"Should I tell my friend his wife is hiding a huge secret?"

The moral dilemma that’s pulling this friend in two different directions.

For ten years now I have had the pleasure of calling this wonderful, caring, funny man my friend.

We have never been anything but friends (and never ever would be) but we have a deep connection and I love him like a brother.

I never would have thought that I could keep something from him, but now I’m not so sure.

Our relationship is strong, he was there with me when I got married, he is an uncle to my children, and he has recently married the love of his life.

As is usually the case, he wanted desperately for his new wife and I to be good friends. And I have no problem with that what so ever.

She is all the things she should be. Bubbly, energetic, compassionate and warm. Everything I hoped that he would find in a partner.

We hit it off immediately and have been spending a lot more time together in our own right. We laugh and joke and generally just have a great time. I honestly enjoy her company immensely and would consider her too, to be a friend of mine.

But recently, things changed.

She and I went out for some girly time without our husbands and had a few too many drinks with dinner, as tends to happen. We started chatting about secrets that people keep from their partners.

I confessed the usual shopping white lies (you know, a top I said was on sale but wasn't really), and then then she casually dropped the bomb.

She has a debt of $25, 000 that she hasn't told her husband, my best friend, about.

$25,000 to me is not a pair of boots on sale that you pretend you've had for years.

$25,000 is a significant amount of money.

She told me that the debt is left over from traveling while she was younger and that she had paid it down a few times. But then she resorted to using credit cards for shopping trips and luxuries far outside of her weekly budget constraints.

I must have looked concerned because she immediately said that she plans on paying it off again soon, but that she didn't want to tell her husband about it now because it was "under control".

That to me, doesn't sit right.

Keeping a secret of that nature is concerning, and her unwillingness to come clean made me question more than just her shopping habits, I started questioning her morals.

A marriage is something where there should be no secrets (the boots, maybe) but nothing of this magnitude. A marriage should be an agreement between two people to tackle problems together and take on each others stresses.

The deceit was so deep that she said at one point, she had a P.O. box set up for credit card bills and statements. They were sent there, instead of to their home, for fear he may discover them in the mail.

So now, I'm stuck.

Part of me feels that my loyalty should always be to him.

He and I were "us"  long before she came along, and I don't know if I could live with myself if ever he found out I knew and chose to say nothing.

They have plans to buy an apartment, and possibly a new car.

He wants to take her on holiday (she doesn't know, it's a surprise for her 30th birthday) and they are saving as hard as possible to have children sooner rather than later.

All of this because he thinks their shared financial situation is something very different to what it actually is.

The information that I have could change all of that.

But it's more than the money side of things.

To me, it's a breech of trust. I just don't think this is something that you should withhold from your partner.

All of this runs through my mind, and then I stop. I have to remind myself that their marriage is just that, theirs. I have no part in their relationship and as much as I want to warn my friend of the debt that is hanging over their plans, perhaps it's not really my place to do so. It's her confession to tell, not mine.

I know if I tell him, the relationship I have with her will sour. And possibly my relationship with my best friend. You never know how people are going to react.

So what do I do?

Tell my friend the secret that his wife is holding on to (and risk losing her friendship) or back off and hope that she comes clean to him?

Should this women tell her friend about his wife's secret, or keep quiet?

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