Friends encouraging affair

[Despiteponder]

A friend of mine recently skirted on the brink of an affair. It was the really basic story of her DH not paying her much attention at home and a guy at work coming along and flirting etc just when she was feeling a bit needy. She managed to give her head a bit of a wobble and pull back and is now working on her marriage.

She spoke with a fair few friends about this when she was thinking about it, me included. I basically told her not to be so stupid (supportive!). However, I was and still am really surprised at the fact that several of her friends just told her she should go for it. It’s of ‘follow your heart’, ‘you deserve happiness’, ‘you deserve someone who appreciates you’ type messages that had her really considering it.

For context this work guy is married and has a young family and she has three small children herself. It would’ve been a terrible idea, surely. So why would close friends tell her to pursue it? Her DH has room for improvement, sure. But shouldn’t friends encourage trying to sort things out?

Unfortunately people that encourage others to act without morals are usually sly and want to see things implode for that person not because they want them to find true happiness.

You don’t really know what others said, just what your friend has said they said.

Perhaps your friend considering the affair heard what she wanted to hear.

If her friends actually did encourage her to have the affair, agree that was shit of them. Perhaps in it for the drama or strongly disliked her H!

I think they just wanted the drama and hadn't considered the number of people whose lives would have been torn apart.

I think a lot of people are afraid of conflict and see friendship as a cheerleading exercise more than anything else.
I don't think like that, but as a result I have very few close friends because I'm honest and I see friendship as supporting each other not to fuck up as well as being there when we do.
I don't lecture unasked and won't bring something up again if I know a friend didn't like my first answer. I'm not God and don't have all the answers and am sometimes wrong, so it's not my place to tell another adult what to do if they don't want to hear it.
But I'm not going to lie and say "yes, this stupid decision is a great idea and won't fuck up your life in any way" if I can clearly see the opposite.
Even if your friend eventually leaves her marriage because it just couldn't be saved, at least she will know she tried and won't feel it's her fault now.
If I was her I'd be very cautious of the friends encouraging an affair, cheerleaders usually disappear when there is nothing to cheer about.

Because its exciting drama isn't it? Because piling on to vilify a man and glam up an affair as 'being true to yourself' is bonding activity. Because we are becoming a species who spend far too much time thinking about our own immediate gratification at the expense of all else. If there were no kids involved and she genuinely felt her marriage was dead, leave and move on, but with kids involved and the humdrum of family life just being that, she's an utter fool if she listens to them