I’m surprised she didn’t ask if she could cook his little girl’s bunny too, like Glenn Close did in “Fatal Attraction.”
It amazed me that someone like this reads a NYT column called “The Ethicist.” She’s sounds like she’s never heard of the concept. She writes,
Last summer, I was dating a man in our weekender community outside New York City who seemed like a wonderful guy. A month after we became intimate, he told me that he was married but that he had been separated from his wife for a year. He explained that the reason he has not gotten a divorce is that she has cancer and is on his health insurance. He said she had just had surgery and was recovering. Naturally I felt compassion and said I wouldn’t push him. Eventually, I ended the relationship, because I started feeling I wasn’t getting the full story. When I mentioned our relationship to a friend who also knows him, I learned that my instincts were correct. Apparently, he is very much still with his wife, and she is healthy. I am so shocked by this. Should I contact his wife and let her know this is what he is doing and saying? Given that they are both journalists, I would think veracity would be a priority.
Translation: “I hate this lying bastard and want to hurt him, and his wife too. That’s OK, right?”
Uh. no. I haven’t even read The Ethicist’s answer, but Prof. Appiah, for all his faults and weaknesses, surely can get this one right. Let’s see…
Yup. In a mealy-mouthed way, but he agrees.
Ethics Alarms 
IF the facts are as she described, then she’s not a deliberate homewrecker. I think your translation is unfair and speculates on state of mind, although you could certainly be correct. She SHOULD have checked the facts if possible, and may want to confirm that her friend isn’t lying. The fact that it wasn’t disclosed prior to becoming intimate means he was probably lying though. Dating a separated-but-not-technically-divorced person is questionable in the best case.
She should let the wife know, and apologize. I’d want to know if I had a spouse cheating on me. It would likely be doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
That’s not a genuine apology, it’s a deliberately destructive apology. It’s being mad at the lying philanderer, and hurting him by telling the wife. She doesn’t even know the wife. She wasn’t knowingly harming the wife with the affair. She literally has nothing to apologize for, the husband does. Apologizing in this scenario is weaponizing a rationalization: she knows the information will cause the wife great pain and may turn her world upside-down, but she’s doing the right thing and persuading herself that it isn’t to cause harm.
99.9% chance that they are separated due to a pastime of lying to his wife and are soon to be divorced.
I found the idea of apologizing to her humorous as his life would be then going down in flames, doing the, now, ethical thing but getting the benefit of the outcome which satisfies schadenfreude for being lied to.
I find it perplexing that you think that an answer to this question would be obvious to someone with a basic understanding of ethics. There are at least two prominent principles of ethics that apply in this situation, and they conflict with each other. I don’t think there’s an objectively correct answer here, let alone a clear-cut one.
The first principle is honesty. If you see someone being deceived, generally speaking we’re taught that you’re supposed to alert them. If you were accidentally complicit in the deceit, all the more reasons to confess.
The second principle is avoiding unnecessary pain. Sometimes, arguably, ignorance is bliss, and there may not be a compelling reason to reveal a painful truth to someone if they don’t benefit from it.
There might be another principle about minding one’s own business or something, but I think that’s mostly defined by the “avoiding unnecessary pain” principle. I’d also argue that minding one’s own business can enable a lot of unethical behavior.
Where do we draw the line between “ignorance is bliss” and “this person has a right to know that they’re being deceived”?
My concept of ethics is based on what builds and maintains trust, but the question here is people want to trust each other to do for them. Different societies or individuals may have different preferences. Do people want to know if their spouse is cheating on them, or do they want to remain ignorant unless they somehow figure it out for themselves? Is there a way they can signal that?
I suppose the theoretically best answer (if an overly elaborate one) could be for the questioner to contact or visit the family in a way that allows the wife to notice suspicious behavior while maintaining plausible deniability if she wants to enter a state of denial. Alternatively, maybe a friend of the wife could start an innocuous conversation about someone else that segues into the question of whether she would want to know if her husband were cheating on her. Both of these border on wacky hijinks befitting a sitcom or possibly a dramatic soap opera, but then again it is that kind of situation. When it comes to being gentle with people’s feelings, sometimes it takes a bit of creativity to see what they can handle. …Now I’m thinking about Good Bye, Lenin!
