Found out something about my friend

[frankiesamson]

A good friend of mine I've known for over a decade, whom I see almost every day, who supported me through some of my life's toughest times & I don't think I could have survived without her... and vice versa, opened up to me tonight about something apparently no one other than her has ever known about.

I promised her I wouldn't judge and that she could tell me anything.

Then she told me: during her divorce many years ago (her husband left her for someone else), her husband was out on a date with someone else & she felt so desperate she wanted him to come home to her. In order to get his attention, she told him their pet guinie pig had died (a lie). He agreed to come home.

So that he wouldn't discover the deception, she killed the pet. She was so ashamed she never told anyone.

How would / should one react?

You are not much of a friend making this public OP.

MsTswift, well apparently killing the family pet when under extreme duress is entirely different to force feeding animals, and allowing them to undergo horrible, extended cruelty for their entire lives. Yes, I eat meat. No, I don't torture my pets. But I would feel very judgemental if I was re-evaluating my friendship with someone who'd seen me through the hardest of times and was a great friend, based on this.

You are not much of a friend making this public OP.

I imagine she's probably changed some detail, i.e., it wasn't a guinea pig, it was a Shetland pony.

Bluntness, that's like saying it's different to murder your child, as.opposed to paying for a kidney extracted from a murdered child (well, I didn't personally kill that child or know them). If it's morally reprehensible then that's what it is.

I think your friend would be justified in feeling hurt and let down if you rejected her as a friend - not because there's a moral justification for killing an animal, but because you had presented yourself to her as someone she could trust. She didn't brag about it in the pub or put it as her FB status; she confided it to you alone and told you she was ashamed of it. Still, we can't help the way we feel and react, so if you can't get past this, you probably need to tell her so and explain why you can't continue the friendship as before.

It does raise some tricky moral questions though. Interesting question from a PP about what you would do if your best friend told you they'd killed a person.

@tenredthings 100%

Wouldn’t be friends with an animal killer? So that rules out lots of farmers and slaughterhouse workers then.

She's despicable to have done such a thing, I wouldn't be able to stay friends with somebody who had done that whether they were mentally unstable or not - killing family pets is abusive behaviour and often linked to abuse of children.

I think it's really disrespectful that you have posted this on here. Your friend has confided in you and trusted you with a very dark and upsetting time in her life so you put it on the internet?
I wouldn't disown my friend for this, I'd ask if they had recovered from their traumatic experience. I'd ask if they needed help seeing a therapist. You have encouraged your friend to reveal a deep and shameful secret to you and this is what you do. Shame on you I say, not her.

If you eat meat you condone the killing of animals. You just distance yourself from it.

Jesus fucking Christ

Interesting question from a PP about what you would do if your best friend told you they'd killed a person.

Because killing a guinea pig is the same as killing a human being.

Oh good. We've got some veggies out in force trying to hijackthe thread and bang their drum, start your own thread.

Please get this taken down.

Jesus I'd never talk to that person again. If it is true that is disgusting

I think she must have been in a very dark, desperate place and to tell you this all this time later means she hasn’t been able to let go of the guilt about what she did.

We used to raise our own chickens for meat. I was vegetarian for a long time and when I decided to eat meat again I wanted to feel that I knew everything about the whole process. Killing them was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever done. It stays with you. Eventually I said, I can’t do this any more and now buy free range meat.

I realise this isn’t the same situation, but it is also an experience of deliberately killing an animal, and if she’s never done anything like this again, hopefully the shock of what she did and the lasting guilt means she would never do it again.

Killing a family pet for the sake of emotional blackmail has nothing whatsoever to do with eating meat. My grandparents farmed. They had the closest of relationships with the dogs and horses; completely different from sending animals bred for meat to slaughter.

I would still be friends with her. Absolutely.

She is shocked herself. She is processing what her relationship did to her. She has a kind of ptsd from it. She is ashamed. Be kind. Be tolerant. Take a wider view.

Goodness me, you couldn't make it up.

I’m not a veggie . Just find those that claim to adore pets then tuck into steak and chips abit hypocritical.

I think I could forgive her. As a vegan I have to interact with people who pay for animals to be killed every day. I still like them and some are my best friends, so it would be hypocritical of me to change my mind just because they got their hands dirty and did the actual killing rather than just paying for it. Certainly if they were going vegan i.e. remorseful and not going to ever do it again then I’d be very supportive so I suppose I’d have to be supportive in your situation as your friend says she is remorseful and won’t do it again. It is tough though. I can’t really understand the mindset as I couldn’t hurt my cat even if my life depended on it, she is family.

@Bluntness100 it’s not hijacking, it’s wholly relevant to OPs question. If we can be friends with a slaughterhouse worker why is that different from being friends with OP’s friend? And if we can’t be friends with a slaughterhouse worker presumably we wouldn’t pay their wages by buying the bodies of the animals they kill? It’s an ethical dilemma thread where the ethics of killing animals are wholly relevant.

If it was a choice between killing all my pets personally, or my daughter being raped, I know what I'd choose. They are pets, I love them, I wouldn't eat them, but they are still animals.

If it was a choice between killing all my pets personally, or my daughter being raped, I know what I'd choose

What a ridiculous comment. In what works is that an actual situation?

I think this is a terrible and disturbing act.

Equally, based on what you have said, she is haunted by it.

I would find it disturbing and would not see her the same way, but I would remain friends with her based on the fact that she had shown herself to be a good person and friend for a decade.

People can do horrible things when in a desperate situation.

I feel a bit bad for her as this is a horrible secret to carry around.

Five years ago I would have been appalled. But having gone through a prolonged level of mental distress (actually distress doesn't even begin to cover it, utter desolation and total loss of self and loss of utterly everything you ever were and ever would be) I could not have imagined this level of distress was even possible. I now have more empathy. You are living in an altered state of mind, an altered reality. You don't have a grip on things in the way you did, or even a grip at all. You can't really judge from the position of being balanced and 'normal' because that is not the state someone is in.

If your friend is normally, normal, and she is ashamed, I would try to be empathetic and understanding. That actor who played Frasier once said, 'Don't judge someone until you have heard their story. And if you hear their story and still judge them, then you are kinda an asshole.'
I live more by this now. Because I get how utterly wretched and distorted you can get. And how utterly, utterly deeply and to the core alone you are because you know other people just won't understand.