If you’d be embarrassed for them to read what you said about them, you’re not as loyal as you think.

Loyalty is not a feeling you have about someone, it is the record of how you speak when they are not there. The embarrassment test works because it skips your intentions and goes straight to the evidence. Most disloyalty is not dramatic either. It is a small joke made to a different group, in a register you would never use to their face.

Scroll back through one group chat and read your own messages as if the person were reading them. If something makes you wince, that is the information. You do not need to confess it, you need to stop writing the next one.