Reply to Do you tell the wife that her wonderful husband cheated on her for two years?

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Reply to "Do you tell the wife that her wonderful husband cheated on her for two years?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I take a different view. I would want to know, pure and simple. It would be most helpful to be told in a symbol, matter of fact way, and to have the option of asking details or not. Perhaps an email stating the very, very basic facts, letting the wife know you will not contact her again or tell anyone else about it, but that she may feel free to contact you if she would like further details or to discuss. Let the wife decide if she believes you, if she wants to know more, or if she does not want to engage at all. Then stick to it. Do not contact her again. At all. That, in my view, would be helpful. She can choose to ignore you, or believe you are not telling the truth, if she wishes. And she has no reason to believe anyone in her community knows anything about the situation.

I have had a good friend decide to move abroad with her husband, leaving her social network and family here in DC. Only to then find out that her husband is a serial cheater, and kept doing so in their new community. So, my friend had to deal with realizing this in a new place, without social or family support, and having just made very significant financial decisions with her husband that were hard to come back from. And then she found out that two of her friends already knew he had been cheating for years. Yes, there is something for allowing people to live in denial if they wish to do so, and to have privacy about the nature of their marriage, whether it is on the rocks, an open marriage, or otherwise.  The impact that a manipulative, cheating spouse can have on an unsuspecting partner, though, is tremendous. It is not to be underestimated.

You never know when someone is about to make a significant life choice, whether having an additional child, buying a new home, changing jobs or location in reliance on a spouses Fidelity, or just deciding to pay for private school because, as a married couple, you can afford it. Unwinding these decisions can be terribly hard. While I might not feel comfortable around the person who told me, perhaps ever do to the personal nature of the information, I would be thankful that someone informed me. Denial can be a beautiful thing, but I am a responsible adult who needs to make sure I am making sound personal, family and financial decisions.

So, I suggest letting the wife know as simply as possible and then leaving it to her whether to seek details. And to be clear you will not breathe a word about any of it to anyone else.

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And that is fine for you and others that feel that way.  No criticism or judgment here.  All I am saying is that looking back in my own situation, I would not have been able to emotionally handle such a bombshell.  I likely would have lashed out and not in a good way.  [/quote]

There is no guarantee that you will have the luxury of this slow unwinding of the details and this fact finding on your own terms.  When something like this is happening in your life the stuff can hit the fan at any time and without warning and sometimes in deliberately unkind and humiliating ways.  You don't know how someone is going to get blindsided by the truth, you don't have any control over their reaction.  The truth is the truth whether it sucks or not.  It is your reality.  It's only a bombshell because it IS about you, your life, your marriage. It does affect you whether you know the details or not.  Might as well know the details.

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You are seriously harping on this. I would love to see how "truth is truth, love it or leave it" the average Tuesday someone deposits some shitty life-changing truth in your face.[/quote]

If someone deliberately set out to hurt ME on some random Tuesday - yeah, that would be very shitty of them.  If someone took it upon themselves to let me know something about my own life...something that had already happened and maybe was in the process of happening...I would HATE to know about it but I would deal with it.  That's just me.[/quote]

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