What Would You Do If...

Exactly.

 

Why you couldn't you just tell the SO or boss by anonymously writing a letter?

 

Why does any of this matter? If you tell the wife "hey, I just thought you should know, I saw your husband kissing some girl the other day, and I've seen them together a few times," then if they have an open marriage, she can say "oh, that's okay, we have an open marriage." And then you can say "oh, okay, good to know. Sorry to bother you."

There... the end. Nothing bad happened from telling the truth. And if he's just doing something dumb or they're going through a rough patch, it's up to her to decide whether or not to forgive him or not. But she deserves to have all the information to make that decision.

 

It. Doesnt. Matter.

Literally doesn't matter at all. All you're doing is passing along truthful information. Yes, I don't have the context, but they do, and they can decide what to do with that information.

Listen, I've actually sort of been in a situation similar to this. I had some people show up on my doorstep one day telling me all kinds of bad things about my husband.

Most of them were either misunderstandings, not true, or things I wasn't super surprised by (like that he watches porn at work). Those people did absolutely nothing wrong, even though their information was largely gossip and not even true. There are times I've felt annoyed about them telling me those things, because most of them turned out to be untrue, but I would never say that they did the wrong thing. They absolutely did the right thing. They believed that my husband was doing some pretty terrible things, and I'm glad to know that if he was, someone would care enough to do the right thing and tell me. I do NOT want to be naive and blindsided. Nothing is worse than that. Hearing those negative things from a stranger is 100 times better than finding out years later that you've been a naiive idiot for years, loving and caring for a man who was betraying you and people knew about it and didn't care enough to say anything.

You're free to not tell anyone if you're in that position, but I'm honestly shocked that anyone could possibly label my view as "selfish." As if I take some kind of joy in telling some poor woman that her husband is cheating. That would be an absolutely awful thing to have to do. I would feel sick to my stomach about it for weeks, but I would do it, because if I were her, I would want to know. That is not selfish in the slightest.

 

I tried to keep my pronouns gender neutral, but for simplicity's sake I stopped trying.

 

I feel like you're just making way too many assumptions and "what ifs" but you're acting like the only outcome of telling the woman is that it will ruin both of their lives and destroy their marriage and end in divorce. Why do you have so many "what ifs" on one side of the dillemma, but none on the other?

 

You were wrong.

 

You're right, obviously nobody knows if that will work out for better or for worse. But I don't think anybody here is doing anything without thinking. It seems to me that everyone here is thinking a whole lot. I certainly did. I thought about what I would want if I was in that position, I thought about what's best even if it might be hard or hurtful at the time, and I thought about what's morally appropriate.

 

I just disagree. I don't see how knowing your husband is cheating on you is going to ruin your life more than being blissfully unaware. I disagree with the concept of "ignorance is bliss." Just because something feels good doesn't mean it IS good, and that seems to be perhaps a fundamental part of this debate that was disagree on. Even if it feels worse, I would rather know and be heartbroken and divorced than be a naive idiot loving a man who is betraying me.

 

Absolutely not! He's the cause of what happens to his family. Why are you shooting yourself for being a messenger of bad news? You would be doing nothing but speaking the truth. If their lives are ruined, it's because of his actions. If he didn't cheat, there would be nothing to tell.

Also, as SOB said, you could say the opposite as well. By NOT saying anything, whatever happens afterward with that situation is partially your fault. If the wife gets an STD, if the husband knocks up his mistress, if his wife has to find out by walking in on then having sex. You could say all of that is your fault, too. Of course it's not, it's his. But with that logic, all of that would be on you, too.

 

Sorry I posted a million times. I'm done now. It's hard to keep things in one post on my phone, so I just sent them as I was reading through the conversation. I also had no idea how long this conversation went on when I first started replying. Lol

 

So... he's a good guy, but I'm selfish. Even though our views are exactly the same, you just didn't allow me to explain mine before calling me out. I completely agree with everything SOB has said here. I guess that's all I really needed to say, rather than replying so many times on my own. I didn't read through all this before I started responding, so I apologize for all the repetition.

Sorry, that really is my last post now.

 

Okay, last one, because this is I think the hesrt of the issue here. You're assuming a lot.

First of all, you're assuming that I was "blindly firing my mouth" without thinking. I still believe it is almost always the right thing to tell the truth, for many reasons. But you seem to have assumed that I had no reasons other than self righteous moral judgement or something. Which is not the case. I have plenty of logical reasons why I believe it's the right thing to tell the spouse, and hopefully I've laid those out clearly enough already.

That's not what anybody here has done, so stop acting like it is. It's honestly insulting to all the long, thought-out responses you've been relying to. Everyone has given reasons why they think telling is right. Nobody has just simply said "it's right because it's right." Yes, I said "it's the right thing to do" in my first comment, but it's not like that's all I said. It's insulting that you're acting like everyone here on the opposite side of your view isn't presenting any valid arguments and is just repeating some lame "but it's the right thing to do though" mantra. That's not at all what happening here.

 

I'm not, and I never said anything of the sort. Stop shoving words in people's mouths that they never said.

How is that different than you? Your stance is basically to talk to the guy and see how it goes, and that you wouldnt tell the spouse, right? Well my stance is to talk to the guy and see how it goes, and if he refused to tell, tell the spouse. Both of us made decisions with the information given to us, based on what seems like it would have the least risk of going poorly and causing harm. Stop acting like you have some moral superiority over me because you came up with a different solution than I did. It's really honestly pissing me off a bit the way you are making me out to be sone rash person who does things without thinking and doesn't care about consequences, when we literally have done the exact same things here. We were presented a moral dilemma, weighed the pros and cons, and picked the side that seems to weight higher on pros and lower on cons. You are not better than me, and I am not some idiot who doesnt think about how my choices effect others. We just have a different freaking opinion. Geez Louise, why can't it just be left at that? You had to go and make all kinds of assumptions and dissect my character over one comment. It's ridiculous.

 

I didnt do that! What the hell are you even on about? I did the same thing as you, as I just said above. I never ONCE said that there's no situation in which I would consider not telling. In fact, literally one post below my first comment, I said that I don't know if I would do the same if the couple were only dating. So clearly I'm not just "going into every situstion with a predetermined action without even taking the time to consider" blah blah blah. It's insane how much you have taken one tiny sentence I've said and made it into this huge, deep character flaw that i apparently exhibit in everything I do, always, no matter what, because I'm egotistical apparently.

Yeah, you're right. I just spouted off nonsense without thinking about it at all. Never mind all of the posts I've made explaining exactly why I would do what I chose to do, and all of the thought that went into that. You're definitely right, I'm just a selfish egotist who doesnt give a shit about anyone but myself.

No, it isn't easy, which I also said above, which you clearly haven't read. Nothing about telling a woman she's been cheated on would be easy

Obviously not. Which is why I never said or implied such a thing.

 

If I explained it perfectly and my reasons are valid, then why did you still just call me egotistical and selfish?

 

Well you probably could have phrased your initial response better, rather than just saying my reply was selfish. You could have asked what I meant by that or explained that you would like to know more depth of my reasoning, instead of just assuming, multiple times throughout this thread, that I had none and that I just wasn't thinking or caring about anyone but myself.