Nineteen...

     “I betrayed you,” she said baldly.
     “I betrayed you,” he said.
     She gave him another quick look of dislike.
     “Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten you with something—something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”
     “All you care about is yourself,” he echoed.
     “And after that, you don’t feel the same toward the other person any longer.”
     “No,” he said, “you don’t feel the same.”

     It’s a “primitive” thing to be reduced beneath love by an outside force. The act is so unfamiliar to our species, it’s nearly unheard of in our society as bare discussion.
     How could they feel the same? How could they not hold high dislike for one another? Perhaps this is dislike of realizing one’s own instincts, particularly how far a human will go to protect themselves. I would be disgusted with myself if I were forced to betray you, but not deniable. I couldn’t feel the same about you because I wouldn’t be able to feel the same about myself.

     This is my favorite example of the realistic weaving of love.