According to Michael Musto and several folks I actually know, one should never tell a friend that their boyfriend, girlfriend, wife or husband is cheating on them. Michael believes at the end of the day, it is the messenger that gets shot (click on his name for the full post).
Catching your friend's significant other in some slide-off action really sucks. Unless you know for a fact they are in an open-relationship or not really serious. Telling them about an incident of infidelity is truly horrendous, because they will be devastated and embarrassed. Yet, I don't think helping with the lie is something a friend should do.
I think it is all about how you deliver the message and what sort of support you offer after delivering the bad news. The way I see it you would risk losing the friendship or feel like shit when he or she finds out you knew about it and said nothing.
Good people, share your thoughts with how you would handle this sorta situation.
4 comments:
I would let the "creeper" know that I was aware of what was going on and that I would not lie for him/her. If they hadn't ended the affair, come clean to their significant other, or broken up with the significant other in a certain period of time I would have to out the affair and take whatever fallout that came in my friendship. Should the friendship end my parting words would be. "I trust you enough to believe that you would never lie to me no matter what, but obviously you don't hold me in the same regard."
I would mind my own business.
I have three words for why I would tell any friend in a heartbeat: sexually. transmitted. diseases.
If its an exclusive relationship and my friend thinks their boy/girlfriend is monogamous when it reality they aren't and are leaving them open to disease, I would tell my friend as I was learning the information myself.
Yeah a friend may hate you for telling, but wouldn't they hate you more if they got herpes from their cheating lovah and you didn't tell them about the cheatation beforehand. Exactly.
This is tough one: a friend of mine is having an affair with a married man. They've known one another for 2 years now, and became sexual 6 months into their relationship. It's very difficult to say anything that could possibly be interpreted as negative toward him, she's very much in love with him. I believe that he's loves her too, but has 2 young kids, a crazy wife, and a multimillion dollar home, so he's not quite ready to decide whether he wants to shit or get off the pot. He's actually just told her that if he were her, that he would have left the relationship long ago, that 2 years is long enough to decide if a person is good enough to trigger a huge life change, and be apart of it. As of today, they are still together. The moral of this story? People see what the fuck they want to see, and overwhelmingly, they ALREADY KNOW what kind of person they are involved with, but choose facade, hopes, dreams, and fantasy over reality. It becomes tough when you threaten to expose what's behind the facade by letting the cat out of the bag, forcing them to face the music.
I understand what Kitty is saying, and her the parting words are beautiful and eloquent, but in many ways we lie to our friends all the time, we lie by omission. I'm doing it with my friend, I can't say ANYTHING to her, especially anything that suggests that she could do better, she becomes extremely defensive. Revealing infidelity would have to be on a case by case basis.
Post a Comment