He-Said-She-Said

Recently I was talking to a very close friend about her ex-boyfriend.

“I never liked him” I gushed over the phone to someone who I don’t talk to as much as I should.

“You know, everyone keeps telling me that. Why didn’t you tell me when I was dating him that you all hated him?”

This brings us to a dilemma. Do we tell our close friend, the friends who we would tell anything about ourselves, that we don’t like the person that they are dating? I guess this gets down to the root of the problem, ‘why don’t you like the person they are dating’? Do you not like them because of the way he or she looks/acts/dresses? Or is it something deeper? Do you fundamentally not like this person because of the way they think/believe/or are.

Personally I’ve done both. I once told a close friend that I did not like her boyfriend because I thought he was narrow minded and a mean drunk. That I did not like the way that she acted around him and that I thought that she was changing so that he would like her more. She got mad and we are not friends anymore (they boyfriend and her are married now with their first child on the way).

Conversantly, when I’ve kept my mouth shut, avoided the topic and just kept my head down, the said boyfriend/girlfriend has ended up breaking my friend’s heart. This usually turns out to be the best in the long run for every one. But is it? If my friend hated Steve would that change my mind about marring him? I doubt it, but I would want to know why. All my friends tell me they ‘love Steve’ but what do they say to each other. Can we really trust our friends to give us an honest opinion of our significant others?

Or should we go with our own gut feeling? Maybe an objective third party can help? I’m not sure of the answer. All I know is that everything in me tells me that Steve is right for me. And that is enough.