An approach I think might work is to get him to understand that, because of his behavior, she will find eventually find out. As long as he continues to have affairs, it becomes more and more likely he’ll be exposed. Either the wife will come across evidence or one of his flings will contact the wife. It sounds like he’s not the type to give it up. He’s “addicted” to these flings. So he’s going to have to deal with the fallout sooner or later.
The sooner he does it, the easier it will be. The longer he’s married, the more assets he acquires that will need to get split in a divorce. If he has kids, he’ll either pay child support or have the kids living with him–either of which will put a damper on his ability to hookup. And kids further complicate things because there will be a whole lot of anger from the kids when they find out the reason why mommy and daddy are getting divorced.
It sounds like the moral argument won’t be enough to get this guy to do the right thing. Perhaps you can appeal to the practical side of him so he realizes he should address this to minimize the financial impact.
Addendum: I have a coworker with whom I have done things outside of work, but not a lot. I’ve never met his wife or kids.
He confided in me (why I’m not sure) that he regularly engages the services of prostitutes. I didn’t tell his wife, but then, I was in no position to. I don’t even know her name. However, I don’t like being brought into his drama, and we don’t do stuff any more.
I would stop seeing the cheater because they clearly hold me in very low regard. For some reason they think I’ll be cool with being complicit in this secret. I’m not. This person has badly misjudged my character, and who I fundamentally am. I won’t be seeing this person again to hang with.
That’s pretty much what I would do in that situation. The risk is a lot higher than the OP’s situation, and I don’t even know the woman so she has no reason to believe me. I would not want to risk a giant drama explosion at work. This is part of why I keep my work life and personal life separate, so that I don’t have to worry about a personal conflict putting my job at risk.
I have a difficult time believing that after seven years of this behavior, his wife doesn’t even suspect anything. Quite likely, she’s willfully ignoring his behavior. Nonetheless, I would refuse to lie for him.
As far as trusting him goes, human beings are remarkably good at compartmentalizing. Personally, I have an ex who I would trust with my life, just not to keep his pants zipped, which is why he’s an ex. I have friends who are dogs when it comes to sexual relationships, but are good people otherwise. Follow your gut as far as your friendship goes and keep in mind that if you go to his wife, your friendship is toast.
Speaking of compartmentalizing him, would part of trusting him with your life include trusting him not to secretly expose himself to possible STDs and then expose you to that risk without telling you? Because that’s actually a life-threatening thing to do, but you seem unconcerned with the risks he took with your health.
I believe that people are good at compartmentalizing, and anyone who can compartmentalize betraying their intimate partners can come up with a justification for betraying anyone else.
She said that she would trust him with her life, but he already demonstrated a significant disregard for her health and well-being that she seems to be ignoring in that evaluation. To seem “concerned” in my book would involve not saying that you’d ‘trust your life’ to someone who has already broken promises for personal gain and put your life and health at risk in the process. Trusting someone who’s already shown complete disregard for your preferences, his promises to you, and your health doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, unless you’re just unconcerned with all of those issues.
? How can you possibly know this? We don’t know what precautions any of these people take against STDs and pregnancy. Presumably the guy is not a complete idiot and uses condoms and makes sure his partner is also on some kind of additional birth control method. For all we know, the married couple in question also uses condoms every time, or perhaps never even have sex together at all.
Which is why you don’t meddle in a relationship: you don’t have the facts.
Theoretically, there could possibly be a circumstance where I would feel it was the right thing to do to insert myself into a marriage and make the decision to inform one partner about the sexual indiscretion of another. But in general, I think it would be wrong. The stakes are far beyond my own personal sense of outrage. Suicides are committed over infidelities. Murders are committed. Families destroyed, lives irretrievably changed. Sometimes people look into the abyss, have a change of heart, and re-commit themselves to their partners. Am I godlike in my ability to discern the outcome if I take control of these peoples’ lives for a time? No. The way I see it, my role is help my friend navigate, but not to grab the wheel away from him.
In this case, I would tell him quite strongly that he is behaving dishonorably and disrespectfully toward his wife, and I would ask him how could he justify lying and setting her up to be the object of gossip and pity, by the person who should take more care for her well-being than anyone else in the world. I would really let him have it. I would tell him that in my opinion he should either stop this, or tell her so that she could decide to continue the marriage under those terms. I would tell him that I hope he thinks about it and takes the path of the ethical person that I had always believed him to be. I would not threaten him, either with disclosing this to anyone else or with ending our friendship, but it seems likely that we would go our separate ways if he continued down the path he was on.
You may be surprised to know that there are women who believe their spouses to be trustworthy and therefore don’t spend time and energy searching for reasons not to trust him.
What would I do? I’d tell him he had 24 hours to tell his wife, or I would – his choice who she hears it from first.
It’s her life, she has a right to know if she’s potentially at risk, or if her home life is built on lies. She has a right to make her own, informed decisions about it.
Oh please. Have you ever looked up divorce statistics? What percentage of people do you think have engaged in some form of deception in a relationship? Those folks are liars or cheaters. It’s awfully lonely in this world if your standards are perfection.
I think people who text and drive are more reprehensible than those who stray. At least Romeo isn’t going to drive his car into a mini van full of kids.
You guys are really demonstrating the fallacy of the excluded middle here. There’s a lot of “Some form of deception” that is not at the magnitude of “Betrayed your spouse on something you know is very important to them and that exposes them to significant health risks and both of you to significant financial risks”. And asking that people follow “don’t lie to your spouse about who you’re banging” is hardly asking for “perfection”, it’s asking for “don’t be a terrible person”. And I’m not feeling all that lonely, I’m able to find more people who aren’t cheating on their spouses to hang out with and date than I have time to keep up with, so I’m not really giving up anything but the stress of dealing with that kind of behavior.
