Couple months ago I met a woman who works at a dispensary I visit about once a week. We hit it off really well. Despite trying to just keep it casual sex, and that only, I ended up developing some feelings for her. She confessed the same to me. I even introduced her to my teenaged daughter, for fucks sake.
I ran into her this evening at a gas station, with another guy, who turns out to be her husband. They’ve been married five years, and have two children together, ages 4 and 2. Finding out they have kids just made me feel disgusting.
So, I told him. He didnt believe me until I described a tattoo in a somewhat intimate place on her body. I had no fucking clue she was married. I think I ruined someone’s marriage. Or at least took part in ruining one.
I feel guilty. I am sorry for what I participated in. Am I a bad person?
you should have confronted her personally first. you definitely got ahead of yourself and overstepped. you acted emotionally without considering the possible repercussions.
the chorus of he/hims in this thread positively relishing the idea of this woman getting punished by her husband for her actions and not even stopping to think about the possible violent repercussions of OPs actions is honestly disturbing. people cheat for all variety of reasons. many of them, especially for women, are justified. hate when this site shows its
roots so plainly.Honestly hadn’t thought of it like that. And after reading some more of details OP provided in the replies, especially the fact that she was making a big deal about him approaching, makes it seem like there was some legitimate fear on her part of some sort of reprecussion.
I just hope others take your, and other women’s, perspective on this and learn something. Admittedly I figure being honest about an affair with the person that is being cheated on seems like a good thing on the surface, but it also completely devalues the woman and the situation they may have been in prior to cheating.
Unsolicited relationship take: maybe it’s worth finding out her marriage situation first (e.g. abusive husband) before pulling the trigger? Maybe she already has plans to leave him, but couldn’t tell you in advance for certain reasons? The reasons could be a lot more complicated than your assumptions here.
Now if it indeed turns out to be an abusive husband, I fear for the woman’s life.
agree. honestly this thread stinks of patriarchal myopia and frankly, gleeful misogyny.
As someone else mentioned, it probably would have been worth giving her an opportunity to give her perspective before deciding if and how to tell the husband. Most likely the final result is just telling him, but there are more marginal possibilities that it is worth accounting for and taking an extra couple of days wouldn’t have harmed you or him (yours was already a dead relationship by virtue of your understandable disapproval of her cheating, so it’s not like you’d be enabling her to cheat for longer unless you think she’s managing to juggle even more guys along with young children and a marriage).
She had every opportunity to be honest from the outset of their relationship. Getting caught lying isn’t some magic reset where now you get to tell your side.
Talking about this in terms of social contract theory is really sidestepping the morality of the issue. Would you say that her lying entitles OP to punch her in the face? Surely not, two wrongs don’t make a right, punitive justice is bad, etc. What OP should do is investigate the issue with her not because she “gets to” tell her side or has a right to, but because he doesn’t know what the consequences of telling the husband would be. For all he knows, the husband is abusive and would beat her for this transgression, transgression though it is. The most likely outcome is, of course, that the husband is not abusive, but the most likely outcome of a round of Russian roulette is that you go unharmed. In either case, there is a real risk that is severe enough that it’s worth checking, even if it’s substantially less likely.
Actually, within your framework, the morally correct thing to do is make sure she didn’t notice you seeing her, quietly break it off, and do absolutely nothing else beyond that. You can’t possibly know for certain the outcomes of your actions no matter how much “investigation” you do, so the possibility of causing a negative outcome exists if you attempt to influence the situation in any way.
That only makes sense if you completely discount the husband as a moral patient. While I’m arguing that he’s been slightly over-emphasized, I am by no means discounting him and in most possible scenarios believe he should be informed. If he has no history known to his wife of probably 4+ years of being an abuser to her or others as far as she knows, it’s pretty unlikely that he is. Making the decision to not tell him anyway on the very, very unlikely chance that he, as a historically normal dude, snaps and blows her head off with a shotgun, is completely discounting the guaranteed outcome of him being wronged by being left in the dark about this.
there is a non-trivial chance that this woman now gets battered because of OP. he could have not acted emotionally and taken steps to ensure that wasn’t a possibility.
