Former Roommate

Noelle and her friend get into a fight when a shared secret goes public. 

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves.

Fifteen years ago, I was taking an early flight to Washington, D. C. from Charleston. It was really, really early. I hadn't had any coffee yet. I was in a bit of a rush and I told myself these and lots of other things to justify what happened next. A TSA agent was kind of rude to me and I was really disproportionately rude back.

I was really rude. I told him what time it was. I really came over the top and he looked at me and I remember him saying, quote, sir, I work at an airport. Your anger means nothing to me. I've regretted it ever since. I can still see his face and I never apologized because I had to get to my gate kind of quickly.

I'm Michael Lee. I'm a professor of communication at the College of [00:01:00] Charleston and the director of the Civility Initiative. Today's guest is Noelle Owen, a graduate student from Maryland. Noelle, tell us an argument story. 

Noelle Owen: Um, just recently my former roommate, who I lived with for about a Um, we parted our separate ways, but we had a mutual friend in common and they were both looking for new housing.

So they had briefly discussed living together, just floated the idea around, but never went to go look anywhere, never really followed up on it. And, um, my former roommate, we can call her Lily for the purpose. Lily was not from the United States. She was here on a work visa. And she confided in me that she planned on leaving Charleston and leaving her current job and trying to move to British Columbia to get a job there, but it was very dependent on her work visa.

Now, where [00:02:00] she worked in Charleston, South Carolina, she worked with our mutual friend's current roommate. So when she confided in me that she wanted to leave and go to British Columbia, she said to me, please, please don't tell our mutual friend because if she tells her roommate right now, it could affect my job and I could lose my visa.

So she told a small white lie to our mutual friend saying, I'm so sorry, I can't live with you. I'm going to extend my current lease. I like where I'm living and months went on. They didn't live together. And. She eventually got ready to leave and Lily was going to move to DC and our mutual friend, we can call her Kate.

She was extremely upset. They still hadn't spoken. And I was sad. I mean, they'd been friends forever. So I encouraged our friend Kate to reach out, hoping that they would, you know, break the disconnect because Lily had no idea Kate was upset. So I told Lily that Kate was [00:03:00] upset and put myself in the middle where I probably shouldn't have.

And they ended up. Squashing their problems. And Lily told Kate the truth that she was planning on moving, but she hadn't told her the real reason that they couldn't live together. And Kate came back and was extremely mad at me. She was like, you lied to me. You knew that Lily couldn't live with me for X reason.

And I've been so lonely. And as my friend, I feel like you should have told me you've known for months. And I felt like it wasn't justified. I felt like, you know, they were both equally my friends and there were harsh consequences that could come from. Kate knowing Lily's motivation for not living together, she could, you know, potentially lose her work visa or get in trouble in terms of her actual livelihood.

And I also felt like it wasn't my place to tell her, [00:04:00] whereas our mutual friend, Kate felt like I was hiding something from her and that I owed her the loyalty of explaining it and that she would never have. You know, put her visa in jeopardy and we didn't speak for about a week. I was extremely upset.

She was extremely upset. And eventually when we spoke about it again and came to terms, she still could not understand my point of view and it did, it changed our friendship for a long time. 

Michael Lee: So you said Kate was pretty upset with you. And you felt like Kate's, did you feel like Kate's position was unjustified or did you feel like she was having an overreaction to some pretty legitimate reasons that she had?

Noelle Owen: I felt like a little bit of both. I think Kate had been struggling with some personal problems of loneliness. She moved out of, you know, her college house [00:05:00] with four of her close friends to be by herself. And she felt a little isolated and it, I felt like she was unjustified and she wasn't understanding that.

I wasn't keeping a personal secret from her that I just felt equal loyalty to both friends. And I also felt like her reaction was a little over the top. She confronted me like publicly, um, Amongst a group of our friends, and I thought it was inappropriate. 

Michael Lee: So there's also the manner in which she brought this to you was public.

Noelle Owen: Yes. 

Michael Lee: Describe that scene, if you don't mind. 

Noelle Owen: We were, uh, a group of, again, mutual friends, not including Lily. We were at a Riverdogs game, um, with some friends that we hadn't seen in a while. And Kate, from the minute we got there, seemed to be in a bad mood. And Then Lily came up in conversation and she [00:06:00] immediately confronted me and was like, so you knew in front of this group of people at a public sports game and tried to start a screaming match there in the stands.

Michael Lee: And so in her mind, the secrecy, the keeping information is, is that like the equivalent of lying to her? 

Noelle Owen: Yeah, it was the equivalent of lying to her and that I knew that she had been. Unhappy and lonely and that I could have relieved some of that distress by telling her why Uh, Lily couldn't live with her.

Michael Lee: In your point of view, this is a very limited, unique set of circumstances with some visa risk and work risk that justifies some secrecy, some obfuscation on your part. Is that a fair representation? Yeah, and I, in, 

Noelle Owen: I hate to say it, our, our friend Kate does have a very big mouth. She had a history of, uh, Not keeping things to herself.[00:07:00] 

Michael Lee: So in Kate's point of view, maybe she's upset because you say, Look, this is sensitive information, which implies then that I can't trust you with this sensitive information. And so this issue that seems pretty localized about Lily is actually much bigger about whether you have a trusting relationship with Kate or maybe does Kate herself feel like a trustworthy friend?

