Should You Tell Your Spouse Everything?

A cautionary tale

I made the mistake of introducing my best friend to his future wife.

I went to high school with the future wife who was two years younger than me. She was a pseudo-intellectual with the debate team, a geek with the band, and a bimbo with the popular kids.

She was the Amazon of gossip.

She picked it up at the debate team and delivered it to the band’s doorstep where she picked up a juicy tidbit and fed that to the prom-king-and-queen crowd.

She wasn’t a mean girl. She just seemed to relish her role as information-spreader. I thought that perhaps it was because she had a great appetite for approval. In my mind, she ended up being a bit flavorless in the attempt to be a flavor liked by everyone. She was the bland by-product you get when you mix sugar with spicy chili.

I didn’t dislike her. I didn’t like her. I just had zero interest in her way of being.

I moved away for university, where I met my college bestie, a guy who was born in South Korea and had grown up in Atlanta.

Two years later she asked to visit me at school for a campus visit. I agreed to host her, mostly out of notions of shared history and geography.