There was a non-trivial chance that OP could get battered or straight up murdered without any knowledge or consent able to be given if the husband were to ever find out. The other party took zero of the steps available to mitigate this possibility.
There’s a non-trivial chance that this behavior puts their children in danger because the offending party is making risky decisions to cover up their indiscretion. It’s impossible to know.
Maybe the “investigation” removed the woman into doing something unconscionable.
In any number of imaginary situations, the OP took the morally correct approach and your approach could have gotten someone hurt or killed by inaction. It’s an incredibly morally ambiguous position to be put in and this guy did what he felt was right, it’s hard for me to pass that kind of judgement on him.
blaming the woman for the theoretical actions of her theoretically murderous husband, nice. not engaging with this misogynistic nonsense. tbh women in cishet relationships cheating is basically nbd anyway, couldn’t care less.
This is a very wild position to have and is proof that, when I ascend to Stalinhood, all sex and romantic relationships will be banned.
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christian moralism is when you think people shouldn’t be unknowingly stuck in a relationship with someone who has no respect for them
nah dawg that is not your relationship. you overstepped. greatly. wtf.
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i know it’s not my relationship, i wasn’t involved. i am an internet person who has never met any of the relevant people commenting from a third party neutral perspective.
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when someone is being deeply wronged and they don’t know about it but you do, you are (in my opinion) morally obligated to inform them. and this is a very common point of view. it is extraordinarily normal for a person who is being cheated with to find out that the person they’ve been in a relationship with already has a partner and to then seek out that partner and inform them. it is standard practice. 99% of people agree that it is the correct course of action.
cheating sucks. don’t cheat and you won’t have to worry about your partner being informed of your cheating
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Sounds like a cheater got mad.
If you know your partner cheats on you you can start moving on and enjoy new relationships. Life is short, dating is increasingly hard as you grow up, so wasting time in an exclusive relationship being cheated on is horrible when you know you could’ve experienced love with other people if you simply knew
you could’ve also been cheating that entire time too. donny blame someone else’s actions for your own decisions in life. you are responsible for yourself and your decisions when it comes to inter-personal relationships, full stop.
You seem to have issues with the “ethical” part of non-monagamy. Cheating on your partner (aka, sleeping with other people without their consent), is not ethical. The ethical thing to do is to ask for that consent, and to break it off if you cant get it and you need to be with/sleep with other people.
Something tells me I shouldn’t need to explain this
Edit : Okay I get it youre against the monogamous patriarchal structure of marriage. I’m too actually, but as long as you get into a relationship with a partner that promises exclusivity it’s absolutely unfair to live a better life and prevent them to do so too. That’s the actual problem, instead of opening the relationship honestly and both live a better life outside the bonds of marriage you keep the other unable to do so and that’s wrong.
While there is potentially more nuance to this, and maybe it could have been handled with a smidge more tact,I don’t see why a betrayal of trust like cheating shouldn’t be reported to the people affected by it only because there is a power imbalance in patriarchal society Obviously,you should make sure the person you’re outing wouldn’t be put in danger by this first,but it’s definitely not something to be excused
Obviously,you should make sure the person you’re outing wouldn’t be put in danger by this first,but it’s definitely not something to be excused
I mean, if someone were to be put in danger by being exposed- wouldn’t that be a pretty damn good excuse?
there’s any number of reasons people “cheat” and main one is that the very idea of monogamy and cheating stands from patriarchal monotheism and the fact that through ask of human history large numbers of adults have “cheated” or lived in non-monogamous societies shows that the idea that it is “BAD” to cheat it moralistic and idiotic.
Non ethical non monogamy is no different from patriarchal monogamy. Get outta here with your bad takes that because toxic monogamy exists it’s okay to be a lying sack of shit to your partners. Non monogamy is great but it has to be done ethically and consensually or it’s just a different style of bad
Monogamy long predates patriarchal monotheism. Jews didn’t invent marriage. And while there have always been cultures without strict monogamy, there have also always been cultures with strict monogamy - and often these can exist in the same culture. How that makes the voluntary choice to be monogamous universally bad and therefore cheating is universally good I don’t know.
