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.