The decision to disclose infidelity when the infidelity is not your own is always tricky business. On the one hand, what goes on in a person’s relationship is no one’s business but their own, but on the other, as a loving friend or family member, there is a protective side that is hard to tame when you notice that someone is doing your loved one wrong.
DivorcedMoms contributor Nancy Lay-King recently tackled the topic in a post entitled, “Should You Tell on a Cheater? I Wish Someone Had Told Me.” From the article:
“Truth can be painful to hear, but it is brutal to deliver to a friend, your boss’ spouse, a neighbor, a family member, to anyone. … A thankless position to be in, but I wish someone had told me. Dozens of people had first-hand knowledge for years about my ex’s chronic infidelity. Some knew me, others didn’t. But they sure knew of me. Any one of them could have used facts and sent me an anonymous note or made a call. Family members actually knew and could have told me, which is especially sad. It would have been a gift, jolting me out of the state of denial that I’d apparently taken up residence in almost from the day I married. As far as I’m concerned, everyone who chose not to tell me walked away from the scene of a wreck and that wreck, unbeknownst to me, was my life.”
If you know that your loved one’s spouse is cheating, there may be a tendency to read Lay-King’s thoughts and say, “No way, not me. They’ll just turn on me if I tell them. I don’t want to get involved.”
While that’s an understandable reaction if you’re not that particularly close to someone, it’s a puzzler if you claim to love the individual. Yes, they might turn on you for a bit as they work to sort through the bomb you just dropped, but if your love for them is reciprocated, they will likely come out of it eventually, especially when they discover you were telling them the truth.
Have you ever been in this position as a friend or family member? How did you choose to react?