When You Make a Friend or Lover, Prepare for Betrayal
After living long enough, you see it: everyone fights, and in the end, everyone parts
You spend a fortune on your children's education and they run away from home. Couples divorce. Friends betray you or cheat you. Even without such extremes, if people stay close for long, their flaws always come out. What you couldn't see at first, you see it all in time. Honestly, relationships where someone will be on your side forever hardly exist.
Humans naturally exaggerate what they've lost dozens or hundreds of times over what they've received. Standards of right and wrong differ by generation, gender and class. People make mistakes. And laws or circumstances themselves can be structured to create conflict.
But you can't live without helping anyone or loving anyone. That may be safe, but it isn't a human life. So here's the dilemma.
First, love hands over the keys
When you love someone, or even just get close, your private information opens up.
Meeting every day, texting every day, being inseparable, even going into business together: how could it not be handed over? At some point they know your private life better than you do. Your weaknesses, your finances, the careless things you said, the people you badmouthed together, photos, years of message history. When things are good, all of this is proof of intimacy. It's your shared memories and assets.
The problem comes the moment the relationship flips. A fight, an affair, a split over money, and the same data changes character. Memories become evidence, and intimacy becomes a weapon. Possessions can be returned when you part, but information, memories and records can't be taken back. They stay in the other person's head and on their phone.
So the worst case arrives. They spread rumors and use your weaknesses to file charges. If a lot of money is involved, one lawsuit isn't the end: appeals, higher courts, the supreme court, and civil suits on top. You end up spending the rest of your life facing the person you once loved most across a courtroom. The person who was closest becomes the most dangerous.
Second, the dilemma of love and war
AI advice says don't give away your weak points or your last key. But you can't give love without giving keys. Marriage itself can't exist unless you hand over the keys. Being together every day with your heart open and your information closed is impossible. And if you give up love because you're afraid of the keys, all that's left is safe loneliness.
Even if you want to choose good people, everyone's moral standards differ. And who shows their dark side first? Everyone looks like an angel. Even Samsung has had its technology stolen through trusted employees. Hearts are invisible. So screening people in advance has limits.
So life seems to flow in three directions: (1) let no one in and live safely alone, (2) love everyone you meet while bracing for betrayal, or (3) open up completely and love freely until one day you sink into a war.
In the end, the only path a person can really walk is the middle one: loving while being prepared for betrayal.
Third, when you meet someone, prepare for betrayal
Looking back on my life and at the people around me, I found lives smeared with betrayal from start to finish.
So I often say: "When you start school, prepare for the job market. When you get a job, prepare to change jobs. When you start dating, prepare for a lawsuit."
Of course, protect what needs protecting. Love, but keep one place for yourself where you can stand again if everything collapses. But that's as far as it goes. Give the rest.
Even Jesus let go. Religious leaders who claimed to love God tried to kill Him, and He washed Judas's feet knowing full well Judas would betray Him. If even God couldn't stop human betrayal, what can we do? Are you greater than God?
Only this: loving without knowing about betrayal is naivety, and shutting love down for fear of betrayal is cowardice. Knowing all about betrayal, protecting what must be protected, and loving anyway. That's a life worth living.
