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][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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I AM aware.  I went through it!!   I hate to be snarky, but you are lecturing someone who has lived through a cheating spouse. I am simply giving you another perspective.  I have the benefit of understanding 100% how a woman would feel discovering that and, yes, that would impact my decision to tell someone about their spouse.  Hypotheitcal:  Would you tell someone if you had a strong feeling that they would harm themselves, the spouse or the AP?  Would you tell someone that you knew would fly off the deep end emotionally?  All I am saying is that this an emotional, highly charged issue that involves real people.  I just do not think the "right" to tell her is absolute and always the best thing to do.

That being said, I do not begrudge anyone who feels differently.  IMO, our differeing opinions illustrate just how complicated this issue can be. [/quote]

Yes.  I would prefer to tell them in a matter of fact, private and compassionate way.  [b]I would have no control over what they did with the i[/b]nformation but this idea that they will always find out only when and if they want to find out and on their own terms is  ludicrous.  This bomb has the potential to go off at any moment - any time, any place, anywhere.  Just because you keep it a deep dark secret doesn't make it any less true or any less volatile.

Better to hear it privately, calm and matter of fact.  That is just my opinion.[/quote]

And that to me signifies the issue.  How can be sure you are doing the right thing if you do not know how the info will be received? You are essentially saying that you would tell the person and you think that you have no moral accountability for telling her.  That is the specific type of person that I would NOT want telling me. Frankly, I do not think you have the right to impose information on people without consequence nor do you have the right to decide what is ludicrous in someone else's marriage.  In situations like this, what you want and what you think the DW should want are not the priority. I would hope that you would have enough "compassion" to make a determination as whether telling her is the right thing to do under the specific circumstances. [/quote]

You seem to think that what makes the affair relevant to the wife is her being informed of it.  But maybe the person who tells her about it knows that the OW and the dh have been planning a future life together, just them.  Not you. But I guess you would be cool finding that out when he ditches your azz?[/quote]

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