The German-American relationship has long been like a bad, never-ending break-up. Germany, especially under the conservative leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, saw the love of its life – intimate, trustworthy, for better or for worse, with no secrets but plenty of denial. The US was always a more sober and suspicious lover – in it for the affair, whenever it had the free time.

Now that a German intelligence official has been arrested under suspicion of passing secret information back to America – potentially concerning an NSA investigation, and reportedly under direction by the CIA – finally the Merkel government is admitting that the long honeymoon is over. Tap my cellphone, shame on you; fool me with a double agent, shame on an ignorant nation.

If a young employee of the German foreign intelligence agency (BND) was indeed passing secret information to the Americans for more than two years, that is certainly a direct attack to the heart of Merkel's conservatives – no matter how low-level the employee, and especially if he was spying on the German Bundestag's spying investigation. The security apparatus was always their domain, and an invasion of their system would be a blow to their fight for enhancing surveillance inside and outside of Germany



"Spying on friends is not acceptable," Merkel said more than eight months ago, when the NSA revelations landed in her pocket. But other than the chief of staff of her chancellery saying that scandal "had been dispensed with", there was no other truly meaningful statement from Merkel's team amidst the international debate on mass surveillance.

This stance of speechlessness led to a culture of disbelief: German history has taught us about the Gestapo and the Stasi, but it was as if we didn't want to admit that we were in on the digital surveillance, too – BND never entered that debate. Instead, many still have the romantic image of the Schlapphüte – old men in trench coats and hats, waiting on the street corner to spy on someone.

After a year of waiting in disbelief, everything was supposed to be getting better. Just 10 days ago, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs met with the US State Department for their first transatlantic "cyber dialogue". John Podesta was flown in for a speech, and a number of officials came from Washington to Berlin. But you could already sense a cooling: Nobody even brought up the NSA – they just talked around it with words like "big data", not "Edward Snowden".

Then, on Monday, after days of James Bond-style reports about another secret agent, Merkel finally called the situation "serious". Her interior ministry’s solution: play a game of Spy-versus-Spy with more counter-intelligence.

There is no easy way out of this. The loss of confidence is so deep – Der Spiegel found this week that 69% of Germans lost confidence in the US – that it cannot be solved with a few more nice words or cyber dialogues. But more surveillance isn't the answer. The federal coalition government of conservatives and social democrats here must finally explain to us: What do German intelligence agencies really do at home and abroad? All this must be put on the table.

The Americans may be contemplating their own NSA reform, but only when Germany's ends it own mass surveillance practices – and escapes from the intense cooperation with the spy network of the Five Eyes nations – can you credibly demand change, even from a former ally bordering on ex-lover.

To really break the thaw, however, Germany must finally get itself out of the victim role. We need to appreciate some values that connect us more with the US than, say, with Russia and China. Now that things can't get much worse, the only way to put back the pieces – like after any break-up – is to move on and remember what you love about yourself.