She can’t possibly know the wife well enough to decide what is in her best interests.She’s a stranger. I know of very happy couples where one half had one or more affairs and the other partner never knew, felt she had a loving partner for life. Can uou, or anyone, say that she would have been better off knowing? I can’t. And I have intervened in the lives of many friends, when I 1) had an obligation to them 2) I knew they would expect me to do what I did, and 3) I knew I was preventing harm, not causing it. None of those factors are present here. Instead, there is the obvious revenge motive.
Favoring the woman throwing a bomb into that marriage is unethical. And, I say, clearly so.
The assumption that you’re making here is that the marriage is likely to remain healthy when one of the parties willfully and repeatedly betrays the trust of the other, which among other things relies on the other not discovering the betrayal at any point.
Even aside from that, the problem with that sort of black-and-white willingness to sacrifice some good things to protect others is that it shuts out possibilities for better outcomes where you don’t have to sacrifice anything.
For example, I realized there’s a more generalizable solution to this question. The questioner can enlist one of the wife’s friends to approach the wife and say, “I need help and I trust your advice on this matter. A good friend of mine, whom I will not name to protect her identity, has an unfaithful husband, unbeknownst to her. Do you think she’d want to know?”
This will almost certainly prompt the wife to voice her own preferences on the matter. If she seems to lean towards ignorance and the friend disagrees, the friend can mention her concerns about e.g. STDs, which is a great point other people in this thread raised, and that may persuade the wife to reconsider.
If the wife does ultimately decide that knowledge of a harsh truth is preferable, the friend can thank the wife, and say that she has some news about the husband that the wife will not like.
(It’s probably not a good idea to transition with, “Thank you for your advice–you’re such a good friend of mine, whom I will not name to protect your identity.”)
Her reaction proves that she is furious.If she was thinking, “Oh, what a difficult position for him,” or “Thanks goodness she isn’t dying!” would her first impulse be, “OK, now to ruin his relationship with his wife!” Because that is what her plan does. “Informing her because she’d want to know if she was the wife” is a contrived Golden Rule rationalization.
Isn’t that presupposing that the wife probably doesn’t want to know and isn’t entitled to be informed, completely separate from any vindictive reasons to tell her?
No, it is based on not knowing whether the wife would want to know or not. Since the mistress has no duty to the wife and no context other than her own betrayal, that tales her out of the equation.
I would like to respectfully disagree with your analysis.
My understanding of a cheater is that they are usually serial, if not polyamorous, dating multiple women either in succession or en masse. If this man has been cheating on his wife with this woman, it is likely that he is cheating on his wife with other women too. The more people one is having sex with, the greater the chance of STDs and for women, STDs can have a more dramatic effect than with men, with cancer and sterility being possible results. Most people who think they are in a faithful relationship do not get checked for STDs. Just knowing that your husband has cheated on you is an essential bit of health data for a woman.
In addition, I know of several women who have experienced the phenomenon of being cheated upon, and they were grateful to find out, even if it hurt. A root canal hurts, but it’s better than having a rotting tooth. Women who have a cheater for a husband take a social hit in most circles as well. This is a huge embarrassment, and if she is unaware, the snickering and snide commentary that she is getting from any ladies around her who are in the know, and the chances are high that such women and even men exist, will seem totally uncalled for. (They are, but rather than discuss how people should behave, we need to accept reality for what it is). Gossip and speculation about the flaws of the cheater’s wife typically run rampant and tar her reputation more than his. She needs to know both for defense, and for restoring her good name.
