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Is honesty always the best policy?

I had this friend.

We met nine months ago when he joined the company I work for. We had some good times together until his girlfriend joined him a few months later. She is insecure and felt threatened as soon as he mentioned me.

I think it’s good if you know that while she was still in the god-forsaken little town they came from, she actually phoned me and told me I’m keeping her boyfriend from her. I did the ‘friend’ thing to do…you know…forgive and forget.

But the drama didn’t end there.

I am not going to bore you with the various nasty things she said and did, the petty things she got angry or jealous over. I am going to skip all that and tell you about the last two days and how a good friendship ended. Maybe you can explain to me why it turned out this way because I am very confused.

There were four of us in this circle of friends. I’m not including the girlfriend because she wasn’t part of the group due to her own doing.

Anyway, the girlfriend decided to confide in one of the group about how she was deeply unhappy and wanted to end the relationship and planned to do so in a few months time. Now I know that breaking someone’s confidence is the wrong thing to do BUT and I believe this is a BIG but, she’s not our friend, he is.

My friend came to me and told me what the girlfriend said and of course, OF COURSE, I told the soon-to-be-dumped friend who I care for deeply. Wouldn’t you?

His first reaction was, “well if that is the way she feels then she must do it”. I told him that it’s likely that she just needed to vent and nothing will come from it but he was angry and hurt and the fact that she said it at all was enough of a reason to end the relationship.

I left work feeling sad that he has to go through this but good that I did not leave him in the dark.

The next day it all went to hell. He turned on me and my other friend saying that it’s clear that we don’t like his girlfriend and this is going to cost us our friendship. He accused me of not being ‘civil’ towards her, referring to me declining an offer for a lift. I got up and left with the words, “This friendship is over!” following me.

Can you say, WTF?

So this whole experience taught me a few valuable lessons or life truths:

Where I would like a friend that is always honest with me, most people don’t. They don’t want to hear the truth if it’s painful.

Your ‘friend’ will always back their romantic partner no matter how illogical it is. No matter if they cheated on them or attempted to kill them. If you tell your friend it will most likely end your friendship. Relationships are holy ground.

People expect you to be friends with the couple and not the individuals. If you can’t get along with my girlfriend then we can’t be friends. Silly but true.

So today I realised that friendship is mostly fake. I’ve been striving for this ideal and I don’t know if it exists anymore.

Bottom line, if I ask, “Does my butt look fat in this?”, I want my friend to say, “It looks goddamn humongous! Take it off!”.

Because friends should always be honest otherwise why have any? There are enough other people who are willing to lie to you.

Have you had a bad falling out with a friend due to a third party's actions? Share your story with us below.

Read more posts on Miss_Muse's blog.

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