Loyalty and friendship

Interesting dinner incident. Gillian and Isaac throwing daggers at each other across the dinner table. Gillian threatening to spill Isaac's secrets like "I'm gonna tell mum about that time when you told me not to tell..."

I stopped her and said I didn't want to hear it.

To me, loyalty is the issue here. If you've been honoured with a secret or entrusted with a dear friend's thoughts, dreams, failures, fears - be honoured and keep those close to your heart. And should the good times end, its important to still keep these close to your heart. To do otherwise would be disloyal and indicative of a shallow character - a fair-weather friend. I don't know if I over-reacted (probably I did - I tend to get very emotional over issues like these) but I told her I didn't think it was good to treat her brother like this. It was just plain wrong. How to expect people to trust you?

I've been on the receiving end before - of disloyalty in a friendship. It cut so deep that I can never forget this. When you trust someone so much, and when you genuinely like that person, you believe in her and are loyal to the core, the last thing you ever imagine that person would do is to cut you loose and set the sharks on you.

So I've learnt the painful way and this means a great deal to me. I certainly hope that my kids won't act like this. Maybe loyalty is old-fashioned in today's world. But that's just me.