Revenge may be this woman’s motive, but the action is both medically and socially necessary for the cuckquean. You have previously stated that the motive behind the action is not as important as the action itself, which means that even though revenge is not an ethical motive, telling a woman that her husband is exposing her to disease and likely social ostracism and shame is the ethical course of action and called for under the Golden Rule. Thus, if motive is irrelevant, then the action here is ethical.
I agree with Sarah B., and did in fact once make the decision to inform a fiance about her partner’s behavior. I had a few encounters with a man whom I later discovered was engaged to be married (something he definitely didn’t share with me) with a young woman I did know casually (friend of a friend). I thought his intended should know.
Was this a pleasant conversation to have? Not at all! The easier choice would definitely have been to decide it “wasn’t my business.” I made the choice to have this unpleasant conversation (the fiance was quite distressed at the news) for ethical reasons, not because I thought it would be fun or for any kind of “revenge” motive — I wasn’t looking for a relationship with the guy, it was casual sex.
I first talked to the mutual friend, who strongly believed that the couple did NOT have an agreement that it was okay for him to be sleeping around, and she agreed with my assessment that it would be good for the woman to know about this BEFORE the marriage in case it was something that would be an issue for her. My reasoning was that if I were in her shoes, I would want to enter the marriage with my eyes open.
This was the point for me where words failed and side-eye took over.
Okay I just went and read the whole column (in case there was more the woman said that I was missing) and the response, and here’s my take:
You AND the columnist both seem to be attributing emotions to the woman that don’t match what she is saying. She says she is shocked. This isn’t surprising since the guy made up a completely fictitious story about his supposedly estranged wife having a disease, surgery etc. Her reported emotional response to that was compassion for his (completely made up) situation.
However, the columnist decides she is angry. Why? There is no evidence for this. Then he imagines motives of revenge or guilt (again, why?), neither of which are indicated in the story. You seem to think she was “scorned” — again, why? SHE was the one who ended the relationship, so strictly speaking it is the MAN who was “scorned.”
Hypothesis: You are both applying some kind of “scorned” woman trope. JM is somehow imagining that the woman is obsessed and deranged (like the Glenn Close character) again, for zero reason that I can discovered based on the situation.
Reading what the woman wrote however, I think a solidarity trope might (again, I am also speculating, but going off the shocked / compassion emotions) be a better fit.
The wife needs to know so she can get tested for STDs.
If the mistress has one, that makes sense.Otherwise, it’s unwarranted speculation,
I would want to know.
You say that. There is a new series on Netflix about the Michael Peterson murder case. The author and his wife had a happy marriage, but he secretly was bi-sexual and had sex with men. According to one theory of the case, she found out, flipped out confronted him, they had a violent argument and she ended up dead. He ended up in prison, through years of trials and re-trials, his children were shattered. Was she really better off knowing? Nobody has a right to throw a bomb into multiple lives like that without far more perspective than the Ethicist’s inquirer had.
Isn’t that just moral luck? Judging the ethics based on that outcome is consequentialism. I don’t think any actual blame should attach to the person who informed her, assuming that theory of the case is accurate.
The point is that there is no way to know what will happen, and if one isn’t certain the results will be good one, the default and ethical position is to butt out.
This entire conversation isn’t just about ethics, is it? Those of us who have been or are married, who have taken vows to cleave only unto each other, forsaking all others … we are profoundly outraged that love and trust can be so cavalierly broken.
Anyone remember the movie ‘Sideways?’
Twenty years ago my friends were celebrating the you-go-girl moment when Sandra Oh’s character breaks Michael Hayden Church’s nose with a helmet, having just discovered that he is to be married in a few days. When I asked these women why they were letting the woman off the hook – blank stares – crickets. My comment that if she hadn’t wrapped her ankles around his neck before the first date, she might have discovered that he was engaged … well, my comment wasn’t so well received. They were invested in his guilt and sleaziness. They were not wrong about him, but it has always taken two to tango.
Relating to the case at hand – we don’t know how long this unwitting adulteress knew the cheating husband before she slept with him, only that it was a month afterward that he confessed to being married. She holds herself out as the unwitting innocent, but could she have discovered this? Should she have? Did she ignore the signs, or was she truly duped? So many unknowns, so much speculation.
