There is this moment. This one moment when someone decides that something is more important than the promise they made. More important than the person they swore allegiance to. More important than the values they supposedly stand for.
We call that betrayal.
But what is betrayal, really? Is it the scientist who sells state secrets to another nation? The friend who reveals a secret that was entrusted to them? The politician who betrays their voters? The partner who cheats?
Interestingly, we almost always define betrayal from the position of the betrayed. We rarely ask: What was the betrayer thinking? What did he hope to achieve?
Because this is where it gets complicated. Almost no one sees themselves as a betrayer. In your own story, you are the hero who had to make a difficult decision. You had good reasons. You had no choice. You had to think of yourself. Of your own family. Of the greater good.
Picture yourself at a fork in the road. To the left, the path leads to something you want—security, freedom, a new life. To the right lies what you have—loyalty, promises, an identity you have built up over years.
And it's clear: you have a choice—but you also have to choose: Make up your mind. Go left and leave the right behind. Or stay right and give up on the left. Stability through holding on, transformation through letting go.
But wouldn't it be great if there were a third way? A trick that would make both paths possible at the same time? Where you could keep your cake and eat it too, so to speak?
And here it lurks, betrayal.
Not as a moral category, but as an attempt to make the impossible possible: to get something new without giving up something old. To change something without changing yourself.
Take Judas. The story is well known—thirty pieces of silver, a kiss, a betrayal. But what did he really want?
The usual answer: money. But you don't betray your teacher, your friend, the man you've spent years with, for thirty pieces of silver. Not if you just want the money.
What if Judas wanted something deeper? Security, perhaps. Distance from the dangerous mission. The feeling of no longer being trapped in this hopeless situation.
Then he could have left. Just walked away. Far away. Built a new life for himself.
But that would have meant: I no longer stand by Jesus. I am no longer the faithful disciple. I am giving up what I was.
That is the price of transformation. You have to let go. You have to admit—to yourself, to others—that you have changed. That you are giving something up.
And that is exactly what Judas could not or would not do.
Hence the betrayal. The magic trick that is supposed to make both possible: gaining security AND at the same time... well, what exactly? No longer being the faithful disciple, but also not the one who left. An identity in limbo. Having your cake and eating it too.
But the universe doesn't work that way.
There are these physical laws. Cause and effect. The law of conservation of energy for some, others call it karma, some call it consequence, some simply say: that's life.
Everything has its price. Not in the moral sense of punishment, but in the structural sense: every decision excludes others. Every transformation requires you to leave something behind. You can't be here and there at the same time.
Betrayal is an attempt to escape these laws. To say: I want the new security, but I don't want to be the one who left. I want freedom, but I don't want to let go of responsibility. I want the gain, but I don't want to endure the loss.
That's why betrayal is so often associated with cowardice. Not because the traitor is weak, but because they do not face the fundamental fear: that if I get one thing, I will lose the other. That I cannot have everything.
Inner transformation—that is the real step that betrayal seeks to circumvent. The moment when you say honestly to yourself: This is more important to me than that. I let go. I accept the consequences. I will be someone different than before.
That is painful. That is difficult. It feels like dying—and in a way, it is. A part of you dies so that another can be born.
Betrayal promises: You don't have to go through that. You can have both. You can change without changing.
But then something strange happens.
The betrayer may get what they wanted. The security. The money. The freedom. But they don't get their deeper need fulfilled—because the deeper need is to be able to stand by themselves. To be at peace with their own decision.
And that's impossible after a betrayal.
Because now the traitor is neither who he was nor who he wanted to be. He is a third, unplanned identity: the traitor himself. Trapped between worlds he did not choose.
Judas got his thirty pieces of silver. But he did not get the security he longed for. Not the peace. Not the freedom from fear. He got a noose and a tree.
Perhaps that is the deepest irony of betrayal: it fails not because it is morally wrong. It fails because it attempts the structurally impossible. Because it attempts to escape the fundamental laws of life—and that does not work.
You cannot grow without leaving something behind. You cannot transform without letting go. You cannot have everything.
That's hard. That hurts. But it is possible.
Betrayal promises the easy way—and delivers the impossible.
And yet people do it again and again. Why?
Perhaps because the fear of transformation is greater than the fear of betrayal. Because we hope that we are the exception. That the trick will work for us. That the laws of the universe do not apply to us.
Or maybe because, in the moment of betrayal, we truly believe that there is no other option. That the choice between transformation and betrayal is not a choice because transformation seems impossible.
But it is not impossible. It is just painful.
And betrayal? Betrayal is also painful. Except that this pain does not lead to transformation, but to dissolution. Not to a new self, but to no self at all.
What does that mean for us?
Perhaps this: When you are faced with a choice that tears you apart. When you feel like you can't have both, but you can't choose either. When the temptation arises to find a way that makes both possible...
Then maybe that's the moment when you should ask yourself: Am I ready to let go? Ready to hold on? Am I ready to stand by my choice, even if it's painful? Am I ready to become the person who makes this decision—not the person who pretends not to have made it?
Because in the end, there are only two paths: make a decision for transformation/status quo or betrayal.
And only one of them leads to the future.
The other only leads to the tree with the noose.
PS: By the way, I've just emigrated to Denmark 😉
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