I agree,but under the current monogamous paradigm, people are going to feel hurt and betrayed by this sort of behavior
So,even considering this,it would have been reasonable to expect that she would have told him beforehand
Until a more enlightened age arrives,where more types of human connection other than monogamy will be commonplace, we can assume most people will have been socially conditioned to expect an exclusive arrangement and may not wish to take part in less conventional types of relationships and then act accordingly
Yeah,I didn’t word that correctly
I meant that it shouldn’t be excused unless that is the case
Ending it quietly is cowardly and unethical.
Hopefully they solve their relationship issues.
Nah, definitely not with such young kids involved.
I really read “mermaid woman” and was saddened when that didn’t enter the story but unintentionally being made partner to infidelity did
My friends call me a loser
'Cause I’m still hanging around
I’ve heard so many rumors
That I’m just a girl that you bang on your couch
I thought you thought of me better
Someone you couldn’t lose
You said, “We’re not together”
So now when we kiss, I have anger issues
You didn’t know and immediately did the right thing upon learning. You were lied to by omission, it’s not a normalized thing to ask “are you in an exclusive relationship?”. The cheater ruined the marriage, not you.
That conversation ranks up there with one of the more difficult ones I’ve ever had to approach a stranger for. Had she not made such a big deal about me not talking to him when I was first approaching, it probably wouldn’t have gotten his attention and I might not have followed thru with it.
Acting guilty instead of playing it cool definitely dug some of that hole. I can’t really imagine, but I certainly believe you in that it must have been incredibly difficult.
Do feel bad, you’re a good person for telling him
Also maybe this is cause I’m a woman but also happy you’re safe. I’d be so afraid of the guy getting mad at me and getting physical
I’d be so afraid of the guy getting mad at me and getting physical
thankfully that burden will now be borne entirely by his wife.
…kinda shocked a woman doesn’t see how bad this is
I had assumed that if he didn’t get mad enough to beat her right there and then after hearing the news he wouldn’t get any more mad and beat her later
Now that I actually think about it yea, this is a completely wrong assumption
I don’t know how cheaters and physical abusers think lol
This, 100%. u/Feinsteins_Ghost, if you have any doubts, you should probably at least check in on her to see if she’s fine.
You did what you should have done in your situation by telling the husband when you found out.
Just be glad you dodged a massive bullet now vs a few years down the line.
Yeah. I’m fine. It ended before I really got attached, or heaven forbid my daughter get attached.
Shitty but I’ll be back to normal, whatever that is, in a couple days.
I mean she didn’t tell you, I’m not sure what you could have done short of waiting longer to have sex on the off chance you might discover she was hiding something, or asking outright. Which is a pretty toxic way to approach relationships from my point of view.
No, you aren’t a bad person. Honestly I’d be taken aback a bit that even after meeting your daughter she wouldn’t have thought of her own kids and told you the truth right then and there.
Yeah. I haven’t been thinking too much about it, but that had crossed my mind too. It is pretty messed up.
Yeah, that sucks ass. Hope you can move on and all that. She probably should have clued in to things when seeing your daughter at least.
Gunna’ use this thread to block the most annoying posters on here. These types and the people who try to bait reactionary language, either during debates or under a faux-naive guise, are the worst.
I’ll be fine. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this situation before, it’s mostly just disappointing. Sad, but mostly just disappoint.
You could not have known and you did the right thing after finding. Sorry you had to go through that though
you did the right thing, nothing to feel bad about. but that sucks, hope you find somebody else you like soon!
I think you should have kept it to yourself.
I’m genuinely curious why
I think telling was out of spite
Spite for what or whom?
You had feelings for her and those were dashed. Maybe I’m wrong!
Nah fuck that he’s not responsible for keeping the secrets of a woman who lied to him
Assuming OP was right, I’d frame it more as his having an obligation to the husband as a human being making the choice correct rather than as a lack of obligation to the wife making the choice indifferent. We should be trying to make the world better, not carefully demarcating the bounds of social contracts so we can find out exactly where we’re allowed to do as much harm as we feel like.
But I also think SadArtemis is right that OP, to put it charitably, got ahead of himself
IMO- something I learnt from others (as I used to be pissed if someone tried to lie to me)- not all lies are done with malice. Her lies hurt the husband, not OP.
