The Hangover
I talked to my friend Cheri about this just yesterday. We talked a bit about ethical fudging for friends along with girl code and guy code. She told me an interesting story about her friend Emily. Cheri said Emily was very much love with her fiancé and was the last person you would expect to meet someone. It was on a business trip for IBM when she met him professionally. The two of them hit it off immediately. After a few drink and excellent conversation Emily went to bed with him. She confided to Cheri in a state of misery and euphoria. She was in love with her fiancé but the new guy offered a level of attraction he was missing. She was terrified the next time she ran into him for fear she could not control her attraction to him. Sure enough she couldn’t and the one night stand turned into months of wild liaisons in hotel rooms across the US. Six months after meeting him she left her fiancé. She was in love with another man and couldn’t continue, she didn’t marry him but is still currently seeing him.
I was only 19 when I lived on an amazing property in the mountains. It was partially remarkable because we were not on the Santa Barbara power grid. Instead we had a huge diesel generator up the hill from the 1970’s cutting edge “mansion” we lived in. Along with the amazing house existed something in most men’s dreams, a bar on the property. This bar was built in a salon style with spittoons in the corners and a bar made out of a chunk of sterns wharf, a gorgeous pier that continues Santa Barbara’s Main Street onto the ocean. The bar’s centerpiece was a 1900’s restored pool table resting on a dirt floor next to a fireplace you would stand up in; this was the perfect place for Jim’s bachelor party. Jim’s brother Dave organized things and soon there were thirty guys, two kegs of beer and two strippers. Soon Jim was tied to a chair and the whole room was howling. Now I can guess what you might be thinking, Jim had sex with the stripper. Makes sense, maybe he did but the real issue was John.
Since I was Dudley Doright at the time I was the only one sober enough to dive the strippers home. (That is another story) when I returned a party had materialized. The place was packed and thankfully there were more girls than guys. I was ecstatic and had a fantastic time, at 3 am the generator turned off, the place went black and I stumbled to my room. It was way to late to be kicking people out of my bed. Damn it… Who is in my bed?? They weren’t moving and were clearly passed out. I yanked back the covers and was a bit shocked. Curled up in a spoon position were two very naked friends. One was John my closest friend and Jeanette a girl I knew from school. This was fine except for the fact that John was very much in a relationship and very much in love.
I had never seen John cry before… He was the kind of burly nice guy explaining what was wrong with your car, not the crying type. But here he was crying complete with snot and drool, “shit Mike, I feel like such an asshole, what am I going to do? Do I tell Nadine? I don’t know man…” he continued to sob…I had no advice for John at the time and I kept my mouth shut and so did he. He never told Nadine and six months later they broke up. In the six years I knew John he never cheated again.
It seems to be part of human character to protect and help friends that mess up. My friend Cheri in the first story never told Emily’s fiancé about her infidelity (even though she introduced them) and I never shared John’s drunken stupidity even with guy friends.
I think the reason we protect these people is because we have been there, we have messed up, we have been human. Yes Jack in the previous story was a bastard but I still could project such a mistake onto myself. I hopefully would never be that stupid but still what if?? What if I lost my mind and was a complete moron? (like something in the movie The Hangover) Would I have friends to support me or would they leave me hanging? Granted I can’t stand the guy now but at the time I owed him loyalty and just like the girl in the first story I kept my mouth shut and helped my friend through his mistake. (Although this was an overdraw on the friendship bank, never to be repaid)
Are men dogs that try to protect one another’s shittieness? No… of course not. We are the same as you. We make mistakes and this is how we become better people. As a friend I projected John’s mistake onto myself and I felt empathy. I didn’t help dig him out of his hole so he could do it again; I did it so that he could grow and become a better guy. I have no doubt that you have done the same for a friend or have been the friend in need. The question is when do we draw the line? When is it too much of a strain on our moral compass? Clearly that is very personal.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Mike…big difference in this post as compared to the other. There was a pregnant person and STD involved. Keeping quiet due to loyalty to your friends is fine. When they are endangered physically, it’s a whole new ball game! Or, when they have endangered others, new ball game. BTW – I thought the hangover was hilarious…juvenile, but realistic and I have been there!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Just keep in on the DL, don’t put your friends in a bad moral position!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
@RTM Exactly, exactly.
These two examples are totally different, nobody is in danger. In the second scenario, where someone was drunk and felt awful about it, I would have left it up to them. Usually I would scold someone but if they already feel awful about it, it’s their look out. A relationship is built on trust however, so I would think it best for him to tell the girlfriend because he might not be himself. That, or he tells a mild version of the story – maybe he ended up kissing a girl. Something like that, so he feels duly punished by his girlfriend, but she wont break up with him.
The example of the cheating fiance one is harder. I was once in a similar position, it would have been hard for me to tell the boyfriend because he lived in France (she in Germany), and didn’t speak each other’s languages. I also didn’t know for sure that he wasn’t doing the same. But I put her under immense pressure… Basically, this friend, she was 32, the Algerian in Paris was 25, he had leant her lots of money at one point (effectively – he bought her a car as a present, she intended to pay it back, and later did). I wouldn’t have minded SO much if the second relationship had been a genuine exploration of feelings like in your example, but it was literally just sex, with a 20 year old who was just using her as a booty call, a good 40 miles away, and another sort of friend of ours. There was a risk her boyfriend would find out – he sometimes would call out the blue you see, and at one point it occurred to her too – when she nearly had an accident on the road to the 20 year olds’ – how would she explain her journey if she ended up in hospital? So yeah… I put her under pressure to give it up, and I don’t regret that, she was not only potentially harming her boyfriend, but herself too. I didn’t do the dirty – it would have been difficult to anyway – but her hypocrisy put our friendship under a lot of strain, as I found her “player” mentality quite hard to accept, when coupled with stories of how two (the boyfriend and the friend) had proposed marriage, declaring love etc…
I think what I am saying, is that RTM, myself, and the other ladies who objected in the other scenario, are doing it more for the reasons explained by QTMama – because the victim was an expectant mother and an sTD was involved. I think even in the most innocent of cases above, if there was an STD involved, I would want them to tell their partners. In the case of my cheating friend, I kept harassing her to go to the clinic, and use condoms. Thank god, she was clean.
Finally, what good is any relationship without honesty and trust. I think my friend’s words as she got the all clear said it all:
“I was cheating on him you know, but I knew who I was sleeping with. We tell we each other we love each other, but I did that. He could have been cheating too – and then I might have caught something, AIDs, even, I don’t know who he is sleeping with….”
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I totally get what you are saying. Its the same reason i don’t call the cops when other renters in my complex have a pool party at 3 am. Yes, it sucks to be woken up at 3 am by a bunch of drunk people splashing around in the pool with no disregard to the other inhabitants of the complex. But if i ever get drunk and want to go skinny dipping in said pool with some hot guy at 3 am, I don’t want them calling the cops on me.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
@RTM I understand what you are saying and the story probably was not appropriate for getting the point across.
@RTM/Rose no one was in danger? Really? Nobody was safe here, there is a very real chance that somebody passed stuff on, maybe it was only HPV or a little bacteria but still, it could have been nasty.
@Ellle I like your analogy. We do cover people’s asses to have our own covered later. For me it was allowing a friend to grow.