Not Your Story to Tell:  Why we blab about our friends

I got an email from a chick whose best friend just told her that her husband was seen

“flirting” with a female Marine.  The young wife went into a tailspin.  The couple had only married a few months.  They’d been fighting a lot before he deployed.  So the minute she got this news the chick was sure that the most important thing was finding out whether or not this was the TRUTH.

  I just didn’t think that the search for the TRUTH about flirting was the most important thing.   My most important thing would be: why would a person who claimed to be a friend tell such a hateful, unnecessary thing?  What kind of friend is that?

Honestly, I just wanted to throttle whoever passed that little message along—starting with the service member who confessed the flirting habits of others to his wife. Why would anyone do that?   Why would anyone terrorize a young spouse (or a young service member) with rumors of flirting?  For that matter, why would we tell someone their husband appeared nine times on someone else’s Facebook page?  Or that a hot new chick just reported to the command (as if she’d actually go for your particular husband)? 

  While I am a firm believer in that old saying “show me someone who hates gossip and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t care about people”,  I still wonder why we military people repeat anything that suggests a fresh, tender, frail young marriage may not have all it takes?  Why do we do this?

  Thinking about the whole thing made me so mad that I started a list.  

1.We tell ourselves we are helping.

I can see where someone might think that telling their friend this kind of news is a helpful behavior.  If the spouse knows there is a burgeoning problem, she can address it and fix it before it becomes worse.  But I’ve never heard of that strategy working for a military couple, have you?.  The problem with deployment is that the relationship is in a holding pattern.  Everybody just has to hang tight until the service member returns.  Suggesting that there is a problem to be fixed when a couple has no ability to fix it is just cruel.

2.We think our friend doesn’t know her husband is a dirtbag.

Assuming that our chick friend doesn’t know whether or not her husband is trustworthy is pretty arrogant.  She does live with the guy when he is not deployed.  She is or is not getting email or phone calls or messages or letters.  She’s the one who is with him when he makes whispered calls in another room, doesn’t show up when he is supposed to, checks out other women in front of us.  We are outsiders in other people’s relationships.  We never know what we think we know.

3.Troubles in other marriages makes us feel better about our own.

This is an icky one, I know, but I gotta list it.  Separation has a way of making people feel unsure about their own relationship.  Contrasting it with a relationship that appears to be in trouble can make us feel better.  Instead, lets contrast our relationship with anything put together by Jude Law or Jon and Kate instead, OK?

4.Groundhog Day.

Remember that Bill Murray movie in which every day is exactly the same?  Deployment can take on that feeling whether its Korea or Afghanistan or the Indian Ocean you are looking at. Someone who appears to be having an affair, or might be having an affair, or who is thinking about having an affair is news.  It’s news that will travel 8000 miles at the thump of a thumb.  Having something—anything—to say might be tempting, but resist it.

5.We do stupid stuff.

I don’t know about your, but I’ve done a lot of stupid, unthinking stuff in my time.  I probably didn’t mean to be mean, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t mean just the same.  I apologize for that.  But the good thing about military life is that the same situation will pop up again.   I’ll have another chance to be a true supporter of my friends, their service members, their marriages.  Because now I know that no matter what I hear about a friend’s marriage, it is not my story to tell. 

Jacey Eckhart is a military/life consultant based in Washington DC.  She is the author of The Homefront Club:  The Hardheaded Woman’s Guide to Raising a Military Family" and the voice behind “These Boots.”  Check out more columns and her speaking schedule at www.jaceyeckhart.com.  Write her at Jacey@jaceyeckhart.com

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