99.9% of the time a cheating spouse is a cad, jerk, louse, scoundrel, rat bastard … take your pick. This particular louse doesn’t deserve grace or mercy from me, though he may find forgiveness and redemption with his wife. And though I stand by my preference to know, I have been persuaded that the unwitting adulteress should just walk away.
“Anyone remember the movie ‘Sideways?’ “
Sure do…mostly for Virginia Madsen….
Anywho, Hayden’s Jack Cole was not only a morally bereft pr!ck, but his ethics-corrupting cajoled Paul Giamatti’s Miles Raymond (albeit reluctantly) into being an enabler.
“99.9% of the time a cheating spouse is a cad, jerk, louse, scoundrel, rat bastard“
These…um…descriptors depict Y-Chromosomal Units > 99.9% of the time. Was that your intent? because, this case aside, no monopoly exists for the gender of cheating spouses.
PWS
Hi CG – the sexism is unintended. The current case and ‘Sideways’ – both cheating men. But two years ago my former DIL broke my son’s heart having an affair, and I’ve known a few other women who rationalized their adultery. It’s just not the right answer to whatever is plaguing a marriage. So, yes, women can also be rat bastards.
Having said that, I had a client whose wife was institutionalized with early onset Alzheimer’s – a severe case. Though she would never leave the hospital, it was years before she died. His children gave him permission to undertake a romance with a lovely widow, who actually helped him care for his wife.
I’m going to leave that one up to God.
I’ve been in-between too many adultery scenarios to count, involving room mates, friends and relatives on both sides. Affairs of the heart are just as destructive (“Casablanca” and “Sleepless in Seattle”) and many of these scenarios aren’t the sole fault of the “cheater.” Men, in particular, have very weak resistance. I knew a very very attractive actress who told me that she was certain she could convince any man to cheat on his spouse, fiancee, or girl friend, no exceptions. (She left me alone.) She said she had never missed yet. I believed her.
The Ultimate Evil Woman, intentionally luring people into mortal sin.
Sooooo Jack, were you insulted?
Actually no. She frightened me. But such people aren’t trying to make others sin, though that may be the result. It’s an ego trip. It’s proof of power. It’s the Kantian ethics breach of using another human being as a means to an end, just as so many men use vulnerable women as mean of sexual gratification.
You are so right about Virginia Madsen. Ethereal in everything she does. And the only redeeming character in the movie. Paul Giamatti is so great as Miles, a sad, sympathetic character – but an alcoholic who steals money from his elderly mother. Likeable, but seriously flawed.
Advice columns aren’t always great places to hash out certain ethical issues. Writers of these letters often include details that aren’t important or leave out details that provide more context. The letters are also edited for length and content before being published, even online. I read “Dear Abby” and “Miss Manners” every day. Occasionally, I will read a column only to find that the answer cites details that appear nowhere in the letter. When that happens, I assume that something was edited out that would have made the response make more sense.
I actually found proof once. After reading a letter to Dear Abby and becoming confused by Abby’s response that referred to information not included in the newspaper version, I looked online and found the letter was much longer and included the pertinent details.
Still, these columns are holdovers from the days when people didn’t want gossip spread around their small communities so preferred to write anonymously to a third party for advice. In some cases, the thoughts of a disinterested third party can be useful.
Unfortunately, a paywall prevents me from reading the letter or its answer. The issue has come up in other columns, though, and – so far as I can tell – the results are mixed on whether or not someone should be told.
The problem is, of course, that everyone is different. Some people have rejected the news and turned against the friend or family member who spilled the beans. Some have ended the marriage and gone on to bigger, better things. Some stuck it out. There’s no way to know the outcome in any given situation. One person would want to know; another person wouldn’t.
