I dunno if it’s a woman thing or if it’s just my own personal feelings but I’d want to be told if my SO was cheating on me. Especially to the extent that this one has been. I know it’s awkward for you since you’re not friends with her but damn, that poor thing having that happen their entire marriage.
Adding to the pile-on, while your friend may be asking for your advice somehow, he has now put you in a horrible position. You know he’s cheating. Do you tell his wife? Do you keep it a secret? I would be pretty upset with a friend who stuck me in this situation.
All I can think is that I’d say “You need to tell your wife about this and the two of you have to sort it out, whether that’s working through it or getting divorced or whatever. I will not cover for you and I will not lie about this.”
And I’d probably have to avoid him until I knew that it was getting resolved.
I don’t know at what point I would feel obligated to actually tell his wife but I think it’d be on my radar.
Rodgers01, I wade in only because you asked for advice. His wife will find out eventually one way or another, and she will be hurt badly. If this were my friend and my life, I would say that there is no way that considering this guy a friend adds anything substantive to my life, and I’d at the least be no worse off without him.
Two options. 1. Dump him, but let him know why you are dumping him. His actions should have some consequences.
2. If there is any risk to the health of the wife, tell him that if he doesn’t tell her you will. This is a case where this isn’t a victimless crime.
And I agree that you should not offer an opinion on divorce. That is up to them.
My wife had a friend who started cheating on her husband. While my wife slowly begun cutting ties with her she got a text from her late one night asking “Can you do me a favor and if (Joe) asks where I was last night can you tell him I was with you?”
My wife replied with a “Sorry. I can’t help you.”
(Joe) never called to ask but that was the last my wife heard from her friend.
Of course the husband found out not much longer after that and they got divorced (leaving a 4 & 9 year-old in the wake). We heard she took up with the other guy, they had a kid together, and now they’re splitting up.
Good riddance.
As for telling the wife, in this case, I don’t think you have any great obligation. You’re not Batman. You don’t have an obligation to save the world. She’s basically a stranger to you. I think it’s the morally correct thing to tell her, but there will likely be serious blowback on you. It’s a personal decision whether you want to take that on and I won’t fault you for not doing it.
I feel it’s different the more you know the betrayed person. The closer your relationship, the more you have an intrinsic duty to look out for their best interests. So if the situation were reversed where his wife was having the affair and you found out, I think you would have more of an obligation to tell your friend that he was being betrayed.
I would tell him he needs to stop cheating or divorce his wife; and to give me a call when one of those things has happened. Until then, I’m not interested in investing in a friendship with someone I can’t trust (since he is proven to be untrustworthy).
Exactly. People are generally weak and avoid any kind of conflict or confrontation like the Bubonic Plague. It’s clear what the right thing to do is. The not-so-fun part is doing it.
Stay out of it unless he’s cheating with one of your female friends or relatives.
easy to say when you’ve got no skin in the game.
Um, ok. It’s still true, however easy or difficult it may be.
The wife needs to know. It’s not ok to let her find out “on her own”. A whole office knew my ex was having an affair with a co-worker and not one had the decency to tell me. That’s not ok. It’s really not.
yeah but the problem with that is if there’s a big fight and then they get back together or she just doesn’t believe it your a bastard for causing trouble
personally seen all this go down a few times…
I’d advise the friend to get professional help that way youre not responsible for anything … .he just wanted someone to assuage his guilt and feel better because someone else knows …
I’d tell the friend 1) I think you’re doing really shitty stuff and B) I won’t volunteer the information to your wife, but if she asks me, I won’t lie for you. And I’d probably reconsider the friendship; is this a trustworthy person to have as a friend?
He’s ripe for sexual blackmail.
Maybe not. That would require him to deeply desire to keep his marriage going. I doubt that’s the case; it’s just easier– less effort – for the cheater to keep the marriage going.
Ditto. I wouldn’t tell the wife. NEVER interfere in a relationship between two people unless you think one of the two is in an unsafe situation. For all you know, the wife has known about the cheating since day one and is fine with it on some level but will be horribly embarrassed if confronted with the fact of it.
While I understand the rationale behind “tell the wife” and “dump the cheater out of your life” I have found that immorality is so common in the world that if I started cutting out anyone who was less than a saint I would shortly find myself a hermit.
If asked your opinion give it (and I think most of us would disapprove), and don’t cover for the cheater, but I’m not the morality police.
But morality isn’t a simple binary - saint or devil. In this case the friend is engaged in some fairly egregious immorality - he’s systematically breaking a promise that he made with considerable solemnity, and in reliance on which someone else has changed her life radically - and he intends to keep doing so.
Perhaps more to the point, he’s trying to make the OP complicit in his immorality by telling him about it - by taking him into his confidence, and at least implicitly seeking his discretion about what he knows.
I think if I simply found out that one of my friends was cheating on their spouse, I would not feel compelled either to tell the spouse or to drop the friend. But if they tries to involve me in their cheating in the way that seems to be happening here, I wouldn’t want to have them as my friend.
It would be different if they told me about some lesser transgression. I think it’s the combination of the fairly major transgression, plus the attempt to demand complicity, that tips the balance.
In my decision, I’d factor in the most important aspects that affect the innocent party. Could the wife be hurt by STDs? How devastated would she be if one of his lovers got pregnant? Where will she be mentally if she finds out? How will she survive if he finally divorces her for someone else if they have kids then? If he’s duplicitous about this with her, I have no trouble he’s doing the same over other stuff too. So, since he brought up possibly dissolving his marriage, I’d push for that like crazy. I’d even go so far as to insist the grass really is greener on the other side. Once he cuts ties, so would I.