Narcissistic idiots find ways to convince themselves that whatever crap they are doing is right and just, and when the convincing’s done they expect the world to get on board. I’m 90% sure this woman will be furious at you if you refuse to cover for her, based on the little bits of information here.
Lost a very good friend, who was indeed ‘there’ for me, this exact way.
And she wanted to talk to me about it, in front of her child, (just speaking, but still, ew!).
She was just dragging her friends into it without any warning. Like they’d be out and she’d say can we stop by here I need to pick something up from a friend. Then leave them in the car for hours while she was making out with the guy. And she knew we were all close friends with her husband! Yuck!
We never actually had a confrontation, I made it pretty clear this was not on with me, and she stopped calling and coming round. Apparently she felt judged.
We’re still friends with her ex today.
A person who does this, no matter how close or indebted you are to them for other support they have given you, is not your friend.
I live by the adage; “When people show you who they really are, it’s your job to SEE !”
Send the voicemail to the husband.
How?
“Was she at your house?”
“No.”
That’s not covering for her.
“Do you know where she was?”
“No.”
That’s not covering for her either.
I agree with this wholeheartedly and think it would be a great way to bring the subject up to her friend.
The conversation would go something like:
Friend: I was out on a date with a guy who was not my husband. If my husband calls about it, would you tell him I was with you that night?
Her: Listen, we are friends. Would you expect me to lie to you?
Friend: No.
Her: Then why would you expect me to lie for you? I know you are having problems with your marriage. You once helped me out at a time when I really needed it, and I am indebted to you for doing that. I will always be here for you throughout this situation. I can give you my counsel and opinions, take you to counseling if needed, but I cannot lie for you.
I hear Captain Picard’s voice in my head: “A lie by omission is still a lie.”
This isn’t a lawyer demanding evidence, it’s a family friend seeking information and maybe reassurance from people he considers friends. Just the already-established fact that his friends know that his wife is screwing around behind his back, that when they get together (he’ll see in retrospect) his friends were smiling and joking with him and all the while knowing this thing about him and his marriage – is bad enough. The cheating wife in this scenario has already shown what she is by putting her friends in this position, even without asking them to cover up for her.
I doubt anyone here would raise any question at all, if the genders in this story were reversed. Wife calls and asks their family friends where her husband might be, and the other wife is put in the position of saying, “uh, we don’t know”, insofar as she’s not certain whether it’s at Motel 6 or Howard Johnson’s, but somewhere her friend’s husband is out fucking a girl from the office, and he had asked them to cover up for him. Seriously, would there be any discussion at all in this case?
If I were friends with the husband as well, I’d be inclined to tell her, “Not only will I not lie for you, but if I learn of continued infidelity, I will have to tell your husband.” The best resolution would be for her to cut it out, work on her marriage, and never tell, but if she’s going to continue cheating on him, he deserves the chance to make a choice about it.
Had a co-worker at my last job who was screwing anything that expressed an interest. (on work time-neglecting responsibilities) I do not know this at the time. I took the irate husband’s phone call and was such a nerdy, clueless, dope that I thought he was imagining things. Until I mentioned the strange phone call to the boss. Whose marriage had gone thru a couple of episodes but they worked out the problem and are now stronger for it. But he knew something was not kosher asked couple of the other employees who blabbed all. There were threats of workplace violence. Yeah, telling the truth can be painful but it solves other problems. The employee was terminated quicker that you could say, “SNOT!”
It probably saved all our lives.
This is a big reason why I would not want to get in the middle of someone’s marital problems. So many acts of violence are due to romantic problems. You don’t know if the husband might go nuts with jealous rage and want to hurt everyone who he thinks is responsible.
There’s no sense in getting judgemental about the lies. Even if she wanted to leave, it’s not easy to go from being a housewife to getting back into a career (especially in this economy), so she probably feels financially dependent on the dude and doesn’t really see how she can leave.
