# Morality (NOT legality) of killing your cheating spouse with their lover? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 14, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268 "2010-08-14T19:49:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/41 "2010-08-17T16:00:12Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Wrong. If it was that invalid, there would be criminal punishment for it. Cheating is as natural and routine as any other human behavior. But on the other hand a strong violent instinct is also natural. It’s the way humans (particularly males) have evolved. Due to the investment put in to human relationships there is a strong evolutionary pressure on the male to make sure he is certain that any children he is raising are his own progeny and one manifestation of that is a violent reaction to infidelity. Either way your legislating against natural behaviour (and I believe in many jurisdictions infidelity is illegal, though in many jurisdictions it is not enforced through the criminal code). ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/42 "2010-08-17T18:49:52Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Morality is all about the decisions people make and the reasons they make those decisions. For example we can’t view all killings as morally equal, if I run a red light and accidentally kill someone I think we can all agree that is far different from the moral decision making that say, Ted Bundy engaged in when he decided to rape and murder women to satisfy deeply seated urges that had taken over his life. > > From a strict morality viewpoint, if someone comes in and sees their wife with another man and kills her because it has angered them or because they are jealous, that is definitively immoral. > > If they come in and see their wife with another man, and they become “so engulfed in rage” that they genuinely lose the ability to make decisions based on right and wrong, then I don’t know how I view that morally. I mean if someone is _legitimately_ no longer in control of their decision making I have a hard time holding them _morally_ responsible. > > Now, my very basic understanding of human psychology is that 99.99% (probably more) of people who kill cheating spouses do it out of “simple” anger and jealousy, not because they entered some “berserker” state where they genuinely lost control of their decision making. > > From a “practical” standpoint, anyone who would kill because of that (be it a “deliberate” killing or a killing because the person was temporarily insane) is not someone I want to associate with. In my life I’ve known a few people with anger issues such that I think they are capable of doing something like this, I’ve always tried to limit my involvement with them. I’d definitely totally eliminate someone from my life if they were a confirmed killer. > > Killing a spouse because you want to get rid of her and marry someone else (but don’t want to go through the legal pain of a divorce), or killing a spouse to enrich yourself through insurance money seems far worse to me than the scenario of this thread. Why? Because even the person who is just a genuinely bad person who decides to kill his wife because he’s mad at her for cheating is someone who has made an immoral decision in the heat of the moment. A person killing for insurance money has had to plan it out (usually) over a long period of time and has in effect repeatedly and in serial made immoral decisions culminating with the decision to actually kill. Morality aside…if someone kills someone because they cannot legitimately control themselves then they can never be trusted again to not kill someone because they cannot control themselves. They need to locked away forever or killed. Someone who kills while in control could, in theory, be punished and rehabilitated. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/43 "2010-08-17T18:55:05Z")
> [@These are my own pants](#): > > Hmm I don’t know how I’d feel about ‘hanging around with them’, but I think I’d certainly be sympathetic towards them. > > I remember a case near me recently on a small canal boat. Person A and person B were man and wife and lived on the canal boat with their young son, person C was person A’s best friend. Persons A, B and C had been drinking and went back to the canal boat and drank some more. Person A went to bed in the cabin with their young son. Person A woke up in the middle of the night and caught persons B and C in the middle of having sex. According to the evidence of person A he flew in to a rage and cannot remember what happened next, but the next thing he remembers is finding persons B and C stabbed and holding a bloody knife in his hand, he immediately phoned the police and ambulance and tried to administer first aid, but persons B and C died shortly afterwards. If you can just let go like that and kill…I guess I just can’t be sympathetic to that. I can understand being really angry but not murdering. Plus, at the most basic level, I guess I just doubt how unplanned a situation like that really is. You have to think to find a weapon, for one thing. At some point, you’re not thinking, “This is wrong/evil”? I guess it’s a world view that I can sort of understand in theory but in practice horrifies me. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/44 "2010-08-17T19:04:11Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Plus, at the most basic level, I guess I just doubt how unplanned a situation like that really is. From what I have come across, most incidents of verbal abuse, and physical abuse, and severe physical abuse, and spousal murder, are unplanned. The level of abuse grows over time, but each instance is usually unplanned. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/46 "2017-11-12T02:04:11Z")
How amusing, that every single poster has assumed that the man is the murderer and the woman is the cheater. And yet men cheat at least as much as women. How do you feel about your wife gunning you and your mistress down in bed? Justifiable homicide? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/47 "2017-11-12T02:25:25Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > The second I find out about it, I drop them as a friend and acquaintance. If we have a business relationship, I end it unless legal considerations mandate keeping it open; and the second that changes, I’m done with that person. > > I see no reason to consider a person who murders a spouse out of jealousy different from one who commits such a crime for, say, insurance reasons. Just viscerally, I think the man who kills his cheating spouse is worse. He’s not just killing a random person, he’s killing a person who has special reason to trust him. Also domestic violence is common enough it needs to be punished especially harshly by the law as a deterrent. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/48 "2017-11-12T02:34:00Z")
The big problem, of course, is that the murdered spouse may shamble after the killer seven years after being killed. Zombies are are always immoral. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/49 "2017-11-12T02:53:29Z")
The only civilized way to handle such a situation is to make them dig their own graves, allow them to bathe, provide them with a last meal, allow them to call a spiritual counselor, and THEN kill them. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268/50 "2017-11-12T02:56:00Z")
Closing this zombie. [/moderating] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-not-legality-of-killing-your-cheating-spouse-with-their-lover/550268.md?page=2)