Do you ever notice how almost every A Practical Wedding post includes the words “and that’s ok.” Like we need that pat on the head that our opinions, feelings, beliefs, and convictions are approved of by the higher liberal powers. Well, ok, I like that affirmation. I’ll take someone telling me my views are “ok” because it feels really good to have other people on board with what you’re thinking and feeling.
But sometimes, something happens that isn’t ok. Sometimes, a close friend does something wrong. Other friends rally around to support the wrong friend, because that’s what friends do, because they’re going through “a really tough time right now.” Well, yes, that happens when you do the Wrong thing.
It’s so Politically Correct to support your friends no matter what. And, to a huge extent, I’m the most supportive person in the world, even when I think you’re being an idiot, even when you know you’re being an idiot. My oldest and dearest friends in the world have both had their moments of making less-great choices, and I supported the hell out of them (though not their choices, just cheering them on to make better ones and waiting patiently until they did).
I’m not Ms. Judgy Pants (like I was raised to be, sorry Ma), and I see 99% of issues in shades of gray. I understand we’re all on a path to becoming our best selves, and sometimes we hit rocks (or sometimes we become rocks in our own paths). I believe in the power of people to grow, but I don’t expect them to shoot up like Jack’s beanstalk. It’s a process, and there’s no magic.
All that is why my hard-line stance with Wrong-Doing-Friend comes as a shock to me. She crossed a line I didn’t even know I had, because it had never before been tested. She betrayed the man who married her, for a guy who would date a married woman. Yes, she is going to need a ton of support, because a relationship that starts like that statistically ends, badly.
I’ve been torturing myself over this. The issue of friendship, support, and betrayal have swirled around my head for weeks. And I have to decide how I’m going to deal with it because they may be in town for the holidays, and would normally be welcome to stay with us. I spoke with the wisest person I know, my Maid of Honor, and she gave me the words I needed to hear: “You want to keep the sanctity of your home and marriage; this bothers you, you are not obligated to share your space with them if it causes you stress. And that’s ok.”
In a world of blurry lines in shades of gray, where people live together, sleep together, use each other for casual sex, hook-up, ditch their long-term girlfriends for no good reason – taking a stance, when you’re not religious, not self-identifying as conservative or even politically Republican – when all you read are feminist and liberal writers and blogs, when everyone you love and respect is bending the traditional rules in one way or another, when you believe in bending rules that don’t suit you…
It’s a very scary and isolating decision to say: That’s not ok.
Sometimes a best friend is the only person who can say “I love you, I support you no matter what, but what you did is not okay and you’re going to have to suffer the consequences, and I’ll be there when you do.” And sometimes it really needs to be said!
Thanks Christine, that’s exactly where I’m at. It tears me apart because I love her to pieces, but man, what she did packed a wallop. MarriedOldHag & Christine, you are very wise readers and I thank you. It’s such a shock to the system when the first of your newlywed friends gets a divorce, especially when it’s this situation. My heart really goes out to the Husband. No man is perfect, and I’m sure he wasn’t, and I know the whole situation was far from ideal, but… relationships take work, sometimes more than others. (And I am the first person to say Quit It if it really *is* an irredeemably bad situation – big believer in cutting your losses). You know what’s terrible? When I first heard they were having issues, my first reaction was “What did HE do?!” Poor guy.
You can support the person/persons, and don’t support the behavior. Relationships are always shades of grey, but a lot of behaviors can be black and white, cool and not cool. It’s also ok to make the very tough decision to end the friendship. “You’re not the person I thought you were” depending on how they feel about how they are living their life. I have never bought the adage, once a cheater always a cheater, but if someone crosses this line, they really have to prove to me the whys it happened and why it will never happen again.
You totally brought me in with that opening line – APW criticism, from Rogue??
Affairs share a lot of behavioural characteristics with drug addiction, and are about equally destructive, as far as I can tell. When people talk about supporting the person doing it, it puts me on edge a bit, because it sometimes boils down to enabling them. Sometimes in those situations, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. I don’t think that pretending your friend isn’t being senselessly destructive is a good idea.
