When To Break The Sanctity Of Trust Among Friends?

I work for a company and its always funny to me that no matter how hard I do work, or how the stresses get to me, like I expect anybody else’s job would, I always see through all that bull-shit and still love what I do. Many of the people I meet are a bit jealous of my career, and rightfully so. I get to go out and party every week and have an expense account to do so. I’m actually required to go out to social environments and test out potential molecules and experimental test mixes. This basically means that I have to have fun, or if I’m lucky, get laid. I mean, who has a job like that? I don’t even like calling it a job, or for that matter a career. To me it’s much more like my calling, something that I love to do.

The thing about it though, there are times when it can be super-stressful just because, well, it still is my job. Inherently I am a nice person and as such believe that man is good. I realize there are those in this world who are bad, but I also believe that it is taught to the weak minded by those who prey on them and then there are others who are weak minded. A few weeks ago, I was having a pretty rough week because of something that was said. It worked itself out, as it always does, but when things like that happen we all need an avenue to vent. I actually believe that a lot of what happens that could be construed as negative is my doing, or undoing if you must, but we learn from our mistakes.

As a company things are moving very fast for us and about to bust open the seams and spill over. Such a unique and forward, innovative group of individuals with a dynamic outlook on life and the world is sometimes going to clash and oh boy, when we do its magnificent! It’s like having 10o Edison’s, the master of innovation, all in the same room working towards the same goals and ideals, all with completely different ways of getting there. Like I said: Magnificent! We may not always agree on how to do it, or why we should do it, or even if it should be done, but the brainstorming sessions alone are like incredible firework displays. The ideas that flow are like electricity in the sky during a lightning storm, the Aurora Borealis on the darkest northern night, or the explosion of colliding masses like that which air burst over Tunguska. Either beautiful or explosive, but how ever it is looked upon, it all has one solid foundational aspect that cannot be overlooked: A Better World! We all believe in it and it drives us.

There are times however, when I need to vent to others about the stresses that can become overwhelming if I don’t release them. In most instances its not an issue as usually things just click and everything seems to flow like a river of thought. A few weeks ago, it didn’t happen that way and so I vented to a friend. My friend is completely separate from anything to do with that world. She doesn’t go there to read or explore what others say, she doesn’t use the molecules, she is just a friend, who ironically became a friend by my testing of the molecules. I know when I go to her she is going to remain true to her word. She is a friend of honor and principles. She stands by what she says and if you tell her something in private it stays that way. I completely trust her and isn’t that the way it should be? I know that I can trust her no matter what I say. Unequivocally she is the true essence of what friendship is all about.

This brings me to my point of this blog. I would think that if you tell someone something in private and specifically ask them to keep it private, you would expect it to be so. I mean, you wouldn’t stop by your local market and tell the checkout chick about something and expect it to remain private. Some people believe, erroneously in my opinion, that there are different levels of friendship. I believe that all friends are equal and should be treated as such. After all, the very definition of friendship is; “mutual trust and support.” Indeed friendships in my humblest view of the world is trusting and supporting each other.

I recall growing up that I had friends who referred to others as their best friends, but the thing was in my neighborhood, my best friends were Timmy, Steve, Kevin and a few others. We didn’t have a best friend, we were all best friends to our very core. When we went out, we all went out, when we had a secret, we all had that secret. There were no better friends amongst us, it was just all of us, I guess the three musketeers comes to mind. That philosophy permeated our friendships and would later, now, shape our lives and how we viewed the world. I like to think all man is good and I know I have already said this, but I do and so should you.

Yesterday I was in for a hell of a shock when a friend called me. He said he had found out about something through a mutual friend and it made him very upset. Not because of what happened, but they themselves in telling me were breaking the very sanctity of trust of the other person that told them. I had told another friend something in confidence, that happened during a pick up  and asked them not to mention it to anybody. It was such a minuscule tiny little detail in life that effects no one except me, but the point being, it was told in the sanctity of trust. I told this person it, because I believed they believed in the trust of our friendship.

The friend that told me was obviously agonizing over the whole thing. My other friend, who I trusted with the information, told this friend not to mention it to me, or anyone else, because I asked them not to mention it. This friend actually used the trust issue as a way of blackmailing against misusing the very trust they were breaking. The friend that told me felt terrible that they were now, by telling me, breaking that same trust of the other friend. The mad spiral down to mistrust!

I remember listening to a popular radio show here in Memphis called “Your Time With Kim”. Silly, but all the ladies in Memphis listen to it and it gives me a tremendous wealth of knowledge I use to open sets. One of my favorites was: “If you saw your friends husband/boyfriend kissing another girl in the bar, would you tell your friend?” It’s one of the best openers I have used in a long time. So much better, than who lies more, and sets fly open. Everybody has an opinion and usually it draws the ALPHA female out of the set first. They are the most vocal and will “voice” their views the loudest. The best part about this is you also get the naughty girls out in the open too. She will usually ask off the cuff questions about how cute the boyfriend/husband is, or does he have a friend. Great stuff and I highly recommend you try it. Of course giving it away was kind of stupid of me!

But it really rings a bell though, because you really have to ask yourself, when do you break that sanctity of turst? What if you were freinds with both the guy and the girl? What happens if while the husband is away the wife tries to seduce you into sleeping with her? Believe me it happens and a good friend of mine is going through a bitter divorce right now. I didn’t know about any of it while it was going on, but what would I have done? I liked his wife and was friends with her, before I knew him. She was always a little slutty, but like I said, she was my friend as well as he was.

Where do we draw the line? How do we choose what friends trust to betray and what friends trust to honor?