Be friends with your friends.
As for A and B.
It is just a relationship.
Spot on.
I didn’t give enough information for that sort of assumption, so here’s the breakdown on my situation. It still may not justify it to you, but it does to me. I knew this guy since he was 11. We all went to school together. He lied to me, was a secret cokehead, thief, stole from my family, my folks, and was lying about his job, his past, and I was engaged and about three months away from marriage. When he found out that I knew, he caught a plane to CA and I had to have him extradited after an arrest for speeding. He went to jail, then skipped town while paroled and is currently running the same scam on some other poor dame.
When I told my two best friends, they urged me to forgive him and think of how he must feel, not to prosecute, etc. They were dismayed at how angry I was, even though my family was out valuables and money, and he was living with us as family, so their trust was also forfeit. In the past, when either of them had had a boyfriend, I made sure they both knew I was there for them no matter what, even if they were wrong. I never spoke up for the other party, and I made sure they knew my allegiance was to my friend. If they needed to hear he was an ass, I said he was an ass. If they needed to hear how great he had been, I empathized. I didn’t stop being friendly to the exes, but if it came down to them being hurtful to my friends, I simply ceased contact. Ho’s before bro’s.
Neither cared enough for me to make the same assurance, but rather they expressed surprise that I would be so harsh in judging him. After the biggest mindfuck of my life, I couldn’t trust them, so I wished them well in their friendship and excused myself. I don’t regret it.
The OP’s wife can choose to stay friends with both, but they may or may not choose to stay friends with her based on their needs. A friendship is like any other relationship: it has to be worth your while to maintain.
Atomicflea, you don’t have to justify your feelings to me, and with further details, I probably would have written them off as well, given the situation. But…
That? Is not loyalty. It’s pandering. I’d be very disappointed in any friend of mine who felt I was too weak or dumb or self-involved to want to hear anything other than my own words parroted back at me.
I didn’t feel either of them was self-involved, so if that assumption were made I would be quick to debunk it. If anything they were too worried about hurting the exes’ feelings and too worried about what our other friends would think of them and me.
As for my treatment of them when they were down…just having your heart broken is a weak moment, so I followed the mood of the conversation because I assumed they were calling me to vent, not to be told what to do. In the early stages of grief or disappointment I try not to lead or influence people. I assume I’m there as a shoulder and sounding board on which to pour out their heart.
Now if a few months later they’re still venting like it’s the first day… :rolleyes: Then I do try some tough love. Still, some long relationships take a long time to get over.
Meh. I would get rid of both A and B and just find friends with less drama.
Are most of you women? I think men seem to have more of a tolerance in other men cheating. Women seem to treat it as a cardinal sin (unless of course, they are the ones doing the cheating, in which case it’s “oh I never met anyone who made me feel this way”).
Also, I don’t think men “break up” with friends. At least not in any sort of formal “I am not your friend anymore” sort of way.
Anyhow, I think most of you are being pretty judgemental. I think your wife needs to evaluate her friendships with A and B independently and not feel she needs to pick as “right side”.
It really comes down to individual comfort level. (FWIW, I really like Gus’s Rules
To Live By.) But sometimes the type of friendship may come into play as well. It’s one thing to be a close confidante; fairly casual kill-time-together friendships are another.
FWIW, I finally broke with a close, long-time friend over precisely this kind of thing. In her case, she was a serial ‘other woman’–and the only guys she became involved with were married. For quite a while I sympathized with her inevitable heartbreaks (because the relationships never worked out for her) while trying to get her to see how badly the cheating was damaging her too. It never sank in.
The last straw was when she quite deliberately set after a very dear friend’s husband. I was appalled, and it just got worse when she justified it on the old basis of, “if she can’t keep him, that’s her problem.” Everybody has lines they just can’t or won’t cross and I slammed face-first into that one. What she was doing was just so wrong, so deliberately callous and selfish, that I just couldn’t be a party to it. I told her I wouldn’t listen to a single word about it, period, nada, never.
