Trying to acquit himself, my partner revealed his friend has also been cheating. What should I do?

[taimatsu]

Trying to acquit himself, my partner revealed his friend has also been cheating. What should I do?

 

Infidelity is awful, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but your situation might not be the same as her situation

 

Published:

16:30 Wednesday, 03 March 2021

 

My partner recently told me that he has been cheating on me for five years. In the process of trying to acquit himself, he told me that one of his friends has also been cheating on his girlfriend. After dealing with the shock of my own betrayal, I was enraged because this girl is wonderful and loving, and I am very fond of her. She doesn’t deserve this.

This has put me in a dilemma. I don’t want her to be deceived for years like I have, but I also don’t want to inflict the pain on her that I’m experiencing. Being a silent bystander, especially after what I’ve been through, seems wrong. What should I do? Tell her boyfriend to come clean? Should I try to tell her myself? Or should I keep quiet and helplessly watch on?

Eleanor says: First of all, I’m sorry. Infidelity sucks; finding out sucks; it’s all awful. From my ragged heart to yours just know that the sensation of time passing will eventually return, and when it does it will help.

 

That said – your dilemma here calls for a particular kind of emotional discipline at a moment when you may least want to exercise it. It calls for you to treat her situation as her situation.

 

This is very difficult to do with infidelity. We must know, intellectually, that affairs differ – that the right way of reacting here might be the wrong way of reacting there. But that doesn’t stop us adjudicating other people’s with the force and certainty we had about our own. I’m sure you’ve already encountered this from friends who unwittingly litigate their own betrayals by issuing certainties about yours: “Honey, all relationships have problems”; “He’s a pig, they’re all pigs!”

 

I think you’re right to hesitate – neither your situation nor mine nor anyone else’s is a blueprint for how she would manage hers.

That’s why I think you should go for secret option #4: tell her boyfriend you’re on to him, but not necessarily so he comes clean. So he figures out why he’s doing this and stops.

Considering the operatic heights of the taboo against infidelity, it often turns out to have really pedestrian explanations. Someone sabotages their chances at real intimacy because their father taught them they don’t deserve it; someone repeats interchangeable flings because they only like themselves through the eyes of an enchanted stranger. It’s all so boring – you’d almost rather they were a sociopathic Lothario than another moderately sad person who should have gone to therapy.

 

But this guy should go to therapy. He should figure out why he’s doing this. Maybe he was a loser in high school and is collecting women like Pokémon now to make up for it; maybe he loves her but is so afraid of committing he’s manufacturing secrets to retain some separateness. Who knows, he might be as confused about why he’s doing this as you are. If the goal is to make him do right by her, he needs more than condemnation – he needs to know why he was doing wrong.

 

It’s true that she has a right to know, but the problem is not all of us would choose to exercise that right. Finding out can be so traumatic. Lies about sex seem to burrow into an obsessive part of the brain in a way that money-lies and whereabouts-lies just don’t. For some people it means years of nightmares and intrusive mental images; for others a paranoia and an insatiable hunger for proof that will make subsequent relationships extremely difficult. You have to be really sure of what you’re doing to risk causing that much damage to her.

 

Confronting him in private might at least have the chance of getting justice for her, without causing a huge amount of pain. And in a position like yours, with so little information, sometimes that chance is all we get.

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Comments

[taimatsu]

I thought this was a good one and wondered what the community here thinks. Apologies if the formatting is awful, I’m posting from my phone.

Could we have a tag for content from The Guardian, do you think?

[lilysea]

I think giving the potential serious health consequences of a partner cheating if they are not using condoms - HIV/AIDs, Hep B, Hep C - telling the cheated-on partner is the right thing to do.

[laurajv]

Yep. That was my first reaction -- not that she needs to know for emotional reasons, although that figures in -- but that she needs to know for her physical health. When my one sister found out her then-fiance was sleeping with several other women, I didn't ignore her feelings, but I did ALSO ask if she'd had an STI screen.

[lemonsharks]

I would want to be told, for, "don't make a fool of me/DTMFA" reasons as well as STI reasons.

Also can we just, advice columns, for a moment consider that the poor sad man forced into an affair by his fear if intimacy that he can't possibly work through with a mental health professional is not actually a victim here?

And that the girlfriend who has not consented to sex with a person who is boinking an unknown third party does in fact have the right to be informed so she can give it revoke INFORMED CONSENT.

[heavenscalyx]

I'd give him a chance to come clean and give him a goddamn deadline to do that by, and tell him that if he doesn't, I'll reevaluate how I'm handling this information. This would give him agency, but also not drop the ball on a friendly acquaintance who needs to know. I wouldn't want her to eventually find out that I knew and didn't say anything.

[taimatsu]

This is how I’d handle it as well, I think. She needs to know but giving the guy a chance to confess first might be better.

[green_grrl]

This is a tough one. There’s even the possibility that LW’s boyfriend was lying about his friend to diminish his own awfulness. But I come down on: possibility of STIs + I’d want to know = tell the gf you have no proof positive, but your (soon-to-be-ex) bf told you her man was cheating.

[minoanmiss]

This is basically what I was going to say as well.

[jadelennox]

Yeah, I realised I felt that way when my friend found out, after she learned her male partner had been cheating, that a male mutual friend had known for months. Male Friend had been concerned about getting involved and creating drama, and I freaked the hell out about STIs.

[ambyr]

There’s even the possibility that LW’s boyfriend was lying about his friend to diminish his own awfulness.

This. I don't think LW should say anything, not because the dude in question needs time to find himself through therapy, but because the LW herself doesn't actually know anything. All she's going on is hearsay from someone who has just proven themselves untrustworthy.

[mommy]

This is what I'd want if I was being cheated on. More information is better than less, particularly where possible health issues are concerned.

[azurelunatic]

Keeping this information from her would absolutely give her trust issues when she found out. Don't keep it from her.

Having this kind of relationship-torpedoing knowledge and withholding it is choosing a side: the side of the cheater.

[azurelunatic]

Also, from an enlightened self interest viewpoint, it's an absolutely terrible experience to keep something important from someone you're close to. It colors all your interactions, it gets in the way of emotional closeness, and they often notice the awkwardness and assume they've done something to alienate you.

The longer it goes on, the worse it gets.

[cereta]

1. I have never understood people's use of bad behavior on the part of Person X to excuse bad behavior on the part of Person Y. You see this in politics ALL the TIME. "But what about Other Due's bad behavior?" Shockingly, "But your honor, my neighbor cheated on their taxes!" never got anyone off of a burglary charge.

2. I always look at it this way: I would absolutely want to know if my spouse were cheating on me, and would be furious if people* knew and didn't tell me. I figure I owe other people that much.

* Possible exception for spouse's parents or maybe closest friend, although even then, I'd be a little miffed.

[rosefox]

LW, tell your friend that your partner has been cheating on you, talk about how it feels, and ask whether she's ever dealt with anything like that or what she would do if she found out her partner was cheating. Your unfortunate situation gives you a perfect opportunity to sound her out on what she'd like you to do.