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What do I do now?
ranger48
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
First time poster, long time reader. Recently I did something I should not have done. I did something I never thought I would be capable of doing.
I slept with my friend's wife.
I don't really feel all that guilty about it. We connected with each other. I understand how shitty a thing I've done, and I do wish I could take it back so that things weren't so difficult. Lately I've been distancing myself to try and break our feelings apart, but she doesn't seem to be able to stop thinking about me. We never told him what happened. I wanted to, but she doesn't want to hurt him.
What do I do now?
(I would appreciate if the posts were kept to suggestions. I don't need to be told I'm a piece of shit yet again.)
I slept with my friend's wife.
I don't really feel all that guilty about it. We connected with each other. I understand how shitty a thing I've done, and I do wish I could take it back so that things weren't so difficult. Lately I've been distancing myself to try and break our feelings apart, but she doesn't seem to be able to stop thinking about me. We never told him what happened. I wanted to, but she doesn't want to hurt him.
What do I do now?
(I would appreciate if the posts were kept to suggestions. I don't need to be told I'm a piece of shit yet again.)
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Was it just one time or a few times? How is she taking this? Is she "in love" with you, or just looking for some fucking?
We're all pretty good friends. I wouldn't say best friends, but they're some of my better friends.
It was just once. So far. I've been distancing myself completely (haven't seen her for 3 weeks). We still chat for brief periods online. I just don't know how to act.
Seems the consensus is to not tell. I suppose the only reason I do want to tell is to get whatever guilt I do feel out. Not fair to him, though, is it... Just feels like I'm rationalizing...
I imagine his relationship rests on the belief and commitment to "We are both being faithful". I'm not sure I'd want to live a lie, and I don't know if he would either...
This is why I wanted to. But I can't say anything without her consent, right? I have a lot less to lose than she.
And don't feel guilty, life is too short.
I don't follow this line of logic, "consent" and all that.
As I see it, what she wants has nothing to do with it.
It depends on what you want, and what he would want.
As I said, I wouldn't want to live a lie, even if it were never, ever to happen again. He might be different, and you know him better than any of us do. If you do tell him, then you'll probably lose him as a friend (but it is my intuition that you'll be doing the right thing).
On the other hand, if you prefer to keep him/them as a friends, then I'd keep quiet about it, cover your tracks and avoid contact with the wife in his absence.
If this guy is your friend, you owe it to him to tell him his wife has been unfaithful. He WOULD want to know, and if he finds out about it some other way, it will be even worse. It may ruin your friendship, but he will at least respect the fact that you were honest with him, and you can at least move on without holding on to that guilt.
Don't be one of those guys. You can't change the fact that you did it, but you can at least do the right thing now. He needs to know, and you KNOW he does. Do the right thing.
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It will be sad to read in the news that something violent happened because of this advice. I have no idea how his friend will react against him, his wife, or both.
If they don't tell him, he'll probably never know. He'll go the rest of his life without knowing, either happily or unhappily. Do you really think telling him will make him feel better than not telling him?
As for "what if he finds out?" do you really think he's going to be more pissed off because you didn't tell him? This isn't spilling a drink, it's sleeping with his wife. I don't think there is a "more pissed off" than that.
If you plan to continue the affair, yeah, you should tell him, but if you intend to keep it to just that once, you shouldn't say shit.
It's about the fact that his relationship is predicated on the assumption of fidelity. His wife having cheated means that what be believes about his relationship is a lie. As Big Dookie and I have said, we'd want to know, we expect everyone else who we know would also want to know, if you asked them.
Which would you care about more: your best friend or your principle of honesty?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
let's see, logically speaking, if we were to weigh the pros and cons and leave out all abstract ideas, then I say that there are no pros when telling the truth. The way to go would be to not tell him. It would be a bad "business decision"
The problem with human nature (if it is indeed a problem- I don't think it is, it distinguishes us from robots) is that we have things like guilt and honesty. You owe this to your friend.
This is tough. The chicken shit thing to do is to not tell. It's also the practical thing.
Wow.
The right thing to do is not tell, and never mention it to anyone else, ever, and have that hanging over you for the rest of your life.
Really a relationship based on screwing over someone both of you are close to is never going to work no matter what connection the both of you think you have.
As for telling him, yes it will hurt him but it will give him a chance to work on whatever problems his marriage has or to stop wasting his time with someone that is unfaithful to him.
I don't have a principle of honesty. I'm saying that in my view telling him the truth is caring about this hypothetical friend based upon what I would want (which I know I would want, from experience).
