friends disloyalty

What would you do if?

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achilles12604
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friends disloyalty

Post #1

Post by achilles12604 »

You are friends with someone. You two have been close friends for many many years. You spend a great deal of time with each other.

Then one day you see your friend kissing someone who is not their spouse. You ask them about it and say something like,
"I trust you. So I am going to be honest with you but I don't want you to say anything until I figure out what I want to do. XXXX and I have been dating for a couple weeks now and I really like him/her. I know I shouldn't but I'm not sure about how much I like my spouse. Please don't tell anyone. I'm just trying this out. If he/she doesn't work out I will go back to my spouse."
What do you do? You know both this person and their spouse. You havn't seen any problems before this. They have 1 young girl.

What do you do?
It is a first class human tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice.

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Darren
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Re: friends disloyalty

Post #2

Post by Darren »

achilles12604 wrote:You are friends with someone. You two have been close friends for many many years. You spend a great deal of time with each other.

Then one day you see your friend kissing someone who is not their spouse. You ask them about it and say something like,
"I trust you. So I am going to be honest with you but I don't want you to say anything until I figure out what I want to do. XXXX and I have been dating for a couple weeks now and I really like him/her. I know I shouldn't but I'm not sure about how much I like my spouse. Please don't tell anyone. I'm just trying this out. If he/she doesn't work out I will go back to my spouse."
What do you do? You know both this person and their spouse. You havn't seen any problems before this. They have 1 young girl.

What do you do?
Having been in a similar situation, I just thought long and hard about how it affected me. I know this sounds selfish, but bear with me a moment.

Someone I knew, a woman, was (pretty much) married to a guy I didn't know very well. She was also friends with another man I do know well. She asked me to keep her association with the latter secret, though there was no physical aspect to their friendship, her new hubby wouldn't like it.
I told her to go away and stop pretending to be my friend.
I would not be dishonest to her hubby, and requiring me to set aside my ethical decisions is not something that I would accept from a 'friend'.
In this specific case, I would tell the friend that we were friends no longer, until he could drop the requirement that I lie to someone.
It isn't easy, but it is the more comfortable choice, since lying about that kind of thing is especially uncomfortable for me.
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Post #3

Post by FidelCastro »

Well I think there's a difference between lying to someone and staying silent. Asking you to lie to someone is not something I'd do... My friend actually told her mother that she was going to be with me after school. She told me this, and said that she was telling me that so I would know what to say if her mother called me. I asked her what she was doing, and she wouldn't tell me.

I think this is unreasonable and I would not have lied to her mother. I know that her mother can be very unreasonable and has possibly been abusive, but my friend knows that I hate lying, but she still expected me to, without any information! As it was, I would only be lying to stop her from being angry with me. Hell, if she had lied to me too and said that she needed to help someone in need, but couldn't tell her mother or me, I would have done it, because I trust her, and I would know the evil I committed would be only to prevent a worse evil. Which her actions show that maybe I shouldn't trust her, but I do, somewhat naively at times.

But the OP seems to just be having silence asked of them. Do you intervene? I can say in the past I've intervened with the same friend. One I think I regret now, and one I don't know if it was the right or wrong. If I hadn't, she might be dead or it might have just made things a lot harder for her. The only thing to do in this kind of situation is to forget yourself and think of the people involved... who will be hurt, and to what extent? Can your intervention prevent that hurt to any extent, or will you simply make it more of a mess? Or would you be more useful just talking to your friend and encouraged them to make the right choice? What is the right choice anyway?

It really depends on your situation... and I'm making the big assumption here, but it sounds personal, and "they have one girl" instead of "a child" is pretty particular.

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Post #4

Post by Darren »

I just thought about it again with myself in each of the roles.

I would tell the kisser that if they didn't tell, I would. Give them time, I am not evil, but not more time than they need. Like give them 3 hours.

I don't like being forced into any kind of lie. It sometimes makes things awkward socially, but in my opinion, less so than maintaining someone elses ethics.
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Post #5

Post by C-Nub »

Wow. I've got to say, I think that some of these responses definitely reflect boundry issues.

