So let’s say that husband comes to wife, un-prompted/solicited, and admits to having sexual relations with another woman in the past (but during the marriage). He says that he is doing so because he loves and respects her enough to risk losing her for her to know the truth about him.
Contrast that with husband getting caught red-handed with said affair and then and only then, does he express any regret or remorse about his behavior when he’s begging his wife to forgive him.
My question is, do you see any difference morally or in character between these two situations? Or are they both on the same level of moral bankruptcy as both are ‘cheaters’?
Cheating is cheating, whether you get caught, or admit to it, or get away with it. The morality of the act itself doesn’t change.
But the guy in the first case is an idiot and an asshole. I dislike infidelity, but if you’ve done it in the past, and you’ve managed to get away with it, and you don’t intend to do it again, then a post-hoc confession is both hurtful and stupid.
I believe that people who make these sorts of confessions don’t really do it out of respect, or any of the other stuff you wrote in your hypothetical.
In general, owning up to trespasses and mistakes before being caught is an honorable and responsible thing to do. Marital fidelity, however, has a deep emotional aspect and learning of infidelity can often be terribly hurtful. In many cases the kindest thing to do is keep it secret.
I suspect a lot of those who would thus confess are not doing it out of any true concern for their spouses, but rather to assuage their guilt.
Perhaps they do indeed love the person that was cheated on but not themselves. Continuing on in the deception (that ongoing deception being that they have always been a faithful partner) is what could be considered an act of disrespect. So ending that deception, even if it ends the relationship, is what motivates the confession. In that way, wouldn’t you agree it’s done-at least partly-out of respect?
I favor confession…because the truth might come out later, and thus the guy in the first scenario becomes the guy in the second.
It leaves him vulnerable to blackmail.
I would favor a partner who confessed and showed true contrition.
If (she) kept is secret from me, then that leaves me in a fool’s paradise. I would not want to live with a love-partner who kept those kinds of secrets.
It’s like Watergate. The sin is bad enough, but the cover-up is much harder to forgive.
(Obviously, if I never find out…I never find out. Some people get away with murder.)
I think it depends on motivation; what does one hope to accomplish by confessing? If the spouses have otherwise realized that they have drifted and become alienated from one another and are trying to work through the reasons for this distance and unhappiness in order to re-establish intimacy, confessing the earlier incident may indeed be an unpleasant but necessary part of that healing process.
On the other hand, if one is just dumping the news on the other to make oneself feel better, because one “can’t live with the guilt” or “needs to get it off one’s chest,” then I see the disclosure as selfish.
You guys are nuts. If my spouse had cheated on me, I’d absolutely want to know. Yeah, it would hurt, and depending on the circumstances, it might end the marriage (which is why the person admitting it would be an idiot…). But I for sure would like to know about it. I’m a big boy, I can handle the truth. It might involve some tears and ice cream, but I’m not a six year old who needs to be told that his dog is going to a farm.
And I agree with Trinopus - I don’t want to just be happy because I’m ignorant.
What would be the least-selfish thing to do in that (2nd) scenario? Just be quiet and let the other one continue to believe something that isnt true and one day may be revealed (however unlikely)?
I’d prefer the confession. Even if it was mainly because living with a lie was eating my partner up, I could understand that, because it would be horrible living with that guilt. And that guilt was probably affecting our interactions already.
With the partner that confessed up front, I’d have more hope of being able to trust them in the future than with a partner who kept it secret from me till they had no choice.
I’d rate the voluntary confessor just slightly ahead of the caught-red-handed on the ethical scale, since the voluntary confession suggests some actual twinges of conscience. “I did wrong and I regret it” does seem a touch more honorable than “oops, I got busted” (and being caught might well be the only part this one’s at all unhappy about).
Still, they’re both cheating scum and aside from breaking some serious promises, they’re both taking nasty risks with the health of the innocent spouse. My opinion would remain the same regardless of genders of involved parties.
A spouse who cheated (but is doing so no longer) and was not found out and is genuinely repentant, needs to accept that it’s his/her role to carry the burden of guilt alone. Confessing to the faithful spouse simply transfers the emotional anguish to the innocent party. If the ex-cheater needs someone to talk it out with, there are priests and psychoanalysts for that.
To change the game a little (but plausibly) what if there is a child of the unfaithful union? Now, this makes it more likely that the cheater gets found out but say the mother and child live a long way away and she is happy to keep it quiet (probably because she doesn’t want her partner to know
But most of all, this. Are any of you actually saying that, if you were the cheated-upon party in the marriage, you wouldn’t want to know the truth? :dubious:
I have mixed feelings on this. I have seen what guilt can do to a person. If my wife sat me down and told me of an affair or one night stand and she expressed true remorse and a desire to get past this I could forgive her and by not having to pry things out of her I feel I could also trust her again. This could easlily backfire depending on who one was confessing to.
In my first marriage I felt certain that my wife had had an affair, I approached her with it and she exploded and moved out. 1 month later she came back and nothing more was said about it but I never trusted her after that and carried a resentment that would later lead to the end of the marriage. A confession before I brought it up would have settled the matter.
One more thing that may not be true for a lot of us, I feel honesty trumps character defects. I believe trust is something that develops over time no matter what the sin honesty can help to at least maintain some of that trust.
Don’t fight the hypothetical.