I’d just tell the cheating wife something like, “I care about you and if you want to get out of your marriage I will try to help you get back on your feet. However, I’m very uncomfortable with being in the middle of this current situation and I don’t want to talk to your husband about it.”
Having been through something very similar a couple years back, let me say: this woman is not your wife’s friend. If she’s lying to her husband, and dragging you into it, it’s 99% certain that she’s also lying to your wife.
It is very hard to realize that someone you’d trusted for years is actually dishonest, and your mind will search for ways in which this is just some sort of “mistake” or a “temporary lapse in judgment.” Which is exactly what I did; we remained friends for another three months (which if I’m honest was against my better judgment, but I really really wanted to believe that I wasn’t wrong that he was my friend), until he finally came clean that he’d been lying to me (violating THE principle agreement upon which our relationship was based) for months, too. I found out later he’d been lying to me for a year and a half. In other words – he’d never been a friend to me.
And yeah, he’d been “really there for me” at times, too, which was why I trusted him. He took time off work when I was diagnosed with cancer to sit with me and offer moral support while my doctors explained my chemotherapy regimen to me, among other things. It was horrifying to realize that he had been doing this while simultaneously lying to me.
He presented me with a very clear picture of who he was, and I failed, initially, to see. That didn’t erase who he really was, it just made my life shittier, until all the fallout was over.
I’ve been working on my Patrick Stewart, but yes, that’s pretty much my answer. They’re telling the truth with the first answer but withholding information with the second. By doing so, they’re covering for the wife. The bottom line is that “staying out of it” involves covering for the wife by definition. That might be an acceptable level of staying out of their marriage. But misleading the husband is taking it a step further.
It’s true that there is a lot we don’t know about this situation, but you’re making excuses for her. “I don’t want to get a job” is not a valid reason for cheating on your spouse.
Not to get all Jesuitical about it – but it’s entirely possible that they don’t know where she was, just who she was with.
Another vote for “tell her that you’re not going to lie about it,” BTW.
Yeah, instead they should say “Well, I don’t know *where *she is, but I *do *know she’s out fucking some other guy.”
Really? This sounds like a good solution? Instead of staying out of their marital problems, you exacerbate them, in the name of fairness? Yeah, you’re a righteous dude. A shitty friend, but a righteous dude.
She should absolutely and emphatically refuse to cover for the wife, let the husband’s calls go to voicemail, decline to discuss it again, and stay the hell out of it.
Except that, really, you do. This is a coward’s logic. There’s no way of not being dragged into the situation; the woman in question did this to the o.p. and his wife when she solicited (or rather, compelled) their complicity in her deception. No matter what happens in the future, even if the woman in question refrains from begging such a “favor” in the future, they would not be able to look the husband in the eye and say honestly that they were not aware of her infidelity. So to participate in this equivocation you advocate, they either lie now or they later. Voyager’s advice is on point; tell her to square up, come clean, and deal with the consequences, or accept the consequences should the husband call and request information. Kaio’s observations about the internal rationalizations one goes through in order to mentally rectify the discordance between a person’s beneficent acts and bad behavior deserves rereading.
In terms of legal and ethical obligation, there is no implied or express obligation to participate in a conspiracy to defraud. Although it is doubtful that anyone would every take you to court over it, it is technically illegal, and ethically disgraceful. If your wife would not have agreed to this if it was requested beforehand, why would she feel obligated to participate in the scheme into which her name and reputation were involuntarily invoked? If anything, she should be righteously pissed off that her “friend” made such a presumption upon their relationship as to expect her to lie on her behalf without prior agreement.
Stranger
So when you tell her husband, you’ll think yourself “brave”, rather than “meddlesome”. How nice for you.
What would the world do without people who have the courage to stick by their convictions, no matter whose life it ruins?