My Mom and Dad did not have a healthy marriage. Unknown to us at the time, my Dad cheated on my Mom regularly. On the night she gave birth to my little brother, the doctors couldn’t find him, only to track him down with some other woman. The obstetrician lectured him on running around while his wife was giving birth. He gave my Dad a deadline for telling my Mom or he would do it himself.
I know my Mom was upset. They stuck together for five more years before my Dad ran off with someone who was supposed to be my Mom’s friend. The marriage ended (he filed for divorce, not her) and there were many long years of hardship for all of us. Should the obstetrician have forced my Dad’s hand all those years earlier? Yeah, it caused my Mom a lot of pain. I would say, however, that she was more prepared and less surprised when it happened again, though. I realize that this is close to consequentialism and anecdotal evidence is hardly useful for building a consensus on the rightness of an action.
Fortunately, no one killed anyone. The Peterson case referenced above is also close to consequentialism. It’s also an extreme situation. Most women who find out their husbands are cheating on them don’t end up murdered. (Additionally, it’s only a theory that Kathleen Peterson found out her husband was having trysts with men. There’s also the thinking that Peterson’s son, who didn’t get along with his stepmother, was responsible. There’s also a monetary angle with the stock Kathleen owned having lost value.)
Finally, I don’t think it’s useful to speculate on the motives of someone like the letter writer.
Unless her letter has been edited in some way, the Ethicist has no way of knowing her motives and neither do we. Advice columnists often explain that they have to take the letter as it is written. For all we know, she is genuinely concerned about her fellow woman married to a man who would cheat on her and tell tales about her to try to cover his back.
I know it doesn’t answer the question of whether or not she should tell the wife. Maybe she should give the husband a deadline?
AM: That was the entire letter that I posted. Here’s Prof. Appiah’s entire response:
This man wronged you, not least by making you an unwitting accomplice to his betrayal of his wife. Your anger is justified. But justified anger isn’t necessarily a good guide to justified action. If you want to tell his wife in order to wound him, you’re being driven by revenge, a sentiment that rarely improves the moral situation. Nor should you be spurred by guilt. He was the deceiver, not you. Let’s be clear: He forfeited any claim to your discretion when he lied to you so extensively. And if this is a pattern with him, sharing your experience among your mutual acquaintances could spare others the same pain. We can agree, too, that his wife is entitled to know the truth about her husband. But that doesn’t mean you are the one who should deliver it. You might ask yourself what you hope to accomplish. If she’s unaware of the episode, your disclosure could upend her life; if she already knows, this couple may have reached a truce.
As for your reference to journalism: People’s adherence to professional ethics doesn’t necessarily align with virtue in their personal dealings. (Character traits don’t work in that “global” way, social psychologists tend to think.) The issue is irrelevant to your situation. The question for you is whether you want to remain entangled with this man by intervening directly in his marriage. You can’t make him honest, but you don’t have to let his dishonesty define your life.
Note that he also didn’t consider potential STDs as a relevant factor, and neither did she. I really feel that raising that entirely speculative consideration, no matter how sincerely, is a rationalization to allow conduct motivated by less altruistic intent.
Thank you so much for the response portion of the letter. I do agree that the LW may be motivated by righteous anger, even if it is anger intended to benefit the wife and not necessarily solely to harm the cheating husband.
I also agree that the journalism comment was superfluous and not really relevant here (though one could conceivably argue that untrustworthiness in marriage could also be indicative of being untrustworthiness in other areas. This was argued a lot during the Clinton-Lewinski scandal).
As for the STDS, I suppose the issue here is that a man who cheats once may have cheated again. Even if the mistress doesn’t have an STD, someone else he’s been with might. Nevertheless, that’s information we cannot know.
So I am back to square one. I don’t know what the right answer is for this particular couple. Is this a case of Is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?
I went through and counted the rationalizations that appear to be invoked in favor of not telling the wife in this situation.
Rationalization 8. The Trivial Trap or “No harm no foul!”
In this case, the cheating is judged to be harmless if it hasn’t been discovered (yet).
