Betraying Confidences

When we get so comfortable inside a friendship that we forget ourselves and let down all our defences and guards, we are, most times, only asking to be betrayed.

I thought I had lived long enough and been through enough and even been hurt enough that by now, I had gained some sort of wisdom where people in general were concerned. I was under the mistaken impression that I was able, by now, to be able to know those people that I was able to trust and those I was not. However, once again I opened myself up, poured my heart out to a "friend," someone I would have trusted with my life, and I was betrayed in the worst way. The saddest part of this story is that I deserved exactly what I got.

There is an old saying, "Live and learn," and I suppose that as long as we live, we are always learning. Learning is one of those good things in life and something we should always be willing to do although learning should not come with such a high price. In this particular case, learning quite possibly has cost me the ultimate price, one I was not willing to pay. Had I known that in the beginning, I would have never opened myself up in the beginning.

So, my lesson learned at nearly 51 years old is this: that no matter how well you know someone or how close you think you might be to that person, if there is something in your heart that you don't want repeated as common knowledge, keep it to yourself. No matter how much a person may promisse you that they will keep your confidence, the time will come that for one reason or another, what you say to another person will be repeated because it's just not possible for people to keep a secret. A secret is not a secret if it's told. There is no such thing as a confidence. People just are not capeable of keeping them. People, in general, have this need to tell what they know. Whether it be for self-importance or self-gratification, I don't know. But for whatever reason, if someone has priviledged information, they have this uncontrollable urge and they cannot help themselves, they just have to tell someone else.