Betrayal

Betrayal is one of the most difficult emotions to handle.

There are so few things in this life which prove trustworthy. Young people trust everyone and everything. It's a natural beginning.
Distrust and fear must be learned.
Sad people learn to distrust too many people and things. - This is the disease of middle age which brings so many to an unhappy old age. These people live their lives in fear. Too often they teach their children this fear too young.
When we finally find something we feel we can trust - and love - and that person or thing betrays us, it earns our distrust and teaches us fear.

Literature and the news are full of the stories of those who feel betrayed. Mothers destroying their children (e.g., Media from the Illiad) rather than allowing their father to see them; or filling their children with unreasonable fear.
Pained by a real or imagined betrayal, these parents betray the love and trust their children place in them. It rends the heart to see that the parents do not see that. Their excuse is that they are "protecting" the children from the other parent.
Too often the betrayal is only imagined; or nothing the other person could control (illness or accident) - but the vicious self-righteousness of the scorned or betrayed is never ending.
"The wrath of a woman scorned...", even is she is not.

There are other relationships in our lives which we must trust, such as the trust in law and government. Men who have experienced the prejudice of the courts and legal/social system feel betrayed.
Volumes can be written describing how such betrayal endangers the foundations of freedom in a nation. If the citizens cannot trust the government, then they will change the government sooner or later.

Australia betrayed me. I joined the ranks of tens of thousands of Australians - men, women, children and families - who were betrayed by Australia.
By allowing my ex to use the prejudice in the system to extort my home and possessions, slander me with my own suffering, then condemn me without incident or proof and even an attempt to find the truth, Australia betrays the faith and confidence of its citizens. Mine is just one small example amongst the ever-increasing many...

Despite the friends I made later, I could not forget Australia's betrayal. I will never again trust anything Australian. It speaks volumes to me that the close friends I made after leaving the relationship were with foreigners living in Australia, or Australians who wished to leave the country.
The eyes and feelings of the men I met who were also betrayed by their country show that they will never trust the legal system. Many have committed their lives to seeing the system changed because they still love their country, but cannot abide the sense of betrayal by an arrogated few.