The Thing About Friendship

Imagine you have this friend.  A friend who’s in a happy relationship, until one day, you hear that their partner cheated on them.  How would you feel?  Being the good, kind person you are, you check in with your friend, and they do the whole, “it’s fine… I don’t want to burden you with my problems…” song and dance.  You, of course, tell them that if they ever need to talk, you’re here for them.

So one night, the phone rings and it’s your friend, crying, upset.  They’re taking you up on your previous offer to talk, and you’re happy to oblige.  They’re swinging between being absolutely incensed and extremely sad.  Through the tears, nose-blowings, and occasional long silences, they tell you that they “just feel so stupid;” that they should’ve seen this coming.  They could’ve done this or that differently.

The natural response, of course, is “this isn’t your fault.”  And from there you can go to, “You don’t need that  [expletive],” or “You’re better off…”

Now, do me a favor and honestly answer the following questions:

Is your hypothetical friend in this story male or female?

Are they straight or gay?

Do any of these factors change the way you would interact with them in this example?

In the somewhat recent past, I’ve had two different friends cheat on their respective partners.  One is a male friend of mine, the other is a female friend.  Both situations ended their relationships, both became extremely sad or depressed, and both took steps to heal from the experience (counseling, meditation, prayer, etc.).  But there were drastic differences in how people interacted with either person.  The man who cheated was almost immediately written off by many, even by people he called friends.  The woman wasn’t unceremoniously written off by anyone.  To be fair, some peoples’ opinions about her changed, but no one would turn the other way if they saw her walking toward them on the street.  In fact, in the case of the woman who cheated, people would say things to the effect of:

Can’t he see that it was a mistake?
If he doesn’t want to fight for you, he’s not worth it.
You have to ask yourself if he’s not willing to forgive you, if that’s the kind of guy you want to be with.
If he’s not willing to work with you about this small thing, what would happen if something really big came up between you two.

One mutual friend was honest enough to say, “You really blew it,” and I don’t know how often she heard something like that.  While the man who cheated was forced into solitude to figure his stuff out on his own, the woman had a strong support system, made up mostly of other women.  The real irony is that the two people in question have a handful of mutual friends, and many of the women who had unequivocally turned their backs on the man, came to the aid and support of the woman.

I imagine that both of their former partners were met with sympathy in some form.  But what I find interesting about peoples’ reactions is that while the stereotype of the emotionless man is often seen as a negative (many of my straight female friends have talked about dating guys who don’t open up to them, or never talk about their feelings), in this case, there is a definite “suck it up and deal with it” attitude toward men who exhibit feelings of being hurt, and not wanting to continue a relationship after being cheated on.

If you are one of the half dozen regular readers of this blog, you know about my attitude regarding cheating.  That said, I think all parties involved could use more honesty and more compassion from the people around the periphery.  No matter what our gender bias may be, there are always three sides to a story, as the saying goes.  And the ever-elusive truth may not be apparent, so we can choose to blindly blame whoever has a penis, or we can choose to listen.  Because at the end of the day, it’s not about how much fault you find in the other person, but how much care and concern you demonstrate to your friend.

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