The Limits of Good Faith

I have read enough about friendship, human behaviour, and moral philosophy to know that none of this should have surprised me.

Aristotle distinguished friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue more than two thousand years ago. The wisdom is hardly obscure. Neither is the familiar advice to judge people by their actions rather than their words.

I knew all of that.

But I have never particularly admired the habit of assuming the worst about someone simply because their behaviour raises suspicion. People are complicated. They make mistakes. Their actions can contradict their intentions, and sometimes they deserve the opportunity to explain themselves.

So I gave people that opportunity. Repeatedly.

I recognized the warning signs, but I wanted to believe that their explanations meant something.

That turned out to be an expensive exercise in good faith.

We began as five friends. An unhealthy dynamic eventually divided the group, leaving three of us. I thought the remaining friendships would be different. Instead, I gradually found myself observing familiar patterns of selective loyalty, convenient excuses, and an impressive ability to discuss kindness without necessarily practising it.

Even inclusion became something of a performance. After I expressed that I felt excluded from conversations, the apparent solution was to continue discussing the same topics and occasionally solicit my opinion.

A remarkable innovation. Exclusion, now with a customer feedback form.

But the more interesting contradiction was the relationship between people's behaviour and their understanding of themselves.

Someone can privately acknowledge that a friend's actions are unacceptable while continuing to defend that friend publicly. Someone can insist that fairness matters while repeatedly extending the benefit of the doubt to only one person. Someone can describe themselves as caring and considerate without apparently noticing whom their decisions consistently disadvantage.

And when confronted with these contradictions, explanations arrive remarkably quickly.

Perhaps that's understandable. Nobody enjoys discovering that their conduct falls short of their self-image.

But there's a difference between explaining why you behaved a certain way and taking responsibility for having behaved that way.

Self-explanation is not self-examination.

What finally changed my judgment wasn't a single disagreement. It was watching the same pattern survive multiple conversations intended to resolve it.

Even when claims about me were disputed, I felt that the preferred account had already been selected. The question seemed less about what was true than about whose version was more socially convenient to accept.

I wasn't asking for unconditional loyalty, but just intellectual honesty and basic fairness.

Apparently, those can become surprisingly demanding expectations when they threaten an otherwise comfortable arrangement.

And here lies the problem with a certain kind of politeness, that allows people to preserve the appearance of kindness while avoiding the responsibilities that kindness requires.

It's easy to be pleasant when everyone agrees. It's easy to call yourself supportive when support costs nothing. It's easy to value honesty when nobody says anything uncomfortable.

Character becomes visible when those things are no longer easy.

So, to anyone who recognizes something familiar here, perhaps there's a more useful question than whether you consider yourself a good friend.

When being fair would have made your life less comfortable, what did you actually choose?

I eventually stopped extending the benefit of the doubt.

Not because I stopped believing people deserve kindness, but because kindness shouldn't require the indefinite suspension of judgment.

I knew the warnings. I understood the principles. I chose to give people room to contradict my concerns.

Their actions eventually answered for them.

And I have no intention of confusing an explanation with a change in character again.