The Price of Truth

“[S]hare some of the words that were said to us, or words we said to oth­ers that were not com­fort­ing, or maybe even made the sit­u­a­tion worse.”

I was in my early 20’s. My then-boyfriend and his life­long best friend (whom I shall call “S”) were work­ing for the same com­pany. He began dat­ing a won­der­ful young woman (“P”) about 19 years old who was attend­ing the local col­lege. P and I became good friends, and the four of us spent a lot of time together. For a few months, it was idyl­lic — we had a lot of fun double-dating.

At first, S appeared to have changed. Although I enjoyed his com­pany because he was witty, intel­li­gent, and a gen­uinely good friend to my boyfriend, there was one aspect of his life that, up to that point, trou­bled me: He was a player. He dated a lot of dif­fer­ent girls — simul­ta­ne­ously. Before I real­ized that, I set him up with one of my good friends. Luck­ily, she rec­og­nized the signs and suc­ceeded in hav­ing some fun with him for a few weeks with­out falling for him and get­ting hurt.

So when I hap­pened upon indis­putable proof that S was see­ing at least one other woman while also dat­ing P, I found myself in a quandry. Because P was devel­op­ing deep, gen­uine feel­ings for S, and plainly expected their rela­tion­ship to be exclu­sive. She was talk­ing about hav­ing a future, long-term rela­tion­ship with P, so I knew that she would be dev­as­tated when she found out that P’s com­mit­ment to her did not match her grow­ing attach­ment to him.

I dis­cussed my con­cerns with my boyfriend and rea­son­ably expected him to con­front S. To my sur­prise, he refused and demanded that I keep silent, as well. He had been down this road with S numer­ous times and ratio­nal­ized his friend’s behav­ior by point­ing out that, to the best of his knowl­edge, S had not pro­fessed love for P or ever affir­ma­tively rep­re­sented that he would date only her. My boyfriend argued that P was read­ing more into S’s actions than was rea­son­able, S had been com­pletely hon­est with her, and P would — and should — fig­ure things out on her own. My boyfriend insisted that if I told P what S was doing behind her back, S would be upset with me and that would strain my boyfriend’s long friend­ship with P. He did not want to risk that.

I knew he was right. If I told P, I risked blow-ups and accu­sa­tions on sev­eral fronts. I also knew that my boyfriend and I had reached the begin­ning of the end of our own relationship.

As it turned out, I did not broach the sub­ject with P, although I was very uncom­fort­able about and dis­ap­pointed by my boyfriend’s reac­tion. P became sus­pi­cious of S’s behav­ior on her own and shared her fears with me. The look on my face belied the truth. I could not mis­lead or con­fuse her. Although I felt that I had hon­ored my boyfriend’s wish because I did not vol­un­teer the infor­ma­tion, when I saw the hurt in P’s eyes, I refused to claim igno­rance, thereby mul­ti­ply­ing her pain, vio­lat­ing her trust, and destroy­ing the friend­ship she and I had formed. As pre­dicted, she could not for­give me once she knew that I had been privvy to the infor­ma­tion for a few weeks and had kept the truth from her.

P con­fronted S and, although she assured him that she dis­cov­ered his duplic­ity on her own, he did not believe her. He was con­vinced that I had informed her about his behav­ior and told my boyfriend as much. My boyfriend thought that I had betrayed him and chas­tised me because he thought that I had vio­lated the promise I made him. P was sim­ply heart-broken as only a 19-year-old in love for the first time can be and ended up not want­ing any­thing to do with any of the three of us.

My boyfriend and S remained friends, although our double-dating days were over. My boyfriend and I stayed together for a cou­ple more years before I had to acknowl­edge what I inescapably dis­cov­ered as a result of this inci­dent: I could not spend my life with a man who would ask me to hold back the truth from a friend andrefuse to believe me when I con­firmed that I did what he asked in spite of my own bet­ter judg­ment, instead adopt­ing his friend’s unfounded suspicions

“A lying wit­ness is uncon­vinc­ing; a per­son who speaks truth is respected.” (Proverbs 21:28.) At the time, I cer­tainly didn’t feel respected. I felt betrayed and aban­doned. Lit­er­ally caught in the mid­dle of a con­tro­versy I did not cre­ate and of which I wanted no part, unable to extri­cate myself with­out severe con­se­quences no mat­ter which way I turned, which path I chose to walk. I should have bravely and unwa­ver­ingly fol­lowed the wise advice of Zechariah 8:16–17:

But this is what you must do: Tell the truth to each other. Ren­der ver­dicts in your courts that are just and that lead to peace. Don’t scheme against each other. Stop your love of telling lies that you swear are the truth. I hate all these things, says the Lord.

I have never regret­ted that moment when my face told the truth to my friend, P, even though my lips did not. Although I ached for and with her, I knew that my hon­esty was not the true source of her pain, even though I became the cat­a­lyst for her suf­fer­ing. Some­times that is how we are called to inter­act with and relate to each other. I learned through that expe­ri­ence — and have relearned so many times in the ensur­ing years — that we can­not con­trol the actions of our broth­ers and sis­ters, but we can refuse to stand silent in the shadow of oth­ers’ wrong­do­ing. And although it may cause some­one we care deeply about to feel sor­row, dis­ap­point­ment, betrayal or myr­iad other emo­tions, the truth is, just as my mother used to tell me when I was grow­ing up, always “the best policy.”

My act of con­firm­ing the truth to P about her rela­tion­ship with S was, ini­tially, nei­ther com­fort­ing nor affirm­ing. But my prayer for her over the years has always been that she came to see, even though our friend­ship was irre­triev­ably bro­ken, that P came to appre­ci­ate my refusal to con­ceal S’s duplic­i­tous treat­ment of her. In the years since that inci­dent, I have often won­dered what became of those three folks who played such an impor­tant — indeed, piv­otal — role in my life. I hope that they learned from what we expe­ri­enced together and estab­lished happy, pro­duc­tive lives. Most impor­tantly, I hope that if they think of me, they do so with respect for my refusal to hide the truth.

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