Should I expose a cheater?

Let me see if I have this straight, RA.

You think she has been manipulated her entire life by her family and her husband. Because of this lifelong manipulation, she isn't able to act clearly on her own behalf. In an effort to manipulate her into doing what you think is best for her, you intend to manipulate her husband into a situation that will give her the evidence you think she needs, even though it will be a fabrication. Do I have that right?

In all of this you intend on staying out of the fray and not discussing this with her in advance or tell her of you involvement after the fact, right? Yep, you're my kind of friend, RA!

Well truth be told I will not be manipulating her or her husband, think of it more along the lines of planting evidence of the infidelity where she can find it. A manipulation of sorts yes but not along the lines you portraited it.

With that said, I suppose that you have a very valid point, in order to do what I think is best, I have been comtemplating an act that will in turn be no different than what she has been put through by countless others and make me no better than them. Hadn't quite looked at it in that light before, and it does indeed make me think twice about doing what I was thinking. However I still have to wonder if it's not worth it to help her break away from not only a manipulative, but also abusive, situation. I guess the question I have to answer for myself is whether or not I believe that my intentions of honestly and truly wanting to help, will justify my actions.

When you are going to do the dying for someone then you can interfere with their living, until then you can't.

I grant you that you care for her. She has confided in you and thinks of you as her friend. Stop being a weasle and hiding in the bushes or trying to plant evidence where she could trip over it and ask her if she wants you to help her escape from her marriage.

I agree.

You're rationalizing. The evidence you plan on obtaining will be fabricated (manipulated) because you think her husband is too smart/sneaky to get caught in the act. You plan on letting her find this fabricated evidence and then be at the ready to be the knight in shining white armor to pick up the pieces that you have created.

IMHO, this situation is all too complicated for my taste.

Butt out of exposing her hubby. If you caught him, then he's careless enough to get caught by her, too. She'll have to work this out on her own if she is to be strong enough to survive in this marriage and the world in general.

There's way too much rationalizing and head games in this story for me. Sorry but that's how I see this.

Also, in the future, if she were single and free again, would you want to see her? If so, make doubly sure that you are in no way involved with her breakup.

There's another thread around here by Lucky Lad that's the flip side of this, well sorta.

He gets an email from a "friend" that was a forward of ANOTHER email from someone saying LL's wife slept with someone 14 years ago before they were even married (they were engaged)

This has been eating LL's lunch for 2 days now. For no reason I can see, she's borne 2 children by him and apparantly runs the house.

I think he's "friend" was a friggin' idiot for sharing that info.

Mind your own bees wax.

As it happens, I was just reading through the Slate.com home page, was looking around at various articles, and hit upon an advice column by Prudence.

She was answering a similar question, about whether a friend should tell that the fellow is gay/bi, to a woman about to marry him. She explains various reasons why people marry knowingly, but in this particular case says tell, because of the aids thing, but says for the friend to say only that there are rumors, not that she knows for sure, because, after all, she wasn't in the room. I'm still thinking about that one.

Noddy's point is interesting about her opinion changing over the years, in part because of the matter of sexually transmitted diseases increasing in danger to life.

I see that point, but still am against interference, as I said earlier.

However, since the woman here has expressed her own doubts, it seems wise to at least bring up that if her doubts are correct, she could be putting herself in line for an STD. And, I continue to agree with J-B, this time on the matter of offering support/help if the woman chooses to move out of the marriage.

I'd still stop short of pushing her to do that. Not really your place.
If the marriage is abusive otherwise, and it sounds like it may be, there are resources for dealing with that, and those are the subject of several other threads here.

Personally, I'd tell her what you saw, provided you KNOW that you KNOW that you KNOW what you saw. Again, did you see him shagging someone? Or were they just out to dinner? Don't stick your nose into a situation without knowing 110% the truth of it. You could ruin a marriage that way.