Noelle Owen: Yeah. It definitely snowballed. 

Michael Lee: And so where are we at now? How does, was there any resolution between you and Kate or the relationship? 

Noelle Owen: Debra, we actually, we didn't speak for about a week. I reached out to her and she was still angry and we got in a second argument. Um, and then a few days went by and she.

reached out to me about two weeks later and she was like, I understand where you're coming from. I don't agree with [00:08:00] it, but I also feel like this reaction on both of our parts hasn't been great and I do want to make peace with you. And I was like, I agree and we've been fine, but it definitely has. The way that she reacted to that changed the way that I perceived her and our friendship.

Michael Lee: It sounds like, in broadening scope a little bit, from the issue at hand to the broader issue, it sounds like perhaps there's a larger disagreement, too, about the role of secrecy or secret keeping in relationships. Do you think that you and Kate have a different point of view about the role, the value, the necessity of keeping some secrets from some friends?

Noelle Owen: I do. Yeah. 

Michael Lee: What's your position? Same. Same. 

Noelle Owen: I think, um, secrets, I guess, for lack of a better word, or things that people confide in you, um, that aren't yours, that don't have to do with your life [00:09:00] personally, aren't yours to share. And I mean, there's definitely some gray area with that, which was a point that Kate brought up to me.

She was like, you have told me things in the past that had nothing to do with you that weren't your business and had no issue there. So I think sometimes it's a gray area judgment call. But for the most part, I believe that if it isn't your information to share, then you shouldn't. And she operates under the.

School of thought that if that information affects someone that you care about, that you should, you know, confide in them. 

Michael Lee: That's right. And I think for you, for your position, your code, as it were, is you share a secret with me. That's your privileged information, and I'm happy to be the holder of that. And we have a trusting relationship where you can share that with me because we're friends.

But if I, as your friend, come and tell you that, the secret that concerns somebody else. Maybe I've harmed this person or I'm keeping a secret from them. [00:10:00] Then now there's a third party involved who you have to make a decision about. Is my trusting relationship with you who's told me the secret more important than my burden to tell this other person this thing that they would want to know?

How do you kind of splice out when one is appropriate and when the other is appropriate? 

Noelle Owen: Um, this might sound kind of terrible, but if the information about someone else, I guess in my own personal life and as I get older, this changes, but definitely when I was younger, if I, you know, received information about one of my friends and I didn't really have a personal relationship or really care about the person who told me, I had no problem sharing that with my friends.

I didn't feel any loyalty, whereas in the case of Kate and Lily, I had been Lily's former roommate. We had our own individual relationship. I cared for her. I wanted to protect her as [00:11:00] well. It's kind of equal devotion to both of them. 

Michael Lee: So in this case, you have equal devotion. In other cases, there's a question of loyalty, who you feel loyal to and who you don't.

And so it's almost like the relationship itself dictates whether you're going to divulge the information or not. If we're close, I will or won't. If we're not close, I don't feel loyal to you. Then it's not a factor in my decision 

Noelle Owen: making. Yeah, and I think also consequences. Like, is this information If someone finds out about that, are they going to be upset or is it going to have, you know, real implications in their life?

Michael Lee: Let's conclude by talking a little bit about the argument itself and what you've learned from it or learned anything at all. Would you do anything differently looking back? Whether you divulge the information or not, in terms of the argument itself and how the conflict came about, what'd you learn?

Would you do anything differently? Do you think it was avoidable? 

Noelle Owen: I think I probably would have gone to [00:12:00] Kate after I encouraged Lily to reach out and have them have their own conversation and say, Hey, I You know, Lily's leaving. I wanted you guys not to leave on horrible terms because you have a history yourselves and I let her know you were upset and she had no idea.

And I hope that she's honest with you. And then I think too, um, with the initial confrontation between Kate and I, I would have engaged less and tried to be, uh, you know, a little less. Explosive on my own part and been like, this is not the place to do this. I apologize for my role. And if you want to talk about it, you know, we can work this out as the friends that we are.

Michael Lee: You have some sense that. At least in hindsight that you were too explosive, too antagonistic. 

Noelle Owen: Yeah. I think when she brought up, and when I say [00:13:00] she, I mean, Kate brought up this conflict publicly, I got very defensive and angry because I felt so strong in my position that it wasn't my information to give, that I was harsher than I.

Could have been that I almost fed the confrontation instead of trying to qual it. 

Michael Lee: Had that confrontation taken place in a different set of circumstances with no audience, would there have been a difference? 

Noelle Owen: I don't think so. I think both of us were just very confident in our sides. 

Michael Lee: Your positions were so dug in, that conflict was inevitable at some level, even in an explosive conflict.

Noelle, thanks so much for coming on when we disagree. 

Noelle Owen: Yeah, thank you so much.

Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. [00:14:00] Reach out to us at whenwedisagree at gmail. com.