A Friendship and Betrayal - Essay Example

 A Friendship and Betrayal Friendship means a lot to me as a person. Growing up, I did not have many friends because my parents and I moved around so much, and it was hard to be a part of a clique. It was not until I was in middle school that I started to make friends, but, even then, the friends that I made were not true friends to me. A true friend is somebody who will always have your back, no matter what. This is not to say that the friend will always tell you that you are right, because sometimes you are not. If you are doing something wrong or unethical, then the same friend will tell you about this. At the same time, the friend needs to be supportive, come what may, even if you do something wrong and this something comes back to bite you, so to speak. So, honesty and loyalty are the most important qualities when it comes to a friendship. Then, of course, there are other things to look for – compatible personalities, a shared sense of humor and a shared interest in activities are good things to look for as well. These are the same qualities that I look for in a boyfriend. Loyalty is an important aspect in friendship in general. It is important that a person not take positions that will undermine you, that a person not steal from you, and that they not betray you in any way. Of course, as I stated before, it you are doing something which is immoral, wrong or illegal, the friend should not support that, but, other than that, a friend should be loyal, and this is universal. Disloyalty generally means that the person is not a true friend. One day, I found out that my boyfriend and my best friend were sleeping together. And they were doing it in my apartment, while I was away at work. Right away, I decided to end both the friendship and the relationship with my boyfriend. If they wanted to be together, then they could be together, but I would no longer be a part of their lives. This was the ultimate betrayal, and I did not think that I could look past it. As I said, loyalty and honesty are the two biggest traits that a good friend must have, and my best friend showed that she was neither loyal nor honest when she did this to me. I was especially hurt because my friend had recently lost her baby through miscarriage, and I was totally there for her during this period of time. She had an ectopic pregnancy, which means that her baby was growing in her fallopian tube and not the womb, so the pregnancy was actually life-threatening. I went to the hospital with her and stayed with her after she arrived home, because she was an emotional mess at that point. I called her every day to make sure that she was feeling okay. I felt that she was profoundly disloyal, and that really hurt. It was several weeks before I would take her phone calls. I heard it through the grapevine that she and my boyfriend did not last, and that my boyfriend had found somebody else. I felt that this was karma for my friend, because she hurt me and now she was hurting too. Still, I was feeling sad and lonely, and my friend was calling me several times a day and leaving messages, so I finally picked up and we talked. She told me that she was suffering from severe depression, and her doctor had put her on medication. The depression stemmed partly from her lost pregnancy, but it turns out that the problem went even deeper than that. She was clinically depressed, which means that she had a chemical imbalance in the brain, and she was getting treatment for that. She did not have an excuse for sleeping with my boyfriend, except to say that she was lonely and he was there. I could feel that she was needy, and I could understand why. She was vulnerable, and my rat of a boyfriend took advantage of that. Really, my boyfriend is the person who deserved all the blame in this situation. I wrestled with whether I would let this person back in my life. I thought about all the good times we shared, because we had been friends for many years. We shared sleepovers, dinners, movies. We cried over the phone over some boyfriend for another countless times. I was there for her when she lost her baby, and she was always there for me when I needed her too. The incident with my boyfriend was just one thing that has happened during the course of our friendship, and, although it was negative, did it really cancel out all the good in our friendship? I also understood that she was vulnerable and depressed, and people do uncharacteristic things when they are hurting as much as my friend is. And, as strange as it seems, I realized that my friend needed me now to help her through what she was going through, and one of the things that she was going through was being dumped by my ex-boyfriend. The part thats highlighted is where you need to answer the questions and analyze friendship issues I wondered about the ethics of it all. My friend showed a lack of ethics when she slept with my boyfriend. At the same time, was it ethical for me to abandon my friend when she is going through hard times, even if part of her hard times was brought about during her betrayal of me? I decided that it was ethical of me to do so, because my friend betrayed the friendship first. I also wondered if it was ethical to end a friendship with somebody who was always there for me whenever I needed her. I tried to picture my life without her – who would I call in the middle of the night when I was scared and lonely? Who would I gossip with, and discuss television reality shows with and go to the movies with? To answer these questions, I decided that I would simply have to find new friends who shared my interests and who I could trust. In the end, after carefully considering all the pros and cons of the situation, I found that I was too deeply wounded because of her betrayal. Her depression was an excuse, because she could have found a different guy to help her overcome her loneliness and problems. She didn’t, and she really didn’t consider my feelings in the situation at all. The betrayal ran too deep, and I found that, at least for now, the betrayal cancels out all the good in our relationship, which is really a shame. This is how I feel now; I may change my mind in the future. They say that time heals all wounds, so I am hoping that this is the case. Because I really miss my friend. In the end, I see that my friend did me a favor. She helped me see that my boyfriend wasn’t good for me. Unfortunately, in the process, she also showed herself to be a person that’s not my friend. What she did was unforgiveable, but I can’t help but hope that I will eventually find it in my heart to forgive. Read More