The only time I remember APW talking about adultery was when they published the story about someone who did it and then went on to marry her affair partner. Comments condemning the behaviour were explicitly disallowed, iirc. It was bullshit. Oh, this post isn’t really about APW? I’ll go back to grumbling to myself
Frugallywed – that’s so weird, my Maid of Honor was telling me the same thing about affairs sharing the characteristics of addictive brain chemistry (hey, you’d know a thing or two about brain chemistry!). And it’s true. My friend is acting like she lost her mind, she even said she feels crazy. MoH says its a brain flooded with dopamine and is not to be reasoned with until she comes off the high (or manic episode, as the case may be). Yeah, I’m not a romantic when it comes to affairs. I’d really rather chalk it up to temporary insanity than actually finding your “soul mate.”
Also, I read that APW post. I respect their stance of no-judging, because otherwise stories wouldn’t get told and I’m voyeuristically curious. But that sure doesn’t mean one should be supportive of everything. That way, literally, lies madness.
Character is at the top of my list for people I admire. People who do damage to other people are at the bottom.
This is such an impossible topic, and frankly, so well said. Christine is right, sometimes the best friends in the world are the ones who are honest with you, especially in light of such crazy decision making. I’m grateful I have those, and I feel honored to be that person for others.
I recognize that this post is about friends who have had affairs, which is different than my story, but I’d like to add that timing in talking to friends-behaving-badly is important. When I decided to leave my husband last year (infidelity was not part of the picture), one of my best friends called me up the very night I moved out to “be a good friend” and tell me all the mistakes I made in my marriage, what I should do differently the next time, etc. Her premise was that being unconditionally supportive during this time wasn’t really being a “true friend.” Although she made many good points about my relationship problems, she laid it on me at the most vulnerable time possible, which felt like a punch in the gut and ended up damaging our friendship permanently. (I hadn’t had an affair, but I didn’t handle the end of my marriage with very much grace, which I already knew and didn’t need a friend to rub it in my face right in the middle of it all.)
Do you really think that permanent damage to the friendship was necessary? Sometimes it takes a real friend to punch you in the gut – I’d give her a second chance if she made good points. But, really depends on how she presented them (you can make great points in very un-friendly ways, and that ain’t cool).
Point taken. At first I actually didn’t think permanent damage would be done to our friendship and I wanted to move on from it. I was sort of in shock, and I wished she had waited a few weeks before making her points, it would have made a big difference. But she didn’t, and furthermore, over the next several months, she continued to deliver those metaphorical punches in the gut whenever I did something differently than how she thought I should do it. My decisions were right for me (when to file for divorce, when to start dating again*), but if they weren’t choices she would have made, she deemed them “mistakes” and delivered her decrees — I had seen her do this to other people for years, I had just never had her judgment directed at me before. (I guess until this past year, how I lived my life happened to meet with her approval?) Anyway, I guess it’s true that with divorce you really discover who your friends are.
*and I suddenly feel defensive about my choices! I filed for divorce about a month after moving out, and I started dating someone three months after that. I don’t think that sounds so bizarre!
Hey, if you ask me, you did it the right way: Divorce THEN dating. I’m a stickler for the correct order of operations. It’s really the only thing I remember from high school algebra.
Rogue, as you know I am decidedly NOT a fan of APW, specifically because of all the “it’s OK” bullshit because I personally don’t think a lot of stuff is OK. But that’s just me.
This post hits close to home. I think at some point in all of our adult lives we’re forced to make tough calls regarding old friends. I too had a friend go banana-cakes on me and was there for her every damn step of the crazy-way. But at some point I realized that while I was always there for her, she was NEVER there for me. I was supportive because that’s what a good friend is. But when the support goes on and on and on and is never reciprocated? That’s not a friend, that’s co-dependency.
It got to a point for me where I had to issue some ultimatums regarding our friendship. I put the ball in her court and told her it was up to her to engage in a true friendship, that I wouldn’t come running when she decided to call me after being incommunicado for months on end. It pained me to no end when that ultimatum was answered with a deafening silence – even through my engagement and wedding.
While painful for me to say farewell to a childhood friend, I know that my life is better without the constant drama.
I think you are doing the right thing in contemplating this to the fullest. You can be supportive of the friendship while distancing yourself from the situation. While your friend may have cheated, no one ever REALLY knows what happens behind the closed doors of a marriage. I’m not condoning, just hoping that her actions are the result of something else that can eventually be mended.
Good luck with it all.
P.S. Miss reading you on the regs.