Thinking about betrayal

The themes are recurrent in my "what-if" scenarios: infidelity and physical pain; the worst extremes of betrayal. Sometimes the two are present in the same nightmare. These are the ones where I'm the punisher, transforming my emotional pain into someone else's physical pain. Even if there is a sub-human urge to identify with pain - inflicted or received - as shown through photographs, I am still sickened by the unfathomable depravity of others, mostly men. It's men who are so brazen and careless about their affairs, too. They bounce from woman to woman in Antonioni movies, easily and without more than verbal attachment. The lack of imagination, the inability to see themselves from the position of those they betray, their missing empathic sense is foreign, so foreign that I am continually surprised by it. But now I assign these attitudes to those around me, because it seems safer to be expectant than caught unaware. Infidelity I believe common, but sadism, though there is as much evidence of it, distresses me intensely; I mentally turn my head, yet my eyes keep reading.