It seems there’s a corollary here: It’s always wrong to reveal an otherwise harmless deception if it would result in inconvenience (such as having to find a replacement for a corrupt politician, official, or employee) or emotional distress.
Rationalization 10. The Unethical Tree in the Forest, or “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
This is similar to the Trivial Trap. Apparently we should always allow people to be deceived if we believe they’re happier that way.
Rationalization 11. The King’s Pass, The Star Syndrome, or “What Will We Do Without Him?”
This would give any spouse the king’s pass regarding secret cheating, by default. What would the spouse do if the marriage suddenly fell apart?
Rationalization 29. The Altruistic Switcheroo: “It’s for his own good”
We have decided that someone is better off not knowing the truth that their spouse is being unfaithful.
Rationalization 32A. Imaginary Consent, “He/She Would Have Wanted It This Way”
In this case we’re making decisions for people while they’re still alive based on what we assume they want.
Are there any rationalizations exhorting us to enable unethical behavior by minding our own business? Cliches against snitching, busybodies, tattletales, et cetera? That might be related to Rationalization 56. The Scooby Doo Deflection, or “I should have gotten away with it!” The corollary to “I should have gotten away with it!” is “you shouldn’t have meddled!”
On the other hand, the Scooby Doo Deflection technically refers to evidence uncovered by unethical means, so maybe we need a variant rationalization. I suggest “The Privacy Deflection” or “None of Your Business”, for when someone’s unethical conduct is uncovered by normal, ethical means of observation (like noticing bruises), but the perpetrator complains that it’s an invasion of privacy. They claim their right to privacy means that nobody can stop them from committing unethical actions because nobody is allowed to investigate those actions, confront the perpetrator, or even acknowledge the existence of the wrongdoing. “How I beat my family in the privacy of my home is none of your business.”
You and I both know that almost all of the rationalizations on the list also have valid applications depending on the situation—even “everybody does it.” If the mistress doesn’t know of any tangible harm to a stranger by her not knowing about the affair, then the mistress involving herself in the wife’s relationship is not warranted by the facts. “He/She would have wanted it this way” can be a valid justification if there is a substantial likelihood that it is true in a particular situation, and “he/she” isn’t a remote party but the object of the actions being considered. Etc.
Assuming the “girlfriend” can confirm the information she was given, I vote tell. Nobody can predict the ultimate outcome, but the guy’s a rat that should be exposed. Whatever happens is ultimately on him.
I do not think we can have a set answer on the question whether a stranger has an ethical duty to inform the cheated spouse. My gut instinct is not in get involved in somebody’s private affairs, and that includes marital issues.
Let’s assume that I meet a good friend at the pub, and he tells me about having marital issues, his wife is cold and disrespectful of him, and they have not had sex for years. None of our group of friends is surprised as we have already figured out that our friend was plan B for his wife, as she was already in her thirties and a party girl who hit the wall hard, and was now looking for a provider type husband with whom to have a couple of kids. In other words, the attraction was never there. Our friend develops an affair and his mood is much happier. I would say this affair is a moral failing, however his wife is not innocent either as her coldness may be interpreted as a breach of duty and thereby a failure to honor the marital contract. In other words both spouses are at fault. There is also a duty to be loyal to a friend, and we may give that duty a higher weight than the “duty” to inform his wife. We may even give him friendly advice, e.g. about getting a divorce with minimal damage.
If we are aware of cheating in a marriage and we do not know the couple very well it is better to mind your own business. Cheating is wrong, and it is a symptom of marital dysfunction. We cannot assume that the fault of the marital dysfunction is for the full 100% on the cheater. Modern divorce law which is often at no-fault basis seems to back that up.
The same is true for domestic violence; there are too many instances of white knights who interfere in a spat between lovers that turns physical, and then being physically attacked by both lovers for sticking his nose in their business.
In the case of the women who writes to the “Ethicist” advice column, she is seeking for a rationalization out of a desire to get even. Unethical due to wrong motive.