You just lost the game.

The Fugitivus blog is back up and rolling with a post about, among other things, her test for friendship. I think she's really onto something with this:

[O]f all the friends I’ve ever made in my life, from the most brief of acquaintances to the closest of friends, I can only think of nine that pass my only test. Here it is:

You can only be my friend if you will not tell me that I wasn’t raped, and if I was, it was my own fault.

That’s it. That’s my only requirement, and it’s been responsible for the loss of 90% of my friends.

I used to believe that this requirement necessitated me disclosing my rape. I mean, how can a person pass my test if I never tell them I was raped? The incident that triggered me starting this blog made me realize that if I don’t want to tell you about my rape, you have already failed this test.

In my experience, intuitions about things like this are usually sound. If you never ask for something important because you know your friend or partner couldn't be counted on to provide it, then it's already over. It's a corollary to my advice column rule: Nobody actually needs advice from advice columns. You can tell from the letters that the person knows the right thing to do and that that isn't what they want to hear---otherwise they'd have already done it. Just the process of writing the letter, on paper or in your head, will tell you the right answer.