By Reginal Campbell · September 17, 2026 · 5-minute read
I Won't Abandon You. And I Won't Make You Prove It.
What does a friend owe you when standing beside you starts costing them something?
That’s the question I haven’t been able to shake this month, watching Ed Sheeran and Macklemore. Macklemore was pulled from the remaining U.S. dates of Sheeran’s tour after onstage comments supporting Palestinians drew objections from venues.[1] The tour’s promoter said in a statement that venues would not allow the remaining shows to go on with him on the bill.[1] Macklemore, in his own account of the decision, described Sheeran as a friend of thirteen years and said the two had a hard conversation about what happened.[2]
I’m not interested in refereeing what happened between them. I don’t know their private conversations, what obligations Sheeran had to everyone else on that tour, or what options were actually on the table for him. That’s their friendship. But it made me think about mine.
I’ve known some of my closest friends since I was about 14. After that much time, you develop certain expectations of each other, even if you’ve never bothered to sit down and say them out loud. And one thing I know is this: friendship is easy when it is free.
Loyalty Isn’t Agreement
It’s easy to say “I’ve got you” when having somebody’s back costs you nothing. The harder version shows up when your friend creates a problem, especially when his problem suddenly becomes yours.
If I said or did something that put one of my friends in a terrible position professionally, financially, or publicly, I know how the first conversation would go. There would be cussing, a lot of it. “Man, what the fuck were you thinking?” I’d hear exactly how badly I screwed up, how my actions affected other people, and what I needed to do to make it right. If I started making excuses, somebody would probably tell me to shut up and listen. And they should.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve confused loyalty with agreement. I don’t think they’re the same thing. My friends don’t have to defend everything I say because they love me. Some of the people who love me most are the people least afraid to tell me when I’m full of it.
But after the cussing, the accountability, and whatever apology I owed, I also know what I would expect to hear: “I’ve got you.” That’s where this gets complicated.
What I’d Owe My Friend
Let’s say I’m the one who created the controversy, and one of my friends is the headliner. Now venues are saying they don’t want me there. Money is at risk. Employees are affected. People who had nothing to do with my actions could potentially lose something because of me.
I’d tell my friend to let me go. I mean that. This is my mess. Don’t lose money over me. Take me off the tour. We’re good.
But I also know my friends. There’s a decent chance telling one of them what he needs to do concerning one of his friends would only make him dig in harder. I can hear it now: “Man, shut up. Nobody asked you.” And then he’d probably start figuring out how much this was going to cost him.
That may sound irrational. Maybe it is. But there is a distinction buried in there that matters to me: there is a difference between holding your friend accountable and allowing your friend to stand alone. The first is part of friendship. I’m less certain about the second.
The Other Side of the Bill
But here’s where I have to challenge my own thinking. It’s easy for me to say my friends would take the loss when nobody has handed us the bill. What if it’s $10,000? $100,000? A million? What if employees lose income? What if your friend’s reputation takes a hit? What if his business relationships are damaged because of something you did?
At some point, expecting somebody to prove their loyalty by absorbing the consequences of your behavior starts looking less like friendship and more like selfishness. And maybe that’s where the responsibility goes both ways.
If I believe my friend should be willing to take a loss for me, then I should be doing everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t have to. I should be the one saying, “Let me take the hit.” I should be trying to repair the damage. I should be making amends to the people affected. I should be willing to walk away before asking my friend to sacrifice something he’s spent years building.
Loyalty can’t just be insurance I collect when I’ve screwed up. Maybe that’s what makes real friendship so complicated. One person is saying, “I’m not leaving you.” The other should probably be saying, “I’m not going to make you prove it.” Neither position requires pretending the original behavior was acceptable. And neither requires agreement.
Where the Line Actually Sits
There is obviously a line somewhere. There has to be something a friend can do that makes you say, “I love you, but I cannot stand beside this.” I don’t know exactly where that line is. I suspect most of us don’t until somebody we love puts us in a position where we have to find it.
That’s part of why I’m not interested in scoring what happened between Sheeran and Macklemore. I don’t know everything that happened between them privately, and it isn’t my place to grade it. But watching it forced me to think about the rules of mine.
After almost four decades with some of these guys, I know disagreement isn’t enough to end a friendship. Embarrassment isn’t enough. Somebody outside the friendship demanding that one of us distance ourselves from the other probably isn’t enough either. But I also know history doesn’t give me a blank check. Knowing somebody for forty years shouldn’t mean I get to put him in impossible situations and then demand that he prove how much I mean to him.
Maybe that’s the part of loyalty we don’t talk about enough. We spend a lot of time asking whether our friends would stand beside us when it costs them something. I’m starting to think the harder question is how much we’re willing to do to make sure they never have to.
I don’t know exactly where friendship’s line should be. But I think the best version of it lives somewhere between two promises.
I won’t abandon you.
And I won’t make you prove it.
Sources
- TheWrap, “Macklemore Removed From Ed Sheeran Tour Following ‘Free Palestine’ Messaging”, September 2026. Quotes the tour promoter’s statement that venues would not allow the remaining shows to proceed with Macklemore on the bill. ↑
- Fox 9, “Macklemore removed from Ed Sheeran’s tour after ‘free Palestine’ speech”, September 14, 2026. Source of Macklemore’s statement describing his thirteen-year friendship with Sheeran and their conversation about the decision. ↑
About the author
Reginal Campbell writes about enterprise technology, AI governance, leadership, and the systems organizations build to make consequential decisions.