If you do know what you saw, and you are that close to this person, I'd say something. Just bring it up and say "I don't want to hurt you but I think you should know what I saw...."

Random Acts, what do you think will happen if you do decide to speak to Mrs. about Mr.'s activities?

Do you expect her to take some particular action on receipt of the information?

Do you think she'll appreciate getting this information, and your involvement? Do you expect her to be grateful to you? How will you feel if she decides that you've brought pain to her life and she doesn't want you around anymore?

How will you feel if she speaks to Mr. about this, and they end up revitalizing their marriage? Will you be pleased for them?

~~~~~

I'm generally not a fan of snooping/setting people up when it comes to own/others relationships, but there are exceptional circumstances when it could be appropriate.

I do think it's important to consider one's own motives when messing around in other people's relationships. I definitely learned a lot about myself when considering taking actions like you're proposing. I opted to back away.

Bella
It's funny your response was followed by ehbeths, because she said so much more elequontly what I want to say.

I know you believe every marriage "should" be totally truthful, and there "should" be no secrets, etc., but frankly, it's absolutely no ones place, except maybe for a close family member to be the one to push their ideals of what a marriage "should" be.

If a friend came to me with this, not only would I stop considering a true friend, but I'd let him/her know that any problems coming from this between me and my husband would be entirely their fault. Problems in a marriage are just private.

No one know what goes on between 2 people. Maybe she already knows this, and for whatever reason choices to deal with it a way in which someone else wouldn't.

Or, perhaps the marriage is coming to the point where this problem, even if there is one, is coming to it's natural coming out. Instead some well meaning person forces the problem into the open before it's time.

We just don't know.

Someone who would do their good deed by butting in like this will be able to sit at home at night, warm and snug in the knowledge that they saved them from themselves by their actions.

In the meantime, the married couple are going through hell.

Mind your own business, when and if it needs to come out, you don't need to be the hero.

The messager becomes the enemy - not always, but often enough.
I wouldn't tell my best friend, even if I'd know for sure that her husband
is cheating on her. Now, I probably would take him to the side and tell
him a few things....

Let's say that Wife is walking down the street and Friend sees a piano about to fall out of a window and onto Wife's head. In that circumstance, it is inconceivable that anyone here would say that Friend should "mind his own business" and not attempt to warn Wife. Friend has information that would prevent a potential harm to Wife. So why is that situation any different from the case where Friend knows information about Husband that would potentially harm Wife?

As I see it, there are five different rationales for saying that the situation where Friend sees the falling piano is different from the one in which Friend sees the cheating Husband.

(1) There's a greater chance that Friend is wrong about the cheating: I think that's true, but then that only means that Friend should be particularly careful before communicating this information to Wife. It does not, on the other hand, seem to me the basis for a rule that permits no exceptions when Friend is absolutely, incontrovertibly sure that his information is accurate. After all, we don't condemn Friend for issuing a warning to Wife even if the piano doesn't end up falling out of the window. Rather, we encourage people to warn others of potential harm, even if the information is imperfect and the harm is not assured. How much more, then, should we encourage Friend if his information is beyond doubt?

(2) There's a good chance that Wife will resent what she perceives as "meddling": Again, that's true, but is that a moral consideration? If Friend has an obligation to prevent harm to Wife (a point that we can, at least for argument's sake, accept as true), then Wife's reaction is largely beside the point (unless that reaction represents a greater harm -- see below). If Wife would potentially be ungrateful or, even worse, actively resentful of the Friend's advice, that doesn't mean that Friend is absolved from his initial obligation. Only if Wife has told Friend, beforehand, that she doesn't want him to inform on Husband is Friend relieved from his duty to prevent harm to Wife and keep his information about Husband to himself.