I was involved in a similar situation a few years ago. I was dating a woman who had a friend who was cheating on her husband. Let’s call my girlfriend “Jen” and the cheating friend “Trudy.” Anyway, Jen had no qualms about being the “excuse” for Trudy regarding her husband’s curiousity. But one day, it did blow up on them. Trudy had told her husband that she and Jen were going out of town for a concert for the weekend. In reality, she was going even further out of town for a rendezvous at a hotel with her boyfriend. Well, the concert was scheduled for a Saturday night. Jen had actually spend the night with me that night. The next morning we awoke to radio reports that the concert had been cancelled due to poor ticket sales. Trudy calls to see how everything is going. Jen informs her that the concert she was using as an excuse was cancelled. Trudy shits a brick because she JUST got off the phone with her husband, telling him what a great time they had at the concert! She hadn’t gotten the news about the cancellation. Too bad… so sad.
No, I’ll think myself as not having to figure out how to continue lying in order to protect my own reputation and not feel like a heel for deceiving some schlub who just asked for the simple truth. I agree, it is nice not having to lie for other people, especially under uninvited duress.
Seriously? The woman in question has done this to herself; not only by having an affair in an apparently not-very-descreet fashion (i.e. staying out late, expecting the husband to call around for her), but then in the belief that the o.p. and his wife would provide an alibi for her without even obtaining their permission to exploit their apparently good reputation in bad faith. I’m not saying they should make a special effort to contact the husband or make him aware of the situation, but if I were the o.p. I’d want to be able to tell him, “Look, she asked us to cover, and we told her that we absolutely wouldn’t and that she should come clean to you. The rest of this is your personal business, and we’ll support you [in whatever capacity the o.p. feels is appropriate] but we’re not going to get in the middle of it.”
I have to admit some personal bias in this matter; when my ex-wife was stepping out on me, she employed the complicity of several of our friends in common. When the truth came out, a couple of them admitted to me that they knew and had provided or tacitly agreed to provide alibis, and at least one person had baldly lied to me in response to a direct query, which was known to everyone else. Because they felt guilty about their dishonesty but unwilling to accept the blame for it, they treated me cruelly and excluded me (and her) from their social circle. Later, after going through an affair and divorce himself, one former friend admitted to me that he’d behaved wrongly, but by that point their was no friendship left to recover.
This woman has made her bed of lies. The o.p and his wife don’t need to be the bedspread.
Stranger
What I think the OP should do is tell the wife they won’t lie for her, and not volunteer the information to the husband unasked - but not lie to him if he does ask. In my view that’s the closest thing to “right” in this situation. There is no way to stay out of this AND not cover for the wife. She brought them into it.
I’m a good friend. In part that’s because I’m friends with good people who wouldn’t try to force me to do something like this.
The shitty friend here is the cheater who has asked the OP and his wife to cover her ass. A good friend wouldn’t do that. And no matter what’s the OP and his wife are in an ethically compromised position, because they are either interfering in someone else’s marriage or protecting a liar and a cheat.
And by the way, the wife is going to get caught sooner or later. I’m sure the husband will thank the OP and his wife for respecting the privacy of his marriage while she was sneaking around on him.
Hey, I have no sympathy for the cheating spouse, I just see no need at all to get all proactive for either party when the problem is so easily solved by simply not picking up the phone.
But don’t fool yourself, if you decide to pick up the phone and not lie to him, you’re no longer the put-upon victim of her machinations here. You’ve gone and inserted yourself right into the middle of the situation.
There seems to be a disconnect here between “not lying” and “telling the husband”. In the situation described by the o.p., I wouldn’t seek out the husband to inform him, but I’d tell the wife that she’d better come clean because the husband is sooner or later going to check up on her alibi, and when he does so, I’m going to answer the followup question of, “Was she at your house last night?” with complete honesty, and if it happens to be something like, “Do you know where she was, what she was doing, or who she was with?” then that is what it is. When participation is forced in the manner described by the o.p. there is no neutral position that involves covering up the truth or feigning ignorance; choosing to do so, even simply in the desire for one’s own convenience, is still electing to participate in the deception.
And rather than not answering his calls, I’d refuse to answer hers. She is, after all, the one who concocted this charlie-fox of a situation and drew the o.p. and his wife into it.
Stranger