She tried a few times to share her romantic updates and I just it off and changed the subject. She got cold and angry over my ‘rejection’ but to be honest I never felt the same way again about her either. (Yes, she got her man, very temporarily, but the marriage and of course their friendships were spectacularly destroyed.) Looking back from a span of years, I somewhat see the pathology that drove her behavior but damned if even now I can see a good/better way to handle it either.
So…no easy, one-fits-all answer available, unfortunately.
I’m back.
First there wasn’t really a whole lotta lying going on by A. Essentially, A met someone new and tried to explain to B that this new person was some kind of special friend but it was not sexual. My wife and I truly believed it could lead to the ruin of the A-B relationship, but A and B tried to work through it together. Then A cheated and promptly and voluntarily disclosed it to B, so B dumped A.
B did not cheat on anyone. B is very much into monogamy.
To answer another question posted above, A and B are a lesbian couple.
My wife does not feel any need to take sides. She has been pissed off and sick at what A has done, and she has spent a lot of time talking things through with B without communicating with A. This is more of a situation where she wonders about her ability to stay friends with A even when the smoke clears a bit. Before the cheating, I think she would say she was equally good friends with both A and B.
My symapthies to your wife. It’s a difficult position to be in, and I’d urge her to wait until the situation cools a bit, because these things tend to arrange themselves.
I’ve been B, and I’ve watched as people who I thought were my friends covered for A’s lies and cheating and wanted to remain my friend after the breakup. It’s not the same, obviously, but there were some bitter times when I thought “they know how badly he hurt me. How can they stand to be around someone who would do that to another person?”
I think whether or not I stayed friends with A would depend on two things - why she cheated in the first place and whether or not she showed any remorse.
A long time ago, I read a philosopher who said that a crime committed from pain was more forgivable than a crime committed for pleasure. I agree. If A shows some sense of having done wrong, of regretting the wrong and regretting the hurt she caused, it would be a lot easier to remain friends with her.
If she cheated just to get laid and then denied the harm she’d done? I think I’d be through with her.
In my experience, the splitting couple divides up the mutual friends, just like they divide up the CDs and custody of the dog. You can try to stay friends with both, but you may find you gradually discover you are now B’s friend, and occasionally run into A, or vice versa.
phouka, just out of curiosity, did these people actually *cover *for him (i.e, lie for him, corroborate his alibis, etc.), or did they just not tell you what they knew (or suspected)? That would make a huge difference to me. I could understand and forgive them for choosing NOT to involve themselves in the situation, but making themselves his accomplices is pretty clearly choosing a side, and not yours. Anyone who would do that wasn’t *your *friend to begin with, screw 'em.
But the answer to the bolded part of your post is simple. We’re *all *friends with someone who has behaved badly at times, because we all behave badly at times. I don’t *know *anyone who’s never hurt another person. I’ve hurt people in my life, and I’m pretty sure I’m not an irredeemably horrible human being, so I have to assume the same of people who’ve hurt me. I’m as self-centered as they come, but I don’t for a second believe that hurting my feelings should result in a lifetime of social exile.
This is a really personal situation, so I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to give you useful advice. Everyone’s got a different threshold for what they want from their friends, and if your wife doesn’t feel like she respects, trusts or likes A, she shouldn’t stay friends with her just because they used to be close. No one should have to be friends with someone they think is an asshole, but it’s also easy to overreact to something unexpected and regret it later.
Since cheating is often more complicated than it looks from the outside and because your wife doesn’t have all the information, she might want to sit tight until the shock wears off, think about it, and then decide whether to stay in contact with A. The situation may resolve itself after a while.
Why do so many people need to make themselves part of other peoples’ dramas?
Not enough drama in their own lives that some has to be borrowed?
