As an example, even after many years of intensive therapy after a disastrous divorce, the divorced ones often are – and are felt by others to be – the walking wounded. What had been melded in spirit – when later broken – wounds the uncoupled spirits. All wounded and broken ones need our full compassion. They develop – must develop – psychic splints, emotional casts and compensatory mechanisms to offset their deep wounds, their brokenness. And the most destructive of all damages – by far – are those that one has done to oneself personally, to one’s own self-image. Later, layer by layer, one can feel one’s personal truth bubbling up – one discovers within oneself the real cause of one’s self-brokenness. One’s own shadow side is now the consuming self-image. Too soon old – too late wise.

[From “Time, Love and The Dream of Family”:

‘Gratitude for essential life is self-evident in any sentient creature, as is its opposite. And who can be surprised that such children’s (the broken ones) own physical and social worlds in time come to reflect their lack of initiative, creative dream and vision at the primal level? Is it any wonder that the physical states of such creatures become prematurely afflicted, their essential relationships become corrosive for lack of spirited principle, and that their work becomes arid, purposeless and meaningless??’]

The Path To Restoration??

In various 12 step recovery programs, a critical early stage is the honest, courageous, solitary Hero’s Path of deep introspection into one’s own experiences – one’s own memories and conscience – listing the people that one feels most guilty about having intentionally hurt. Then one has to try to make amends – an honest attempt to restore to wholeness those people that one has wilfully damaged. To show contrition and a sustained desire for mutual goodwill. Some on the list can be still contacted, if one only has the courage and resolves to cleanse one’s conscience in order to restore oneself. Some on the list may be beyond reach: people after all sometimes move and later are not locatable – and of course we are all mortal. But wherever possible, the attempt must be made. In one’s own self-interest. One may be rebuffed in one’s attempt to make amends – one’s heroic initiative to release both self and other from longstanding bitterness. Nonetheless, one’s own honest effort releases one from one’s personal brokenness. And if the other party would rather keep the grudge than accept the release, that’s on his own ticket and it is no longer an impediment to one’s own restoration. As implied in the first paragraph, the only one who can restore you, is you yourself. This is a maturing human’s essential responsibility – and until this is addressed, one is of no real benefit to others drafted into the legions of the walking wounded.

Posted July 13, 2004

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