FOR MONTHS, when I was unemployed, my fiancée paid our rent and lent me money. I thought we were partners and that some day I’d return the favour. Later I found a good job and started to pay back the debt. Then she left me. Must I continue to repay her, or was an unwritten contract broken when she flew off to start a new life with another man?
If you had an obligation before the break-up to repay your fiancée, it remains, even if she does not. (You may, of course, grind your teeth and mutter darkly while writing the cheques.) But did you have such an obligation?
In intimate relationships, governed by tacit understandings (and misunderstandings) it can be unclear whether it was a gift or a loan. However, when it comes to the ordinary necessities of life — rent, car payments, tuition — loan is a good guess. Here’s the classic example: she (in those days, it was, alas, likelier to be she) pays for him to go to medical college, assuming that eventually he’ll return the favour by supporting her for a while, perhaps while she returns to higher education. Then he picks up his degree and, soon after, her replacement. Though there’s unlikely to have been any paperwork establishing her contributions as a loan, an honourable doctor would repay his ex. And though in your case it is she who initiated the break-up, the debt should be paid.
There are genuine gifts, suffused with emotion, often impractical, sometimes made of silk. It was once the custom after a break-up to return such things, but that is a relic of a gentler age, like singalongs in the parlour or public libraries open seven days a week. Such tokens, freely given, may be retained.
Advertisement
Can you suggest solutions to this ethical dilemma? Or do you have dilemmas of your own? Write to: The Ethicist, Times Features, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. E-mail: ethicist@thetimes.co.uk. Readers’ solutions will be published on Friday.
The Ethicist originates from The New York Times Magazine.