How far would you go to stop your friend from making a huge mistake in their personal life, like cheating?
If you’re musician and TikToker Deshawn Harris, you’d make an appeal to their wallet to knock some sense into them ― and then you’d post about it on TikTok.
Last month, the singer-songwriter from Little Rock, Arkansas, posted a video on the social media app, calling out one of his married friends for flirting with other women at a nightclub.
“My homeboy got mad at me, and now he ain’t talking to me, because we were in the club and wanted to talk to these women but he’s married,” Harris explains in the now viral TikTok.
After all the money Harris had spent on the guy’s wedding and bachelor party, he couldn’t just stand by and watch mistakes be made.
“I told him to cut that out,” he says in the video, which currently has over 526,000 views. “I didn’t spend all my money on your wedding to watch you come into this club and start cheating on her and mess this all up.”
Harris says he’s friends with the wife now, too, so he had to cut in.
“I ain’t tell you to walk down this aisle, I ain’t tell you to introduce me to this woman and get this ring on her finger,” he says he told his friend. “You better go and sit down somewhere because I spent too much money on your wedding!”
In the comment section, people almost unanimously praised Harris for holding his friend accountable:
- “Friends don’t let friends fall off the cliff!”
- “People need to normalize calling friends out for inappropriate behavior.”
- “Now this is the homeboy my husband can call and say he’s going out with and I’ll be fine with it”
A few people knocked Harris for what they saw as meddling.
On Twitter, where the video was reposted and widely shared, one guy said, “I think I saw this man at the Haters Awards. smh.”
In an interview with HuffPost, Harris said he shrugs off criticism.
“I don’t really read my comments, so it doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I’m just an honest and loyal friend. If it were me in the situation, he could’ve done the same thing to me, I just wouldn’t have gotten mad about it.”
The singer also gave a little more context for the video.
“This night started out as a smooth night with me and my homie,” he said. “He wanted to get out, and he knew his wife wouldn’t trust him to go out with nobody but me.”
Harris and the friend ended up paying for a reserved table because the place was packed.
“These girls saw that we had a section and came over to us. I noticed my homeboy was drunk, because he bought a bottle that was $200 and was just passing it around,” Harris explained. “The women were trying to get him to buy them bottles and asking him where the after-party was and all that.”
That’s when Harris took his friend aside and had a little one-on-one talk in which he invoked the cost of the wedding and wanting to protect his investment.
“Our tuxedos were $350, the Vegas trip and hotel was $1,100, the activities were $650, the food was $400, the flights were $550, and that’s not including the gambling,” Harris told HuffPost.
The viral video caught the attention of Kurt Smith, a therapist in Northern California whose counseling practice specializes in helping men. Smith told HuffPost that he thinks Harris’ money-centric appeal was genius.
“First, it introduced another person who would be hurt by his friend cheating,” he said. “It’s easy to dismiss someone, even your spouse, when you’re not beside them but much harder when your buddy is staring you in the eyes.”
Cheating happens because we’re thinking only about ourselves, but Harris tried to help the guy step out of his desires at that moment. (A recent study suggested that to avoid cheating, your best bet is to try a little perspective-taking ― aka, try putting yourself in your partner’s shoes.)
Secondly, it was smart to bring in the issue of money. “Money is a motivator for everybody,” Smith said.
Interestingly, Smith recently counseled a married man who was in the same boat as Harris’ friend — only he did end up leaving the bar with the other woman.
“This guy ended up hooking up and then having a yearlong affair with this other woman,” Smith said. “His wife eventually found out, and he’s been in counseling with me for two-plus years rebuilding his marriage.”
Thanks to therapy, the man is still married, but the rebuilding process was “very painful and costly,” Smith said. “The client told me over and over again that he wishes his friend had done something to stop him.”
“If you’re in a position like this, you have to act like your friend’s designated driver for the night, pushing back on any resistance from others ― like the girls in Deshawn’s situation. Tell them you promised to get your friend home safely and you’re a person of your word, so you guys are leaving.”
In Harris’ case, the friend ended up appreciating the effort.
“Even after this situation, my homie called me and apologized for getting mad at me that night,” he said. “He realized that those women would’ve had him spending thousands of dollars if I wouldn’t have been there. I’m not about to let my homie get played while he’s drunk and with me.”
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