Honestly, it’s been . . . almost ten years, and the details are thankfully a bit blurry. I don’t remember any absolute “I called Ben, and he said Chris was there, just in the bathroom” type covers, but I do know that the group of friends socialized with the ex and the other woman, and that they were physically affectionate and talked about their relationship in front of my friends, who knew that I had no idea what was going on. I know that a man I counted as a friend encouraged his girlfriend to sleep with my boyfriend.
I suspect they also knew that he had stopped going to his job and had someone sign him in and out so he could still get paid. Choosing sides? Maybe. I suspect that there were a couple of grudges and a whole lot of cowardice. If you’d asked them, they would have said they were my friends. I came to terms with it when I realized that they had a radically different idea of what friendship entailed from what I did.
The whole group imploded anyways. It was a toxic atmosphere, and I’m glad I got out of it, though the price was steep.
A lie isn’t a mistake, it’s a choice.
If someone tells me something in good faith, which later we both discover wasn’t true, that is a mistake. Of course I wouldn’t make a big deal of that.
Lying entails 1> knowing the truth, and 2> choosing to deceive someone anyway.
If there’s dishonesty, there is no relationship. This is true for friends as well as lovers. How can you be friends with someone you know you can’t even trust?
Lying is inherent to cheating. If you didn’t lie than your SO knew about your dalliance beforehand and they call that polyamory, not cheating.
And no, I don’t lie to my friends, or to anyone, really. If there’s something I don’t wish to share, I actually say “I’m not going to share that.”
Contrapuntal: Thanks.
Okay, you know how I said upthread that this was a fight between two individuals and the friends aren’t part of it? That only counts if the friends weren’t aiding and abetting.
In your case, your friends were asses. I hope you cut them out of your life along with your scum-sucking ex. 
This isn’t my experience at all. Some people are just kind of screwed up when it comes to dating relationships. I have a friend who is incredibly loyal to all her friends, but who’s cheated on basically all of her boyfriends. I’m not saying it makes sense, but that’s the way people are sometimes.
And you know what? She’s a freaking awesome friend, and I consider myself lucky to have her in my life. Her relationships are her business, unless she specifically asks me for my opinion. It’s not my job to be the morals police, and it wouldn’t exactly make me the best friend. And anyway, who the hell only wants to be friends with people who have no flaws?
Sigh. I’ve said already that I’m not some draconian bitch who doesn’t allow imperfection in my sight. I do not insist on absolutely flawless friends. See above. There’s a huge difference between making mistakes, and making the choice to deceive and harm others. Really, there is. And I have no idea why y’all insist on conflating the two. They are not the same. Shall I repeat it yet again? They are not the same.
And my experience has been the opposite, as I’ve already said. Your choices don’t invalidate my experience. I have found that people who have a “flexible” definition of honesty, do so in all arenas, not just a chosen one or two. I have found it’s more common that they’re skillful enough liars to not get caught for quite some time, than it is that they’re only lying to that one person. And I see it as a waste of time to invest my trust in someone who has demonstrated untrustworthiness. It seems rather counter-intuitive, and counter to logic, to do so.
There’s that old adage: when people show you who they really are, it’s your job to pay attention.
Aside from that, I’m also not a person who is comfortable reaping benefits at someone else’s expense. I get a “friend” (of dubious value) while someone else gets cheated on and hurt, and I do nothing? Silence implies support and approval, and I very much don’t approve of purposefully choosing to act in a hurtful manner. The consequences of cheating are predictable and obvious, so no one can claim the hurt came about by accident or ignorance or “by mistake”.
(And yes, I did learn all of this the hard way.)
I second Kaio on his/her response. Further, I offer that by my definition it would most certainly qualify you as a best friend. I offer to my best friends the truth as I see it, even though it may hurt their feelings. I expect the same in return. Being a best friend does not imply blind support, IMO. Rather, it implies a duty of care that extends far beyond protecting their feelings. Challenging each other’s worldview is one of the most important duties of best friends. At least, that is what my friends and I believe.