My partner and I are good friends with a man who is a single dad and a wonderful parent. His income is low, he has substantial debt and money is a chronic source of stress for the family, though he owns their modest home. We have given him unsolicited small-to-medium monetary gifts over the years and have offered to be his no-interest lender of last resort in emergencies. He has taken us up on that a few times and reliably made installment repayments.
The family’s kitchen is in such poor structural condition that aspects of it are unusable. By their own report, their life would be considerably more enjoyable with a partial remodel. My partner would like to give him the substantial sum he needs for the repairs with the stipulation that it be used for that. I also would very much like them to have a functional kitchen, but my priorities may not be the same as our friend’s. He might want to use the money to pay down debt, splurge on the kids or anything else he may decide.
I think it would be controlling and demeaning to give this money with strings attached. I would be comfortable with saying: ‘‘We think this is what a partial kitchen remodel would cost. Please use it for that or for whatever you prioritize.’’ My partner says that making this present conditional on the kitchen remodel would be no different from giving this family a new car or a generous gift card at a niche store. But I say that if our friend had other priorities, he could at least sell the car or buy items at the store and resell them. We jointly own all of our assets, so this would be a collective decision. What do you think? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Can we think more about the car analogy? Suppose you’ve talked about your need for a new sedan. Maybe you’ve had your eye on a particular model. It’s just that you don’t have the cash to buy it. Mary, your prosperous and generous friend, has that model delivered as a birthday present. Would you have reason to take offense?
Perhaps the gift presupposes that she’s richer than you are, but you’ve never made any bones about that. And she has previously used her bigger bank account to your advantage without roiling the relationship. Generosity does put you in a kind of moral debt to the donor, but this only has to be a problem if that debt becomes the basis for lording it over you.
So the gift needn’t be demeaning. As for controlling: Well, in giving you the car rather than the cost of the car, Mary has made a choice for you. Maybe it’s not what you would have done with the money. Send the car back, if you want. But if you accept it as a gift, you ought to take it in the spirit in which it was given. A friend meant to help you out by providing you with something you had a use for.
True, you would be at liberty to resell the vehicle (at a significant discount from the retail price, no doubt) in order to pay down your student loans. Yet Mary would have a right to be miffed if you did that. You would have been scissoring invisible strings, precisely because you wouldn’t have accepted the gift in the spirit in which it was given.
I feel the same about the needed kitchen remodel. In fact, if you know a reliable contractor, why not offer to line one up and have the contractor send you the bills? Once again, paying for something specific needn’t be demeaning — you’re not going to be lording it over your friend — and it isn’t controlling, because he’s perfectly free to turn down what you’re offering him. He, not you, is in charge of whether he gets a new kitchen.
It matters that you’ve apparently managed, over the years, to help your friend materially without making him (or you) uncomfortable. You’ve figured out how to combine generosity and respect. While I admire your sensitivity and thoughtfulness, I see no reason that this dynamic wouldn’t survive a kitchen rehab.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a writer in a predicament. She wrote: “Two decades ago, while raising a child in a small town, my husband and I became close to two other families with children the same age as ours. … Then it came to light that, for more than a year, one of the husbands had been having an affair with the wife of the other, and our chummy sextuplet was torn asunder. … We ended up moving away, but eventually I wrote a novel that drew on the episode. To promote it, I published an essay in a small writerly newsletter about what inspired the plot (disguising the names of those involved). Unfortunately, someone who still lives in the town read the essay and passed it around to friends of friends, until it made its way to my old friend — the wife who cheated. She immediately emailed me and demanded I delete the essay from all social media. … I deleted the newsletter post from Instagram and promised that I would not share the piece anywhere. … My friends (and my agent) are now telling me to ignore my old friend. … I have no idea what to do. Do I post it and get more sales or keep it hidden and hope she and I someday rekindle our friendship?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “I don’t think you wronged anyone in publishing the novel. The people who might have been able to connect this work of fiction to those long-ago events would be those who already knew about them, and (absent your essay) they could only conjecture about what else had a basis in reality. But circulating the essay was unfair to the betrayed wife and inconsistent with your professed friendship. Doing your best to pull it would be a gesture of apology — one made more meaningful by your concern that it could have commercial costs. You have self-interested reasons, of course, to care more about promoting this new book than respecting this old friendship. Yet in the story of your own life, you’ll also want to give weight to larger questions about character.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I think the Ethicist is right on with his response to this letter. I was shocked as I read this novelist’s dilemma: having larger book sales or discontinuing injurious actions toward an old “friend.” It amazes me how well Dr. Appiah can unravel the twisted strands of ethical misbehavior. — Ronnie
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Oy! A writer should know better, and have an agent who would alert her to potential issues. But I do agree that this is a conundrum. As a writer myself, I have struggled with this very issue many times. I’ve lived an extremely interesting life that could easily be an excellent and entertaining (and edifying) novel, but I will never publish such a thing until everyone involved is gone and I’m no longer able to cogently reply to any flack that may come up; it’s just too easy to avoid recognizing what harm could be done. Book sales are not worth causing pain. Once the material is out in the world, it’s hard to take it back. — P.D.
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Writers often call upon past experiences to create stories. Anyone who recognizes the identity of the adulterous participants from reading the essay obviously knows about the infidelity anyhow. Unfortunately, a spouse straying into a sexual affair is not exactly rare in our society, so I’m guessing there are hundreds of people who could read that essay and think it was written about them. — Dave
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I agree with the Ethicist. There was nothing friendly about sharing the origin of the novel in an essay and to add insult to injury, the writer has gone and done it again, though this time anonymously. — Helene
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The novelist should retract what she learned in confidence and shouldn’t have published anyway, and try to save the friendship. Friendships are hard to find and hard to keep. — Mark
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