A scalding post by Janet Stemwedel, on the expectation of trust. It’s a ventriloquial sort of post, speaking in the voice of someone else. It’s variations on the theme: “you should trust me.” It’s extremely well done.
Yes, I used the cover of friendship, your loyalty and my apparent track record of not-misbehaving with hundreds of women (including you!), of being a good guy except for one single lapse of judgment (which I swore was not as bad as it sounded, because that woman who you didn’t know was trying to take me down), to ask you privately to convince a couple other people that I was still a good guy. I guess it was awkward when you discovered I’d split up the list of people who needed convincing and asked other people to do this too? And when you discovered that I described the task with one of the people I assigned to you as “getting her to put down the pitchfork”. In retrospect, that probably seemed kind of manipulative of me.
But you should trust me, I totally get how what I did was wrong, and I won’t do it again.
Sure, I haven’t actually acknowledged that lying to you and trying to manipulate you to protect my reputation and relationships was a bad thing to do. I haven’t acknowledged that it harmed you. I haven’t said sorry.
But you should trust that I am sorry and that I won’t do it again. I shouldn’t need to say it.
Ouch.
You may remember that yesterday I quoted a comment that Janet posted on Martin Robbins’s post:
I[t] would be a mistake to think that Bora hurt exactly three people here. Or that he has apologized to all the people he harmed.
I say this as someone he harmed, someone he has not apologized to as yet.
I wondered when I read it and then when I quoted it what the harm was. Now I know. Now we know.
Scorching.