He's already a party to ruining his friends marriage by sleeping with his wife.
Yeah you're gonna have to live with the guilt. Because if you tell him, you'll be doing it first and foremost to clear your conscience. And you've pretty much forfeited that right by doing said bad thing.
I told a lie to girl one time. Said it wasn't because she was ugly that I didn't like her. Couple years later, my guilt got to me and I told her that I had lied. The guilt I feel NOW for being such a selfish ass-face FAR outweighs the guilt before AND I have to deal with the knowledge that I probably took another piece of her already tiny source of self-confidence. I was a dick and I deserved to have to deal with that guilt. Now I'm a selfish dick and it's so much worse.
You gotta be absolutely certain of what your intentions are if you're gonna tell. Is it primarily for you or for him.
I don't think that's quite how it works. Just because you told someone you did something doesn't make what you did ok. The guys is probably still going to feel whatever guilt he does now over what he has done, and it seems like even though the guy's wife has only cheated this time, she seems eager to do it again, and if not with the op, she could cheat with other guys. If she does, the chance that the guy will find out that
You should tell him. Just be prepared to lose a friend.
Also, you said that she "didn't want to hurt him." It sounds to me like she only cares if he finds out, because she didn't seem to mind actually cheating on him. That seems pretty selfish to me. I think she's only trying to protect herself.
What if that other guy ISN'T clean?
What if her husband gets that disease when they have sex?
Just throwin' that out there.
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Do you have a point, or are you just asking questions with really obvious answers?
And on another note, there is no reason to think that the wife is going to stay silent. Something will happen. An argument where she blurts it out just to hurt him. A valentine or anniversary where he gets her a gift and the guilt drivers to to confess. Maybe she has one to many drinks and blurts it out accidentally. Maybe they're having sex and she yells out the wrong name in bed. bottom line there is no reason to think she wont spill the beans.
Right now the op has the chance to beat her to the punch and be the lesser shitheel than if the wife tells hubby what happened.
Its her job to tell. Her vow, her stuffing it up.
She hasn't had sex for money, so she's not a whore. Slut is really 'someone who's had more sex than me', so its not accurate either. She's a cheater and a liar, and a breaker of serious vows. Lets leave the pejoratives at the door, its not constructive.
Fair enough, though I believe my point still stands on principle.
I think Alyce was refuting the idea that, "If he never tells, no harm will ever come of her infedelity."
1. Tell him. He beats the shit out of you. You let him. Their marriage falls apart and ends in divorce. He probably starts drinking.
2. Don't tell him. You get to feel guilty the rest of your life but he isn't hurt until she does it again. (and she will).
Obviously, the only solution here is to seduce your best friend and fuck him. Then they've both cheated.
Or, just break off contact with both of them.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
What the flaming fuck? You quoted my post but you clearly didn't read it.
This has nothing to do with what I think is right. This has to do with ranger48 covering his ass. Shit is going to hit the fan. Anyone can see it coming from a mile away. All he can do now is control how much of it he's going to catch.
By coming clean he controls what the husband is going to hear. Maybe he wants to blame the wife for it. Maybe he can pretend to be honorable and say it's all his fault or make it look like it just happened and nobodies to blame. Bullshit, I know. But it's a million times better than the wife dropping the bomb in a fight or yelling out the other guys name in bed.
Really, there is nothing nice or honorable about this approach. But then again, neither is sleeping with your best friend's wife. Again, the only point of this is one thing. Damage control.
Furthermore, the more blame is placed on the wife, the harder it will be for the husband and the wife to be civil around each other, be it in marriage counseling or the more likely scenario of divorce. Whether it's fair to the poster or not, the truth is that the very least he owes his friend is a clean divorce and the illusion that his wife maybe wouldn't have cheated on him if she hadn't been seduced. Whether or not his friend ever really trusts a woman again could be determined by what he allows himself to think about why his marriage failed, truthful or otherwise.
And face it, it's not like the poster and this guy are every going to be friends again, should it come to revealing things to the husband. So why should the poster bother try to save face by ensuring that he gets his side of the story out there? There's nothing to gain.
But anyway, unless there's reason to believe that the wife is going to contract a disease or become pregnant with some other man's kid and isn't going to try to make things work with her husband, I wouldn't advise telling. If it's clear the marriage is down the tubes (and one instance of infidelity hardly means as much), though, then he should encourage the wife to come clean and resist intervening himself unless it becomes clear that she doesn't have her husband's interests in mind at all.
But either way, the friendship is over and there's no use pretending otherwise, so cut off all ties.