Quite honestly, I think it's foolish for anyone to pretend they're somehow above lying. No one likes to lie, but we all, at some point or another over the course of our adult lives, have to tell lies of some kind or another. I think anyone that says "I never lie" is pretty much full of it. Absolute honesty is not a philosphy that allows one to function in our social world.

Asking a friend to lie for you is a pretty petty thing. I don't think someone should do that, that said, you choose, or SHOULD choose your friends based not on singular actions but on the total actions that demonstrate their overall character. We all fall short of who we aspire to be on occasion, and just because this particular hypothetical may be falling short in a fashion we ourselves would like to think that we might not, the semantics of the argument still fall apart under scrutiny. I wouldn't lie for the guy, but I could also, assuming I was not better friends with the person he was cheating on, butt-out.

How someone conducts themselves in a marriage is, shockingly, none of our business. If you're good friends with the victim, well, then you might owe it to them to fill them in. Then again, you might not. If you don't know them, and are friends with the cheater, you're free to disapprove, and tell them exactly how much and why, you're even free to disown them, but you still owe them the loyalty, the fealty that comes with friendship. Romantic relationships are complicated, and interjecting a third party who forces a confrontation isn't 'big picture' help. We're supposed to support our friends, that's part of what it means, and if you want to help them, you don't take important, PRIVATE life decisions out of their hands.

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Post #6

Post by Furrowed Brow »

The nearest I’ve been to this was a longtime ago. My best friend had been with his girlfriend for around seven years or so. Though they weren’t living together at the time, and there were no kids. Anyhow I was out shopping and bumped into the girlfriends holding hands with………another guy.

I told my friend as soon as I saw him next. Just asked him out – “what’s up between you and x”. As it happened there were problems of which he was aware. He suspected already what I told him, and had been trying to confront her over his fears, but she had been denying anything was going on. So my big mouth confirmed his fears.

If they had been married, and there were kids involved I think I might keep my mouth shut. But it really depends on the couple and my friendship with them. I don’t think I can apply a definitive rule.

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Post #7

Post by Karina »

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but omission is still, you know, lying. And just because someone keeps their mouth shut doesn't mean that their hands are clean.

On that note, this issue is definitely subjective for every person. Someone in this thread mentioned that if you're good friends with the "victim" then you should probably tell them what's up, and i have to agree with that. I guess we have to look at it from both sides. if you're the one doing the bad deed, would you want your friend to rat you out? But if you're the victim, then would you want to be kept in the dark?

Personally, i would present that argument to the friend who is cheating and see what he/she says. But unless i actually knew the "victim" (I really hate using that) very well, then i just don't know if i could be the one to reveal this to them.

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Post #8

Post by Zzyzx »

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What others do in their life is not my business. It would be very unusual for me to lie to protect someone from being discovered in any activity, but I am unlikely to deliberately expose them under most circumstances. If a particularly good friend's mate appears to be two-timing them I may pass on what I have observed -- if the friend and I have a confidant relationship. However, I would not claim to understand the truth about what is happening in the lives of others.

A mate being unfaithful may be an indication of serious problems in the relationship – well beyond my comprehension. However, it is also possible that a couple might have an "open relationship" in which one or both may engage in other intimate relationships. Again, that is none of my business – and I have no opinion regarding whether they should or should not have such arrangements between themselves.

I am certainly not empowered to inflict my preferences or "morals" upon others – nor are others empowered to inflict theirs on me.
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Post #9

Post by Sjoerd »

Ok, call me a Macchiavellist, but my answer would be: "I will be silent... for now". I would have some long talk with my friend about his marriage and his family, and morality and his future. I would ask if his spouse is really such a nasty person who deserves to be cheated upon (who knows, perhaps she is), what he thinks about what is best for his daughter, if he wants to have eternal regret on his consciousness, etc. If his spouse would be a nice person, I would probably try to manipulate him into owning up to her, with a threat to tell her myself if he would refuse. If she was really a bitch that he would have divorced long ago if not for his little daughter's sake, I would probably remain silent. But I would have the long talk with him anyway.
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Post #10

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Hook up with his old lady while he's off with the other girl.
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