Where should your loyalty lie, with your friends or with your family?

If you had two family members who were getting divorced and you found out that their ex’s were now dating each other, would you keep that secret to yourself, or would you tell your family?

In this story, one man is in this situation and decides to keep the secret, but now he’s wondering if that was the wrong thing to do.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for not telling my brother and cousin that their exes were now together?

The people involved in this are:

Me 34m My brother James 36m My Cousin Janie 42 My best friends Adam and Jeff 34m Jeff’s younger sister Leah 28f.

My brother and I aren’t very close, we lost our mom when we were young and he dealt with it by becoming a jerk.

I consider Adam and Jeff my closest friends, we’ve known each other since we could walk, so I also consider Leah my little sister.

It’s great when your friends marry into your family, but when they get divorced, it gets complicated.

My cousin Janie met Adam at our college graduation, they have been married for 12 years and have 2 kids 11 and 8.

Leah and James more or less met (they had known of one another but never talked before) at my wedding 8 years ago and they married 6 years ago, no kids thank god.

A little over a year ago, Leah filed for divorce because James apparently decided that after the wedding it was fine to cheat on her whenever he wanted.

My wife 34f and I were obviously on Leah’s side, but he did a lot of BS with our family like telling them she had an abortion without talking to him, but the truth was it was an ectopic pregnancy and there was no choice. Things like that.

I’ve tried clearing some stuff up but I’ve been accused of not prioritizing family.

This is starting to sound like a soap opera.

To make it all a bit more dramatic, a few weeks after Leah filed, Adam left Janie.

And a few weeks after that Adam admitted that he was with Leah.

Obviously, not great, but they said they didn’t have an affair and Jeff and I believe them.

BUT, both James and Janie really went hard at them during their divorces and they didn’t want either to know, so my wife and I didn’t tell anyone in our family.

He’s wondering if it was wrong to withhold that information.

But the divorces are now both finalized and Leah and Adam are openly dating.

Janie and James are ticked off, and both say it could have helped their divorce cases.

Janie has been trash talking both of them, but especially Leah who she blames for everything, to our entire family and even her kids.

My dad now knows that I knew and told me I need to be more loyal to my brother in the future.

He’s not mad but says that what Adam and Leah did was unconscionable and I shouldn’t stay friends with them; I have no intention of cutting them off but am wondering if I was wrong for not telling Janie and James?

What complicated family dynamics! Was he wrong for agreeing to keep a secret for his friends, or should he have told his brother and cousin what he knew?

Let’s see what Reddit thinks of this story.

This person points out that the brother wasn’t loyal.

It’s best to stay out of it.

Here’s another similar comment.

But one person went against the grain and thought OP wasn’t innocent in all this.

What a mess!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.