(3) There's a greater chance that Friend will be acting on ulterior motives: No doubt that is always a risk, but, as in the first case, I'm not sure why this should be the basis for a rule that admits no exceptions. Can we say that someone in Friend's position is always a rogue and a scoundrel, or lacking in the kind of insight that would prevent him from appreciating that, in this case, he was acting more on his own behalf than on that of Wife? Certainly, someone who would benefit from the breakup of a marriage should examine his own motives extremely carefully before taking steps to effect that breakup, and the least doubt should weigh his decision in favor of keeping silent. On the other hand, I don't think we can say that, even in the case of the less-than-disinterested Friend, he could never, in good conscience, inform Wife of Husband's indiscretions.

(4) Informing on Husband might cause more harm to Wife than remaining silent: Well, that's true as well. Wife, for all we know, might be much happier living in ignorance. But then we don't tell people not to act in the interests of preventing harm, even if their actions might actually lead to greater harm, as long as they are acting prudently according to the knowledge that they possess or should possess of the circumstances. If, for instance, Friend sees the piano teetering on the window ledge and yells out a warning to Wife, and, as a result, Wife steps off the sidewalk and into the street, where she is then hit by a car, we don't necessarily condemn Friend for yelling out the warning, even if he took into consideration the possibility of Wife being hit by the car, as long as he reasonably believed that the danger of the falling piano was greater than that of the car. If Friend, fairly weighing the damage to Wife of telling her and the damage of not telling her, concludes that the latter outweighs the former, then he should not be blamed for telling her even if it turns out that he was wrong.

(5) It's none of Friend's business: Actually, this is more of an amalgam of the previous four distinctions. In its essentials, it's more of a pragmatic rule of thumb rather than a substantive distinction. Saying that Friend has no business interjecting himself in Wife's marriage, on its own, sounds no more reasonable than to say that Friend has no business telling Wife that she is about to be flattened by a piano. The only reason that we place marriage "off limits" is because, in our experience, there are many more negative consequences to someone like Friend informing Wife of Husband's dalliances than to someone like Friend informing Wife of an impending encounter with a heavy musical instrument. But, as I point out above, I'm not sure if any of those consequences rise to the level of moral considerations. For the most part, they are pragmatic, not moral. In the end, they deal more with what might happen to Friend than what Friend should do on Wife's behalf.

The consequences to Friend might be severe, but I am not clear on why those consequences should play a decisive role in determining what Friend should do in the first place. Of course, Friend may decide not to act because he fears the consequences to himself, just as he might decide not to call out a warning to Wife about the piano because he fears that, if he is wrong, he will be ridiculed. Indeed, in the latter case, the law would not condemn Friend for his failure to call out a warning, even if turns out that the piano does in fact fall and squash Wife. On the other hand, most would consider it morally objectionable for Friend, acting in his own interests, to refrain from calling out when his warning could have prevented serious harm to Wife. Why, then, would the possible negative consequences of informing on Husband make it less objectionable for Friend to neglect his duty to prevent serious harm to Wife?

I would say, then, that if Friend is confident that his information is solid, that he is not acting on some ulterior motive, and that he would cause more harm by not telling than by telling Wife, he should tell her. I would hasten to add, however, that those are rather formidable considerations, and one should not act unless he was absolutely confident on all those points.

Relationships aren't pianos.

That'll teach me!

Personally, I like numbers 3 and the first part of number 5. I don't think Random Action is without self interest in this and I do think that there is a certain sanctity of the relationship where Friend is obligated to support her choice in her relationship rather than try to manipulate it.

A statement that is as indisputable as it is irrelevant.

Ah, but aids, etc., can be a piano.

I think it's very relevant that people and their relationships are not inanimate objects. There are emotions involved in relationships that simply don't come into play when the 'other' is an object.

I don't think it's as simple as 1 through 5 - people aren't like that in my experience.

But, by pushing her away from the falling piano, RA is assuming she is unable to see the piano, even if it's pointed out to her and is putting himself in the role of savior and shining knight. I wouldn't have nearly the issues with this if he was being upfront with her and working with her. I'm much more concerned about his manipulations of the situation, which seem to serve his self interests.