This arose in my head from a comment from one poster in Ambivalid’s thread about confessing infidelity before being caught. The comment was that not confessing leaves one vulnerable to blackmail. A bit melodramatic, but let’s take it from there.
Situation: you are in a loving, long-term relationship with one other person. Some time ago, due to possibly mitigating circumstances (fill in what you like) you had a 3-month fling with another person. This 3rd person is now completely out of the picture, and you are sure you will never succumb to any such temptation again. To the best of your knowledge, your SO has no idea you have ever strayed.
Now you receive an anonymous letter with evidence of your infidelity, and a demand for a small, regular sum of money every month, on pain of exposure of the truth to your SO. The sum of money is small enough so that you and your SO won’t really miss it, and you can disguise the payment so that your SO will never find out.
What do you do? Pay the blackmail, report it to the police, confess all to your SO? Something else? Eat cake?
Assuming I became a different person overnight and cheated on my husband, I’d opt to not pay the blackmailer a penny AND not tell my husband. Ball’s in his court.
If my relationship is based on a lie, it is of no value to me, so I suppose I’d have to confess. As an anarchist though, I’d have to deal with the blackmailer without the police. Maybe I’d have them over for dinner or something.
In the photoshop age, anything can be faked. I do nothing and say nothing. If the “proof” is mailed to my husband, I feign ignorance and claim it must be a 'shop.
I’ve never cheated and would never. But I’d never pay hush money, either.
Well, then he’s an asshole and I’m glad I dumped him. If I really loved my husband, and this scenario kind of assumes that I don’t, then I guess I’d confess.
You’re fighting the hypothetical. The OP says “proof” so let’s assume it’s actual proof, irrefutable. ETA: ok, the OP said “evidence” not “proof”, so let’s suppose there is irrefutable proof.
Pundit Lisa, the OP said the blackmailer was an anonymous person, not your former fling. It could be anyone, you don’t know who it is.
Weedy, I guess that could be Something Else, I didn’t want to seem to espouse an illegal act of violence.
I’d tell the blackmailer where (s)he can stick that evidence but I wouldn’t call the police. Would/could they do anything? The confession to my wife might come if and when the blackmailer did his worst, depending on the evidence.
I could probably forgive my wife if she had an affair a long time ago and someone has just now come forward to blackmail her. I’d have a hard time believing much of what she says if she had an affair along time ago and had been paying someone to keep it quiet ever since.
Giving in to blackmail is a bad idea. There’s no way they could convince me that all the evidence was gone, and no way to convince me they won’t be back for more throughout the rest of my life.
Since that’s not an option, I’d just have to find a way to mitigate the damage and maybe get the person arrested.
I wouldn’t pay the blackmail, pretty much out of spite. I generally respond poorly when someone tries to pressure me into doing something, and I own my mistakes so I’ll take the hit. I don’t know if I’d take it to the police, because whatever.
It would actually probably be a relief to get it out in the open.
I would pay it but not for the reason why most of you may think.
If I cheated, I would pay it out of guilt and punishment for myself. My SO does not deserve to be hurt any more by the revelation and this action has the highest probability that lets me keep it from her. I would take the guilt and the monetary punishment upon myself because I deserve it, and I should be the only one to suffer. If the blackmailer eventually mails it to her, well, I can’t stop that, but what I’ve done is bought her some peace and happiness.
I can’t imagine a situation in which I’d cheat. The closest I could imagine is if, perhaps, we broke up, I moved on, then we ended up getting back together and perhaps I just didn’t tell her about it for whatever reason. Still pretty low probability for me, but at least something that might have a non-zero chance of occuring.
Regardless, I’d never succumb to blackmail. First, and primarily, because I value trust and honesty in a relationship and if it’s something she should know, even if it’s painful, then I’d rather be the one to tell her. Second, someone who is willing to do something dishonest like blackmail cannot be trusted to keep to any sort of deal. If I decide to pay, how do I know that person won’t later demand more? If I’m so willing to pay a small amount of money that she wouldn’t even notice, maybe he’ll reconsider and decide he can squeeze more out of me. And if I don’t pay, he gains nothing by revealing the information other than a sense of revenge, and even then, I’d like to think I’d confess first, and even if I did feel the need to hide, as others have pointed out, it would take still take more than a random picture to convince anyone. And if they’re able to get audio recordings and videos and junk like that, why are they wasting their time blackmailing me when they could much more likely catch someone with some more substantial wealth and also more to hide.
In short, I’d make a terrible blackmail target as is, because I aim to be honest anyway, I don’t do much at all that I would future regret, at least to the point of paying to hide it, and I don’t have enough money to be a good target. There’s got to be a hundred other nearby targets with more money and/or more to hide.
The thing about blackmail is that it never ends. Its just a matter of how much you spend before being “exposed”.
Make the first payment and you are hooked. They become more expensive and more frequent till you can’t take it anymore, then, you get “exposed”. Might as well not spend anything. You are going to lose no matter what you do. Make it quick!
The main flaw in the OP, for me, is that it assumes I’d be able to cheat on my SO, and keep it concealed for more than fifteen minutes. If I stepped out on my boyfriend, the next conversation with him would go something like this:
I can’t imagine me ever doing something like that. But if I had, and this guy came along to force me to tell my SO the truth, I would probably thank them for being my conscience.
I would also call the police though, and throw the book at them, because their intentions were not good. And they obviously took pictures of me when they shouldn’t have. Yuck!
Fuck the blackmailer over to the point where he’s still hurting in his deathbed, many decades later.
If that is not possible, merely do whatever is going to fuck them over worst.
If that is also not possible, laugh in their face and tell them to go ahead if they got the balls. Most people don’t.
The OP’s example isn’t something that would apply in my case, but I’ve had people try to blackmail/threaten me before; in most cases, it hurt them worse than it hurt me.