Kind Cruelty

            Considering all of the personal and interpersonal things I’ve been writing lately, I thought it was time to elucidate the concept of kind cruelty.  This oxymoron runs through the concept of my Friend-Zone post and the discussion of masks, and has been a recurring feature of all my social interactions.

            Essentially, the premise of kind cruelty is this: sometimes, a harsh act is the quickest and least painful method of addressing a difficult situation.  For instance, telling a friend that you cannot return their romantic feelings may be cruel, but it (probably) clarifies and closes the situation for both people involved.  Cruel, yes, but swift; the stroke cuts deep but clean.  Given time, such a wound will heal, and the scar will likely be small.

            To see the logic behind this idea, consider the converse; if cruelty can be kind, then it stands to reason that kindness can be cruel.  To mirror the example listed above, entering a relationship despite a dearth of feelings or your part will most likely be cruel, even if meant kindly.  Eventually, the truth will out, likely after a long period of doubt.  When the truth is revealed, it will hurt not once but twice: once from the hard nature of the news, and twice from the knowledge that this person lied.

Kind cruelty has at least two elements: honesty and closure.  Honesty because it says that I trust the person, closure because it allows the wound to close.

Honesty is vital because it says I trust you. I neither give nor receive trust lightly, and I have no gift more precious.  To trust another person is to be able to tell them your thoughts, your feelings, your joys and sorrows, and to know that they will accept them, understand them, endure them, help you with them, and never speak what is not theirs to tell.  Few are those whom I trust, precisely because trust requires that I lower my guard.  To lower your guard to the wrong man (or woman) exposes one to cruel cuts, and such blows land deep.  If I trust you, I must know you will not level such blows intentionally, at least not without trying to drive me from greater pain.

 As for closure, there are few experiences I can think of that are more painful than waiting for an answer that never comes.  Failing to give an answer always has the logic that eventually, the person who asked will forget about it.  That never happens.  If the question mattered, the person who asked remembers.  Answering the question allows healing, even if it requires a hot iron to cauterize the wound.  Better the clean pain of the surgeon’s knife than the deep, numbing poison of cancer.

Given the theory of kind cruelty, it is easy enough to see how cruel kindness arises.  The white lie, the failure to give a hard answer, such things are no kindnesses at all.  In my opinion, lying to another human being may be the cruelest thing one can ever do.  Lying says that I think you will reveal my weaknesses, that I think you cannot endure the truth.  It rends the bonds of trust asunder, for if I lie, it says that not only do I not trust you with the truth, but also that I value you so little that I will give you false goods.  Thus, lying is cruel, and wrong at any time.  To lie to another for kindness’s sake is no kindness at all, but a second blow laid upon the first.

Almost as painful as lying is failing to answer a request or overture from another.  No reply is crueler than waiting for an answer, for waiting keeps the barb in the wound.  To ask a question is to open a wound upon yourself, a gap in your defenses; failing to answer is to keep the injury open until it fills with pus.  Such an injury might bleed less than the surgeon’s knife, but its pain poisons, and if it finally heals the scar is deep and wide.  To open the gash with the knife, allow the poison to drain, and seal the wound with a hot iron; such an operation hurts, yes, but at least the pain is clean.

The theory of kind cruelty, in short, comes to the difference between clean pain and infection, between inflicting a single blow or two.  It is not easy, nor pleasant.  But it is the lesser of two evils, and sometimes that is the choice with which we are left.

Friendzone

            These half-formed thoughts have been falling from my head with remarkable speed recently.  In this case, the post discusses the “friend-zone,” in which boys (or girls, for that matter) have romantic feelings refused by a close friend who nonetheless wish to retain their friendship.  I’ve been on both ends of this stick in the past two years, so I’ve got some idea of how it feels.  It’s not comfortable, and from the receiving end, it feels like rejection.

            After some thought and experience, I came to a somewhat odd conclusion.  Friendship and romantic feelings are two very different things, and though not mutually exclusive, they most certainly are not married.  I care deeply about many people in my life, but I have romantic feelings for very few of them.  That I would reject overtures from the others most emphatically does not mean that I value them less; in fact, I would argue that an honest rejection would be the clearest sign that I value them.

            Now we come to the punchline of this post; I argue that being “friendzoned,” as it were, actually shows that the other person values you too much to lie to you.  It’s easy to lie, especially if you think you’ll get something from it.  Yet, to lie to another person may be the quickest way to destroy the bonds of trust between people.  It says that you do not value that person enough to give them the truth and that you don’t trust him or her to be able to handle it.  It’s insulting, and it’s wrong.

I say, far better to tell the truth at the beginning.  The surgeon’s knife and the hot iron offer the best chance at healing.  The knife must cut to remove the barb, and the iron must burn to seal the wound, but to leave the barb be invites creeping infection.  Infection may lessen the pain, but as it kills the pain it kills the host.  If nothing else, the surgery’s pain means you can still feel; if nothing else, it means you are still alive.

Lest you all think I’m merely proselytizing, I can tell you that I’ve had precisely this debate with myself in the recent past.  A few years ago close friend of mine asked me if I wanted to start a romantic relationship with her.  I’ll admit, the question did not entirely take me blind; I’d been asking myself the same question.  Still, I didn’t have an answer.

After mulling the question over for a couple of days, I came to the same argument that I outlined above.  I didn’t want to hurt her; she was my closest friend at the University at that time, and remains one of my closest.  Driving her away was the last thing I wanted, but I knew that the spark, the emotional drive simply wasn’t there.  Given that fact, I decided that I should tell her that I wanted to keep our friendship, but that a romantic relationship simply wouldn’t work.

This was not an easy decision.  Personally, I take rejection hard, and it takes great effort for me to make myself so vulnerable.  As such, I knew that the rejection would hurt, for I had to strike her hard.  Nonetheless, I knew that pretending to have feelings that didn’t exist would hurt even more.  She wouldn’t have been fooled for long, and when she discovered the truth it would be two injuries in one.  I cared about her too much to cause more harm than necessary.

When I met her to tell her this, she took the news better than I could have expected.  It was not a comfortable conversation, but nonetheless friendly and understanding.  Looking back, we both acted in the “Keep calm and carry on” mindset, and probably hid the true impact this had on both of us.  I certainly acted like an uncaring jackass…probably a coping mechanism for my guilt and discomfort.  Nonetheless, the episode became a minor bump in our friendship, rather than a pitfall.  This surgery was painful, yes, but the knife healed, and we were able to recover quickly.