I know someone who received an amends call that informed her that her friend had stolen from her for years. The friend said, “Sorry!” And that was the end of the amends.

Well, not good enough. My friend was furious, while the thief felt totally relieved that she’d unburdened herself of this secret. Who was really served by this? The victim had to suffer more, and the perpetrator was vindicated. If the apology had to happen, it should have been followed up with a great big check to make up for all that had been stolen.

When you’re thinking of volunteering advice, you also need to ask yourself this question: Will revealing my feelings on this subject actually help?

My friend Richard Thomas was in David Mamet’s play Raceon Broadway, and one night in 2009 Anna Wintour was in the audience. Richard called his teenage son, Montana, who is obsessed with fashion, and said, “Anna Wintour’s here! You should come over.”

“I’m afraid,” the boy said to his father.

He had reason to be. Anna took Richard aside after the show and said, “I have a note for you about your performance. You’re dressing very poorly. You need a much more expensive suit.”

The suit was Prada. How much more expensive does it get? I can’t believe that a costumer, a director, and all these other people would let an actor out onstage in a starring role if he didn’t look great. She apparently couldn’t help herself from expressing an opinion. In a case like this, if you have a criticism, you really should keep it to yourself.

This question of what to say or not to say is a running theme in my family. One tense holiday season, we had a family conversation about what we could do to have a better time together.

“We could all say a lot less,” I suggested. “Everyone in this family shares entirely too much.Before speaking, let’s ask ourselves if this is something people really need to know.”

As I anticipated, the Gunns nixed my strategy.

There was one night when we were visiting my mother and all hell was breaking loose. She was going after my sister about the inevitability of some problems my sister was having with her son. “I spotted it at a very early age,” my mother bragged.

Not even remotelyhelpful. It just pushed a button in my sister that caused her to lose it. She was sobbing and ran out of the room.

“Was that really necessary?” I asked my mother. “You took a nice little gathering in your hospital room and turned it into The Jerry Springer Show.

“Besides,” I asked her, “why not say something when the situation is actually fixable rather than years later when the damage has been done?”

“I don’t butt in,” she replied.

Translation: When it’s fixable, I don’t say anything. I wait until it’s done, and then remind you about it.If you’re so sure at the time, do an intervention. Otherwise, you should keep your mouth shut forever after.

This is my whole way of operating on Project Runway.After the judging, we’re back in the lounge and sometimes a designer will tell me, “Nina and Heidi were telling me how bad this aspect of the garment was, and you never mentioned it.”

“And I never would,” I say, “because you couldn’t have done anything about that particular aspect of your design.”

At the same time, some secrets shouldn’t be kept. A friend whom I love and adore was diagnosed years ago with a degenerative disease. Somehow, her husband learned about it before she did and kept it from her for some two or three years, until her symptoms were evident to her.

When my friend told me this story, she suggested that this was a tremendously generous and romantic gesture on her husband’s part.

“I hate to respond this way,” I replied, “but I’m not even remotely moved by this story. It makes me angry.”

“Why?” she asked, shocked.

“What if your last wish were to climb to the top of an Aztec pyramid or to rappel down the side of the Empire State Building?” I asked. “What if? You would have had three years to do those things before your illness progressed.”

Plus, I found it infantilizing. My friend is a very strong, very smart woman. Her husband thought the diagnosis would weigh on her, and so he thought it was good that she didn’t know, but I maintain it wasn’t his call.

Still, I know that some of her friends think how wonderful it was of her husband to keep this secret from her for years.

“He wanted to protect you from this,” they say to her, all moony.

Protect her? It was going to happen anyway!

I guess if she’s happy he kept the secret, then he made the right choice, but I still have trouble with that story. Maybe it’s just that it pains me to see people being lied to “for their own good.”

Maybe I’m just extra defensive because I was lied to by a man for many years and still haven’t fully gotten over it. I’ve had only one long-term relationship in my adult life. In my twenties, I was madly, passionately, unconditionally in love with the same man for almost a decade. It was fabulous, I thought, but I was living in a fool’s paradise. What’s the opposite of a monkey house, where everything smells pristine and is not? Maybe it’s just another room in the monkey house.

We were together for nine years and more or less living with each other, but I still had my apartment. We worked together, so I saw him every day and night. One night we were in bed watching M*A*S*H.He turned to me and said, “I don’t have the patience for you any longer.”

“What?”I responded. “What am I doing? What can I do?”

“There’s nothing for you to do,” he said. “I want you to leave.”

Then he told me that he’d been sleeping around—with any guy, anywhere. And of course this was during the advent of AIDS, 1982. So not only was he throwing me out abruptly after I’d spent almost my whole adult life with him, but he was revealing to me that a major part of our relationship had been a sham, and that he’d put my very life at risk.

I still remember driving down Rock Creek Parkway back to my apartment that night. I had to pull over because I was hyperventilating. I could hardly breathe from grief, humiliation, and despair. Those feelings later turned to anger.

His moral behavior was horrible, but he also put my health in real jeopardy. I was monogamous. I was in love, why wouldn’t I be? I never thought he wouldn’t be. To find out he’d been cheating for years was such a slap in the face and also potentially a death sentence. I was tested for HIV every six months for years. Thank God, I was okay, but I’ve never quite learned to trust anyone intimately again.

And then I still had to see him at work every day. It was no fun being in academic meetings with the person who’d broken my heart. I took the high road. But it was not easy. Doing the right thing can be very, very hard, and I think it was also the right thing that I left town as soon as I could. I moved to New York City the following year, and this breakup was most certainly a catalyst.

When people hear that I haven’t had a boyfriend since 1982, they often whisper, “Does he not have sex?”

That’s right!

You know, much of my one long-term boyfriend’s “I’m over this” was about not having the patience for me with regard to sex. I’ve always been kind of asexual. So now I can’t even consider sex without thinking about him and his disapproval. Talk about something that will make you lose the urge. That breakup was a cold shower to last a lifetime.

Could I get psychiatric help and resume some kind of sex life at some point? Probably. But it’s a little late for that. And frankly, I am happy being celibate. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had thoughts. I am a human being. But I love my life and don’t feel any need to change it.

Getting used to being alone was hard, but now that I’ve made a life for myself alone, I really like it. It’s been years since I’ve been interested in anyone. And I really think if you don’t need it, you don’t need it. As hard as it is for a lot of my friends to believe, I really am happy alone.