Secrets and Lies

Vivir con miedo, es como vivir a medias
(A life lived in fear is a life half-lived)

I learned last week that two people I worked with a couple of years ago got engaged to each other over Thanksgiving. I had to laugh when I heard it, because I had strongly suspected that they were dating when we worked together, although they had tried very hard to keep me (and almost everyone else, I think) from finding out. It wasn't like I was even prying, it was just that we all worked so closely together that it was impossible not to notice that something was going on between them. After all, we worked together in a department of only four people.

When I joined the department, the three of us started off as friends, sharing music, movies, and other interests. We really had a lot of fun together. But later that year, there was a distinct shift, and I remember many times that summer when I was simply making conversation, talking with one or the other of them about their plans for the weekend or vacation or even just lunch, and I would get the sense from body language and tone of voice that they were uncomfortable with the conversation. Or I would ask an offhand question and get an elaborate explanation from one of them, way more than I ever needed to know, only to hear the exact same explanation from the other one later on in the day. It soon became impossible not to notice that they were working hard to keep their stories straight. After awhile things like that made it very uncomfortable for me to relate to them on a personal level. Even mundane conversations were stressful, because the most innocuous topics would sometimes make them turn weird and evasive.

Finally, one Friday I chanced to catch them in an outright lie. It was such a stupid thing -- I had asked her if she wanted to go out to lunch, and she had said that she had errands to run and she wasn't going to eat at all. I didn't mind, I just went by myself -- and ended up finding their two cars parked on opposite ends of the parking lot at the Chinese restaurant that I decided to go to. I wished so hard that I had just gone to McDonald's and had never seen them there together. It wasn't that I wanted to eat lunch with them -- I didn't really care about that -- I just hated knowing for sure that they were lying to me when I had thought they were my friends. It was very upsetting.

After that incident, I felt like I had to at least bring it up with her (since she was the one who had lied to me that day). So I called her that weekend, and told her very cautiously that I didn't mind if there was something going on between the two of them, that I really didn't care if they were seeing each other outside of work, but that it was making me very uncomfortable to find that I was being lied to all the time.

She swore up and down that they weren't dating. She also suggested that I had an overactive imagination.

"Well," I thought, "maybe I was wrong."

I wish now that I had just told them both that I couldn't keep trying to be friends, with all that deception going on. I wish that those relationships hadn't felt so important to me at that time. But they did.

I worked with the two of them for a total of about eighteen months. I think they were dating for about a year of that time. Anyway, after they both left the company in 2000, I never looked for any confirmation that they'd been dating. I certainly never asked anyone, and when people asked me about it (because of course many did) I just said I'd never known for sure. It wasn't until last Friday, when I heard they were engaged, that I was really certain that I was right when it had seemed so obvious to me that they were together.

Since last Friday, I've remembered all these little things that make so much more sense now than they did back then, back when I was trying to convince myself that nothing was going on. I've also remembered a lot of things I find vaguely disturbing. Like how sometimes he would speak to me "privately" about her -- criticize her, basically -- in an effort (I suppose) to throw me off and make me think they weren't together. Or maybe he was trying to get me to say something negative about her that he could report back to her. I really don't know. Looking back on it now, it all just seems kind of creepy.

Most of all, though, knowing the truth at last helps me understand why things went so wrong at the end. Relations deteriorated very badly between me and the two of them before they left the company, and I know now that it was not simply because of what happened to our department (it was downsized and one of their positions was eliminated), and neither was it just because I was so nasty, controlling, and manipulative (to borrow some terms from the two of them).

It's kind of sad to look back on the whole situation, and think about how miserable they must have been, hiding from everyone and probably cursing me every time I foisted my unwelcome presence on them. Apparently they decided to keep their relationship secret out of fear that they would be reprimanded because they worked in the same department. I suppose it's possible that might have happened, although I know other couples at my company who work in the same department together without a problem. To me it seems like the level of deception they practiced -- not just with me, but with almost everyone -- reveals a deep paranoia, perhaps even an unreasonable fear of persecution. But then, how should I know? I wasn't in their situation. It wasn't my relationship, or my decision, or my job, or my issue in any way.

But my part in the experience affected me. And I learned some important things, too (okay, Wonder Years time):

If it seems like something weird is going on, it probably is.

If it feels like people are lying to me, they probably are.

No matter how good the good parts are, no relationship is worth the effort it takes to deceive myself.

Anyway, I hope that if I ever find myself in that situation again, I will be able to handle it with more self-assurance and confidence than I did the first time. I think I will. I'm good at learning from my mistakes, especially in relationships.

And in the end, I'm glad my life is the way it is and I'm who I am. Despite the difficult and stressful events of the last year or so, I am a much happier person today than I was back then. So I'm satisfied. And I'll let them worry about their own happiness. I'm sure they have it all under control.

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