They’re not responsible for keeping the secrets, sure. But we also don’t know her circumstances (clearly OP didn’t either, if they only found out she was married now). You can feel vindicated that the “cheater/liar got punished,” or whatever, but I imagine you’d feel different if OP posts in the future saying next time they see her she has a black eye (or it’s in the news she was killed or something), now wouldn’t you?
Personally I’d have confronted her about it and asked first. And personally- coming from a seriously fucked up family upbringing myself- not all marriages, “even with kids” (sometimes especially with kids) should exist, some are a curse on everyone involved. I’d have thought most people nowadays can understand that on some level, in such spaces in particular.
And personally- coming from a seriously fucked up family upbringing myself- not all marriages, “even with kids” (sometimes especially with kids) should exist, some are a curse on everyone involved. I’d have thought most people nowadays can understand that on some level, in such spaces in particular.
In my family’s fucked up marriages, cheating is almost always the violation that sends the whole thing spinning - no abuse needed. My parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle, in-law grandparents were all destroyed by one side choosing to cheat.
Neither of my parents cheated, as far as I know (and if they had, good chances are I’d have known). They just tortured each other (and the kids) for a decade, while spiraling deeper into certain Catholic mindsets/circles and quiverfull-adjacent nonsense. And then they tortured each other for the better part of yet another decade (taking several years to properly divorce despite being separated, having a long, drawn-out divorce which only further ruined their already long-since ruined lives).
Not invalidating your own experiences here, but it’s a big world out there, and there’s probably just as many out there with experiences like mine as with yours. As a kid my parents’ separation (nasty and destructive as it was) was still a relief, and when it was finalized with a divorce it was all the better. Some things (or many) are simply cursed from the onset.
I do agree with this general sentiment, I’ve been in a cursed, abusive relationship and cheated on them (though not to the point of sex) because at the time I was being quite explicitly threatened and coerced into staying in that relationship. If I had been found out, it would not have looked pretty; OTOH cheating like that was a major step in giving me the confidence to leave.
I have no idea what the woman’s circumstances were, but I agree they could’ve been very complicated and not as black/white as it seems.
At the same time, I also don’t think it’s fair to claim her lies didn’t hurt the OP, and I don’t think OP is a bad person. I wouldn’t have blamed the other person if it had happened in my circumstances. I can 100% understand why a person might cheat (obviously, as I’ve done it), but if you betray a person’s trust, especially the one who actually hasn’t wronged you at all, then it’s not unfair or unreasonable for them to react negatively, nor to assume the other person should find out too.
Personally, I’d do the same as you. But it is an understandably murky moral sea, and I’m not sure any answers are 100% right. Not confronting it there and then could mean OP just gets lied to more.
Good point, in regards to that her lies did hurt OP (unintentional as that may have been). FWIW I didn’t think OP is a bad person, it was a difficult situation and in the heat of the moment, I can’t claim that I would have necessarily acted differently (hell, I’d say I genuinely used to be a bad, or overly spiteful/vengeful/malicious person about such things).
My comment wasn’t written as, or intended as a judgement of OP’s character (which wouldn’t be defined by just one thing, hell, “good” people can do “bad” things), that said. I just wanted to bring up what everyone else here seemed to have not considered- what I’d like to think I’d do, if I approached things from a calm and collected manner, and the insights that I’ve had shared with me from others (not always taking lies personally definitely wasn’t something I learnt myself).
There’s all sorts of reasons why someone could cheat, or even (highly circumstantial and uncommon) reasons why someone should cheat. And seeing all the comments moralizing about always outing or condemning cheaters also just put a bad taste in my mouth (as someone who’s never cheated, myself- though coming from the childhood I did, I can’t claim possessiveness/exclusivity matters in the slightest to me).
For sure. I agree with everything you’ve said here, and fully appreciate you bringing up those points. Cheating comes with a context and complex circumstances that don’t make things so clear cut.
Her lies hurt the husband, not OP
She made OP complicit in cheating.
plus lying about your sex life is a consent issue both just because it’s consent prefaced on a lie and because of STDs.
nope lol, if you’re being cheated on you deserve to know
