Limits to loyalty

I used to prize loyalty to friends as an iron-clad part of my personality and one of the virtues I honoured most highly. I learned I was mistaken. You don’t have to be loyal to someone who doesn’t bring out your best, make you smarter, encourage you to take risks, and back you up if you fail. I have been blessed with many great friends who have those traits, and I assumed all of my friends did. It was a late-in-life epiphany that loyalty has limits.

When one friend in particular began to suffer a string of bad breaks, I stood by him. When he began to act like a weasel, I stayed his friend. I was motivated by another close pal who shared my simple belief that you never turn your back on a friend, even if you don’t like him anymore. Turned out it wasn’t that simple. 

I watched this guy cheat and fail over and over. He made repeated bad decisions and took no responsibility for them. He designed and participated in his descent into personal and financial chaos. Every lapse of character was an opportunity to plead for more help from someone else, especially his dwindling circle of friends. 

As his life fell apart, I stayed in contact, believing that my philosophical backbone made me tough enough to deal with his negativity and that it would show weakness of character to abandon him. He asked to borrow money he would never repay. I saw him stiff people on his bills. I watched him destroy his own home in the process of carrying out another get-rich-quick fantasy. I imagined that my friendship could lend him the strength to get out of his spiral. I didn’t want to leave him friendless.

Bad luck does not cause all our misfortunes

My husband suggested to me that when someone suffers a seemingly endless series of misfortunes, don’t make an automatic calculation that he is a noble victim of fate. All of these difficulties – broken relationships, unemployment, outright fraud to stave off the bill collectors – were not the result of colossal bad luck. These were his choices. He used his free will to be a spineless jellyfish.

Sticking by him made me complicit in his delusion that he had no responsibility for his situation. He rejected opportunities to get on track or even get a job because it demanded responsibility on his end. I was infantilizing a guy who I once looked up to, who was once my boss, buying into his view of himself as a helpless victim. As my wise pal Megan noted, “There is nothing more boring or less sexy than someone claiming victimhood.”

Loyalty is a bond that is fair and honest, it’s not a one-way street

Loyalty is a bond that is fair and honest, it’s not a one-way street. Friendship is reciprocal. Aristotle writes, “Friends are people who must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other.” Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapter III. Loyalty is not a virtue when it comes with an expense. The expense could be a loss of respect from others. The expense could be an actual expense when they start weaseling money off you.

When I drive by his foreclosed house my disgust still bubbles up, but I remind myself to be grateful that I don’t have a victim mentality and am not a thief. I turn my loathing and disappointment into something better for all. Every time I let myself indulge in revenge theater, I make a donation to the food bank. As Epictetus said, 

Never be so tied to former friends that you are pulled down to their level. - Epictetus, Discourses 4.2

Life is too short for weasels. They are going to be all around you. The only upside we can take from weasels and difficult people is to use them as examples of how we will not behave. Marcus Aurelius noted that “the best revenge is to not be like your enemy.” Meditations, 6.6 Weed your social garden and pull them out by the roots.

In Sharon Lebell’s interpretation of Epictetus’ Enchiridion, the sage admonishes us, “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” You can’t be a loyal friend unless you are loyal to yourself and the true Stoic virtues – courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom.

Karen Duffy is a producer, actress, and former MTV VJ. Her latest book on Stoicism. Wise Up (https:// amzn.to/3PpLv5D) is published by Seal Press.

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