Throughout the years, my siblings and I have shared many secrets, mostly about friends and family members who were not that close. You may wonder if a secret is still a secret if you share it. The answer is that it depends. Between my brother and me, a secret is not really a secret, but between anyone else, it is. Usually, we share secrets with someone like our brother because we are seeking advice on how to handle the situation, how to advise the person who shared their secret, or simply to gossip.
Now, I will share a story about a difficult situation. A few years ago, a friend of mine was married to a woman who had one child. Unfortunately, their relationship wasn't great because their child was quite difficult, requiring a lot of attention. Perhaps the child was seeking attention that they weren't getting from their parents because they couldn't get along. My friend recently confided in me that he knew something that could potentially destroy the relationship between these two people, and he wanted advice on how to handle the situation.
One day, my brother saw my friend's wife on a date with another man. She didn't know that my brother was there, but he remembered her because they had hung out before. Immediately, my brother told me that he saw her and that they were definitely on a date because they were kissing. When I heard the story, I was in shock because despite the problems they had, my friend really tried to make things work. He wasn't an angel and was responsible for a lot of the issues in their relationship, but he constantly tried to improve things.
I was faced with a tough decision. Should I tell my friend what my brother saw or not? I was afraid that I would destroy their family, but at the same time, she was cheating on him. I was also concerned that I would get dragged into their problems as the bearer of bad news. After taking a few days to decide how to handle the situation, I called her and asked to meet for coffee. During the meeting, I told her everything and asked her to be the one to tell him because I thought it might salvage something between them since they had a child.
She immediately told him because I believe she understood that it was the best way for her. If I were the one to tell him, things would have been much worse between them, and they might have even gone to court for custody of their child.
As I mentioned in my previous post about the #weekend-engagement topic, the situation raised a lot of ethical questions for me. I still wonder if it was the right thing to do because for a while after the divorce, my friend was angry at me for not telling him directly. Our friendship was strained for some time.
Trust is a fundamental aspect of any healthy relationship, and keeping secrets is often a part of that trust. Breaking that trust can have severe consequences and cause irreparable damage to the relationship. However, sometimes, we have to risk those relationships for things that we will be grateful for later in life.
Ps it’s almost 4 o clock past midnight in my country and I really stayed up until now to write that post 😂 those two topics really got me fired up.