Lying and morals in general

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Maybe your problem is that you expect people to be rational while in reality they're social intuitivists who habitually see and manufacture what they want to see.

Lying was once described to me as the intentional misleading of someone else.

There are three types of truth-telling:
The truth - versus an out-an-out lie
The whole truth - all of the truth rather than just part of it
Nothing but the truth - versus a truth plus a lie

This is why all three are stated when taking an oath to "tell the truth" in a court of law.

I really like the "intentional misleading" description. In any situation, I might think the answer is one thing and give that as a truthful answer even if it is proven wrong or false later. That doesn't mean that I lied, as I was not intentionally trying to mislead.

In a case of a person cheating on a significant other, omission of information is not intentionally misleading, but that doesn't mean there might not be consequences to omitting info. If the friend was to ask a direct question, you could still attempt to deflect the question, which I don't think is lying, but I do know that it has the consequence of not endearing you to the other person if they find out later that you withheld info, but sometimes it's best to withhold. If a police officer pulled me over and asked if I knew how fast I was driving, I might deflect by asking him how fast he clocked me as driving, as I'm under no legal obligation to tell him how fast I think I was driving, but in that case, the outcome is legal based, not close relationship/friendship based. There's more at stake regarding friends.

There's also, unfortunately, no way for you to know if the other person would prefer to know or not know, and even if you asked if they would want to know in some sort of hypothetical game, what answer they give under that circumstance may not match their real response given a real situation. it's one of those dreaded gut instinct moments, when you have to decide if the truth is better or if omission is better. You can't always foresee all of the potential reactions from others. You just have to make your best guess based on what you know of the people involved. You run the risk of guessing wrong, but that's a part of life that everyone faces, and if it happens, you will learn something about someone else (namely, how they react in such situations).