So let’s say that you have it on decent authority that one member of a serious monogamous relationship is cheating. Let us also assume that you consider both sides friends. Do you tell the non-cheating partner? Is it your place to do so?
There aren’t any specifics, as this is totally hypothetical, just looking for additional insight as a result of a discussion with a friend tonight.
Let’s put it this way, if the situation was reversed I would want the friend to give me a head’s up this was happening. Therefore, while there might be extenuating circumstances that would make an exception, I would generally spill the beans.
Stay out of other people’s business.
If it is an ongoing thing, 90% of the time the cheated on spouse pretty much knows. They either refuse to acknowledge it or accept it to some degree. By forcing the issue you are just going to get yourself caught up in a web of bad feelings and may well become the target of those bad feelings yourself. Nothing good is going to come of it.
You may start out having two friends; but if you insist on being a busybody you will only one friend or, quite likely, no friends when you are done.
It depends on how close of a friend you are talking about. My sister? I’d tell. People at work that I see every day and consider close friends? I wouldn’t. It would also matter how I found out. It I were out and saw the husband of a close friend out with a girlfriend and he clearly looked guilty when he saw me, I’d say “you tell her or I will”, simply because I couldn’t stand having cheating as “our” secret, withheld from my friend. And I would not, under any circumstances, help maintain the deception (i.e., cover)
And of those two friends, how many will still be your friend when it comes to light that you knew one partner was cheating, and you kept it a secret?
I vote for tell.
I agree. I assume by “decent” authority you mean a third party who you trust told you. Third parties can and do have motives of their own and may be recruiting you to achieve whatever goal they have. Or the situation may have been innocent but misconstrued. Therefore the first question I’d ask Decent Authority is “how did you get this information and why are you telling me?” Then butt out because you still may not have 100% of the total picture, and what you do have has been filtered through someone else.
That said, direct evidence is different, as Manda JO pointed out. If I saw the cheater out and about with an obvious paramour, I’d confront that person. But it would have to be hit-on-the-head obvious before I intervened.
True story. A co-worker heard from a well-meaning friend that her husband had been seen in a posh restaurant having lunch with a woman who was not his wife, and the well-meaning friend felt that the pair was being a little too intimate. This was true. But what the well-meaning friend didn’t know was that the other woman was a sales rep and a college classmate of the husband, and she was treating him to an expense-account lunch to show him her new product line. At any rate, my co-worker had her husband had a miserable few weeks before she believed him, and several months more before she completely trusted him again. All because some well-meaning person came forward with incomplete information.
So the moral of the story is that the evidence pretty much has to be unequivocal before I’ll get involved.
Robin
I had this experience once where the husband of my best friend (who was also a friend) decided to tell me that he was cheating on his pregnant wife. I wanted to kill him, both for cheating on her and for the sleazy chickenshit tactic of telling me and assuming that I would tell her for him. He refused to end it so I agonized over it for a while because I couldn’t figure out which was worse - telling her while she’s 8 1/2 months pregnant or waiting until after the baby was born. I even talked to a doctor to figure out how damaging a major emotional trauma could be for her pregnancy. A week later she told me that he hadn’t been coming home until the middle of the night and asked if I knew why. I couldn’t lie to her face so I told her. Of course she was devastated, and two hours later she was giving birth in the hospital. He didn’t even show up for the birth because he felt that she needed to get used to being a single mom. For the first and only time in my life I screamed at someone until I was hoarse. I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do, but she said that she would have been doubly betrayed when she found out if I hadn’t.
I would confront the cheating party first and try to get them to pull their shit together before I even considered spilling the beans to the wronged party. My circle of friends in grad school were all involved in this situation and in the end the party being cheated on never knew. The cheater ultimately ended up breaking it off with the third party (after two years) and their SO is none the wiser so maybe it’s worked out for the best; who knows.
I would ask the wronged party the same (hypothetical) question and act accordingly. The idea is to find out whether they would like to know before spilling the beans.