Snaked by my own kind

The value of loyalty can not be overemphasized, it is one of those things we all enjoy and which brings us great comfort. Whether it's our parents and how loyal they are to us, or our friends and the commitment they have for us. I don’t know about others, but it's something I value a lot in all the friendships I have because I understand just how important and valuable it is in society. It is also one of those pleasurable gifts we can get from anybody, and de-facto we expect it from everybody we get to interact with.

Sometimes you don’t even have to think about it, and rare are the moments when we get to request for it. You’ll need to be really insecure if you have to request for loyalty from others. It's just something which has to come naturally and really feels great. When it doesn’t come naturally, then we assume that person isn’t a friend to us, and we move away from them quickly. It is something that is expected without even saying a word, and so it is always mind-boggling when you meet a person who betrays you. It's like this person was doing something against nature itself, but in reality, betrayal isn’t something that unnatural. I’ve already written an article on the reasons to betray a friend.

Test of loyalty

Loyalty is something we all feel entitled to, and sometimes it can go to the very extremes, that's where it becomes problematic. People even when they do wrong things will still expect loyalty from you, but the real test of loyalty is precisely at those moments. The mistake people make is to think that they have to support their friends in the wrong things they are doing. Sometimes others rather feel like they have to destroy their friendship because the action is so egregious that they can’t stand by their friend. This can be true one way or the other but I think loyalty is something which goes both ways. The actions of your friend can hurt you and others as well, so he or she can’t just expect you to be there for him when he clearly isn’t there for you.

What you have to do in such a case is to clearly show your friend the implications of his actions and a way to redeem himself.

I’ll take an example, imagine a friend who steals from you or someone else, this is obviously a betrayal of trust because your friendship wasn’t based on theft, it was understood even without saying it, that these weren’t actions you agreed with. For him to steal is already a betrayal of the idea or image you had of him, however this won’t mean an end to your friendship, you still give him the chance to redeem himself or at least make amendments.

Snake your own kind

Situations like these happen very often and even go as far as friends actually setting up their own friends, relatives, or pretty much anyone they possibly can. The reasons behind this are obvious; money, emotions, events etc You can name the multitude of reasons why people can betray others but I want to take a specific case. Imagine a friend who sets up his friend for him to go to jail or worse, maybe because he was jealous of this friend’s newly acquired wealth. His friend started getting a lot of wealth and even though he shared part of it with him, he still was jealous, envious and ultimately hurt his friend.

This is a cycle of betrayal started way earlier than you might think, most people just limit themselves to the end results, an envious friend betrayed another. You have to look back at the genesis of their relationship, where it all started, so you figure out who betrayed who. Looking back, you might realize that their friendship was based on them sharing everything with each other, and it was convenient enough since they didn’t have much. Once one of them started earning way more, an imbalance set in and that became problematic. Once this imbalance was in place it affected their loyalty to each other slowly, eventually the rest is just a consequence of that imbalance.

You’ll see that for the relationships you have where loyalty isn’t even a question you ask yourself, there is a pretty consistent balance in your relationship with each other. You know what to expect from the other, and they never deviate quite a lot from that. The vicious cycle of betrayal can move in all directions and be totally unpredictable.

Conclusion

Overall and really depending on the kind of environment you are in, people are pretty loyal however, it can’t hurt to brace yourself for a potential betrayal every once in a while.

Thanks for reading ☺️