I was having a very animated conversation the other day with a couple of buddies about what you tell your friends or whether you tell them anything when you know things they ought to know but don't know.

There was one guy who said you should, one who said you shouldn't and one in the middle. The topic could have been about a million different things but it wasn't. It was one thing.

It's the one thing men are more likely to withhold from their friends than any other thing and that's whether or not the person you're in a relationship with is being true to you.

 

Buddies don't have very much trouble at all telling a friend that someone they think is their friend probably isn't because of the things they say about you when you're not around.

We talk about things like this all the time and we don't withhold a whole lot. If I know someone who believes they have a true friend when they really don't, I tell them. The other guys in the conversation agreed because we need to know who has our back and who doesn't.

This holds true for practically every other situation as well. I have more than a couple of friends who are in the restaurant business. If I eat with them and something's wrong with the food, whether it's undercooked, overcooked, cold or whatever, I tell them.

In fact, at least one of them has a sign posted in their restaurant that says "If you like our food and service, tell someone else; if you don't, tell us." I believe we're obligated as friends to do this and I always do. I have to believe that they understand our friendship well enough to know I'm not taking cheap shots at them; if I tell them something was wrong, they do everything they can to fix it. It's called constructive criticism.

 

But when it comes to relationships, the rules often change and change quickly. I've never really understood why. If I'm in a relationship, why wouldn't I want to know if someone is being unfaithful to me behind my back when I don't know or suspect anything at all?

One of the people in this conversation with me said that if you tell someone else, you risk losing a friend because that's the one piece of information they don't want to know and they will ultimately take it out on you rather than the person they're in a relationship with.

That may be true for some but, if it is, it's pretty fouled-up thinking I told him. He countered by saying that a lot of people just stick their heads in the sand and pretend that nothing's amuck, even when they have strong suspicions that something is and they don't want to hear anything counter to what they need to believe. If they do, they blame it on you instead of the person committing the injustice.

 

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but that kind of thinking doesn't make any sense either. I can't speak for other people because I don't know how they think or what they perceive.

I can only speak for myself but I've done a pretty good job of saying things that other people can relate to in the years that I've been writing this column so I hope I'm not completely out in left field on this one.

 

I want to know.

If someone is jacking me around or talking about me behind my back or cheating on me, I want to know. I don't want other people talking about me when I'm not around, even if it's sympathetic talk and we've all heard that kind of talk. "Poor old Mike" they say.

"If he only knew what she's doing when he's not around." They think that by not telling me they're protecting me but they're not protecting me at all. I've written in this column many different times that knowledge is power. Only when we have all the facts or the most facts possible can we make intelligent, informed decisions.

So how are you protecting me by keeping the truth from me? The truth is always more powerful than the lie, even when the truth is the most painful thing we can hear, maybe even the last thing we want to hear.

But any relationship worth having, worth nurturing, and worth protecting is built on trust and if I can't trust the person I love, what kind of future would we have anyway?

 

In relationships, if someone is in love, they will remain in love, regardless of what the other person is doing or thinking, until they have good reason to question the love they have; to wonder whether it was misplaced or not, or to wonder whether it has been abused by the very person they love. These people can never proceed, can never get "unstuck," can never get on with their lives until they're able to put the past behind them.

And if the past only conjures up memories of the good because your friends have hidden the bad, then you can NEVER get unstuck.

 

Friends should want the best for their friends. They should want their friends to be happy, successful, and to enjoy their lives. But if their friends are mired in a false reality because they are withholding the truth from them, they will never be able to achieve any of these positive emotions because they're living in a fantasy world inside their own minds.

Sometimes it seems that everyone knows the truth but you; the one person who needs to know the truth more than anyone else.

 

So when it comes to me and the woman I love, just shoot it to me straight. I think a lot of other men would prefer it that way too. I've always been able to handle the truth much better than deceptions disguised as friendships. I believe a true friend tells his friend the truth and allows the chips to fall where they may; knowing that if this person really is their true friend, they will be treasured for disclosing the truth rather than discarded. If telling the truth ruins your friendship, you didn't have much of a friendship to begin with.

 

Because friends in need really are friends indeed.