UBT: I Had an Affair With My Friend’s Wife. Should I Tell Him?

Once again the Ethicist fumbles with a FW who asks “I had an affair with my friend’s wife — should I tell? And of course the “Ethicist” advises to keep the secret.

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I can’t even with The Ethicist in the New York Times. I think this is the bazillionth time he’s answered a letter about cheating and been on Team Secret and head cheerleader for sexual entitlement. In fact, it’s almost like he goes out of his way to run these columns and give this crap advice. Either that, or he’s run out of ethical dilemmas.

Gift link to I Had An Affair with My Friend’s Wife. Should I Tell Him? We can all vomit in tandem.

The comments were totally disappointing.

“Snitches wind up in ditches.”

“There’s absolutely no reason for you to actively participate in blowing up this poor guy’s world for an affair that only lasted a few weeks. If I were you I wouldn’t mention this affair to him or anyone else.” (MOST LIKED COMMENT.)

“Let sleeping dogs lie. It ended. You never knew their full story.”

No one ever thinks about the chump.

Because it’s terrifying to imagine yourself that vulnerable, so the majority of people sympathize with the cheaters. I Wouldn’t Want Anyone to Know. Of course, they’d want everyone to keep their secret. The collective mind doesn’t go to the person who didn’t get a vote. Best to keep him in the dark. Let him keep investing in his Potemkin life. No one wants to consider the chump’s risks or what could happen during a “short” affair. STIs. Pregnancy. No, just make it go away. They assume absolutely no harm could occur. In fact, the only harm is the truth.

The letter:

Not long ago, I met a woman entirely by chance in an art class that I wandered into. From the moment we met, there was an immediate spark and chemistry between us — we flirted and we connected, and that flirtation grew into something more.

I was single, but I later discovered that the woman was the wife of a friend of mine. He’s not a close friend — close enough that I care, but not so close that I even knew he was married, let alone to her. By the time I learned this information, my connection with his wife had become magical. Despite numerous mutual efforts to stop it, we had an affair that lasted a few weeks.

Eventually we ended the relationship, knowing it wasn’t right, and we haven’t resumed contact. Now, months later, I wonder if I have a moral duty to tell my friend what happened.

He and his wife seem to have a stable life together. If she chooses silence, is it my place to reveal it? Or should I let them navigate the situation as a couple? I’m torn between honesty and not wanting to cause unnecessary harm. — Name Withheld

My Chump Lady advice:

You should tell the betrayed husband. As a willing affair partner, you conspired in his abuse. You risked his health. His wife made unilateral decisions about their relationship and his health and giving him knowledge is one way to right your unethical behavior.

Whether you knew he was married or was a friend or was the Maytag repair man is besides the point. Once you discovered there was a third person who didn’t know, you were harming this person. What he does with the knowledge is HIS business. He might reconcile, he might dump her, he might not waste the next decade of his life investing in a person who isn’t invested in him. But he won’t be in the dark.

All these “keep the secret” people are siding with a cheater’s entitlement. And ignoring the harm the conspiracy of silence is doing to the chumped partner.

This was a minority opinion.

And at this point I lost hope about trying to change the infidelity narrative. I’d just listened to this excellent podcast series about the Michael Jackson trials and they’re talking to an FBI agent about raising awareness about child seggs abuse. And a woman whose child was victimized has made it her life’s work to stop predators. But she grows heart sick because NO ONE WANTS TO KNOW. They imagine it’s all stranger danger when the facts are it’s family and close acquaintances and people in trusted positions of authority — and absolutely no one wants this information.

Same with chumpdom.

Secrets have CONSEQUENCES. Affairs are NOT what you think. Double lives are ABUSIVE. Talk to Eileen Fox, the woman I interviewed for the podcast this week, who has multiple cancers from her husband’s wandering dick.

No one wants this information.

Including the New York TIme’s Ethicist. Fortunately, when I cannot go on, I have a patented bullshit translator to do the work for me.

Like all virtues, honesty is a complex character trait. It certainly involves a concern for the truth, but that concern does not require blurting out every truth you know, or even every truth another person might wish to hear.

There is no moral certainty just fuzzy shades of gray. Just because some chump would like to make informed decisions about his life, doesn’t mean you need to tell him you’ve been schtupping his wife.

I would never tell someone they have cancer. It could really destroy their world. Honesty is complex. Even when you imagine they’d want to know they have cancer. Save yourself the awkward conversation.

Don’t mislead people with the truth.

Above all, honesty means resisting the temptation to mislead.

The UBT is wondering how can you mislead someone by simply stating what you did?

So it would be one thing if your ex-lover’s husband were to ask you if you had an affair with her. But you don’t seem worried that he suspects anything, so that situation is unlikely to arise.

Not telling is a sin of omission. It’s a lie.

In fact, there is an entire school of ethics about this, which seems odd that a professional ethicist is unaware of. Withholding the truth to create a false impression is a form of lying. The false impression here is that the wife is faithful to her husband.

He’s not even a friend!

Nor is he a close friend; in light of the fact that you hadn’t even known that he was married, one might well wonder whether he qualifies as a friend at all. (There’s a category difference between people we count as friends and people we’re merely friendly with.) In any case, what you owe to a close friend who hasn’t asked is different from what you owe to somebody you know less well.

In what world of ethics does doing the right thing only matter if the person is a friend? If you saw a little old lady being mugged, should you not stop to help because you don’t know her? If you were friends with the mugger should you not report the crime?

Honest people also recognize the importance of keeping secrets that others reasonably expect them to keep.

WTF? Honest people don’t let cheaters enlist them in conspiracies of silence. There’s keeping secrets like “I have Anne Frank hiding in my attic” and secrets like “I cheat on my spouse.” Why is the Ethicist muddying the waters?

At the very least, an honest person in these circumstances might want to speak with the woman involved before deciding what, if anything, should be said.

Ask your mugger friend first if you should report the crime.

That’s because honesty involves caring not only about the place of truth in one’s own life but also about its place in the lives of others. It is perfectly consistent with honesty to recognize that some truths are better told by someone else.

Like, people who don’t have direct knowledge of what happened. It’s much easier to discredit such people.

Have clarity!

And then, honesty requires clarity about your own motives. Are you sure that concern for the truth is the only thing driving you? Do you secretly hope that telling her husband about the affair will bring her back to you? Are you, perhaps unconsciously, trying to punish her? Or yourself? Those are the kinds of questions you ought to give thought to.

Those genital warts care about your motives.

We sometimes speak of exercising a virtue “to a fault.” What we mean is a kind of moralism that isolates one feature of a situation and, by overemphasizing it, turns a virtue into a vice.

Keeping secrets is a virtue, telling a man he’s being cheated on is a vice. This is what severe dunderheaded moralists believe.

A decent person answers to more than one virtue,

Just like you answer to your head and your dick.

and therefore to more than one moral concern. Speaking up in this case would put at risk a marriage that you and your ex-lover have already strained. That might be unkind.

Telling the truth is unkind. Truth strains marriages even more than cheating!

To do so without fully thinking through the consequences would be thoughtless. And kindness and thoughtfulness are virtues, too.

You slept with your friend’s wife. Oops! Say no more about it. You wouldn’t want to be thoughtless and unkind, would you?