AIBU to want to tell colleague’s wife about his workplace affair?

[Berrylipshade]

Name changed for this.
I’m watching an affair play out in work. Been going on for a long time. Everyone knows. Not at all discreet. Today it was bad, cuddling, neck stroking, hands in hair, in plain sight of a few of us, and leaving for “lunch” together.
He is a horrible arrogant man. His poor wife & young kids.
I hear him telling clients about his wife and comes across as so devoted. He’s a pig.
The one he’s shagging is single, but an obnoxious flirt. The whole thing just makes me so annoyed.
i wish I could not care.
but i keep plotting to leak this to his wife.
is that wrong?

It's a risk I'm prepared to take. I prefer it to someone who knows nothing about me suddenly charging uninvited into my life, dropping a bomb and then pissing off congratulating themselves. Extra shitpoints if they did it anonymously. So they know it's explosive, they know it's potentially very harmful, but they still protect themselves. They think it's their business enough to meddle, but not their business enough to take any associated risks to themselves. My children and I can take any number of unknown risks of harm, including self harm. Doesn't matter to them.

I am happy. If my husband is cheating, he's being extremely discreet and there's no sign of it. I don't want some stranger crashing in. I won't thank them. And you know they aren't doing it for altruistic reasons because they don't accept that I have a right not to want to be told even if they don't like it. They argue about it. They insult you for it. They tell you they're right and you're wrong and you're lacking for not agreeing with their unilateral interference in your life. They demand justification from you.

They just want to punish a cheater. They don't actually care what you want. Lots of them even say they'd enjoy sitting back and watching the family explode if it hurts the cheater. The destruction and pain they claim to loathe so much actually becomes entertainment for them if it satisfies their sense of displaced vengeance.

You don't have to understand. You don't have to approve. It's my life. I prefer to take my chances and I don't want you butting in and it doesn't matter if you can't fathom why. I don't owe you an explanation.

But I recoon you can't definitively know the motivations and thinking of ALL people who might choose to reveal a cheat .

Might be fun.

And if that's true, you certainly can't know the wishes and preferences of ALL people you believe are being cheated on (how often is there actually any solid proof)?

And it doesn't matter anyway. Your argument here, trying to justify it, only proves my point that it's not about what the cheated on spouse wants but only what the teller wants. But what the teller wants doesn't matter. It's not supposed to be about satisfying the teller, although it usually is. If you truly cared about what the betrayed spouse wants, you wouldn't argue and complain when they tell you what they want and it isn't what you want.

Like I said... they argue about it. They tell you they know better and you should take whatever they decide because you don't know them. And they don't see the irony or hypocrisy.

I don't understand those saying not to tell her. How many times have women posted on here, even on this thread, saying one of the worst things about discovering their husbands affair was that everyone else knew. Yet nobody told them.
I would let her know anonymously. She deserves to know. What she chooses to do with the information is her choice.
79% in your favour in poll.

If you absolutely must tell her, at least don't be extra shitty by doing it anonymously. If it's the right and moral and upstanding thing to do, if it's that important, if it's that much your business and your duty, then take the same risk you're deciding to visit upon everyone who is actually directly involved. Be available for her questions and everything. Why wouldn't you? Aren't you trying to help her, aren't you being selfless, aren't you motivated by what's best for her and giving her as much information as possible? That surely includes the source so she can decide if she trusts you.

And you do have actual proof of course, right?

because you have absolutely no idea what is going on in their lives

how do you know there are not other issues and the wife hearing about this from some anonymous source may just be too much for her to deal with

how do you know if she has the support around her to manage

its horrible what he is doing, people can be selfish, some affairs are never found out and the marriage happily continues

its putting your morals on other people (do we want the morality police) you are not saving her you are interfering. If she was a friend that is a completely different situation and you would be doing this through caring not judgement

I have been cheated on and it was really heart breaking and humiliating but in the end it was between me and my partner.

Before they were married, the wife of the boss who was having an affair with a staff member had actually previously worked in the same branch and had had been seeing this guy behind his previous partner’s back. The wife actually wasn’t a very nice person especially to her female colleagues. So no one in the office felt particularly bad for her. It was inevitable that what goes around was going to come back around on her at some point, it just so happened it was years later and about 5 children later. A very messy divorce apparently. She tried to contact me to be a witness to her husband’s long history of unfaithfulness, I declined.

I’ve seen these workplace affairs more than once. Sometimes blatant like your colleague, sometimes they try to be secretive but it’s still quite obvious. Like my female colleague who used to spend hours in her boss’s office “talking” every day…

I actually met my husband at work, no affairs or unfaithfulness but the company although happy for us and very supportive, didn’t really want us working together as bias does creep in and it makes people around you feel awkward, so he took a role in a different part of the business.

Maybe her cheating husband should be wondering if his wife could cope if she found out ! The woman needs to know.

I once sent a note to a work colleague that if he didn’t end his affair with a woman from work I’d tell his wife, he ended it pretty quickly. I never told one single person I’d done it, ever, and then looked surprised when I was told it had ended.
He then started a different affair within months, he left his wife for her, they got married and had a baby, he has had several other affairs along the way.
Big workplace and 30yrs. I’ve been told his wife knows all about his affairs and just phones the women and tells them to back off. She has a shit life. I don’t regret what I did, but I’d probably not bother again.what is the point with someone like that.

Ridiculous to tell your manager IMO and you'll be marking yourself as a target.

Your manager knows the same as you and they won't thank you for making it their problem because you're angry and too wimpy to do anything about it yourself and you want to avoid confrontation.

Either send an anonymous note, speak to the man or HR directly yourself or ignore it.

Don't flap around wringing your hands and making it someone else's uncomfortable problem. It will bite you when your boss doesn't like working with you any more and you want a favour.

Agree with this .work place relationships need to be disclosed to HR .

You can't tell his wife in this context but in any other context than a work one I would definitely agree with telling

I don't get why people have affairs at work. It's gross and unprofessional.

I would be absolutely mortified if this happened to me and everyone knew about it and nobody told me. Imagine how stupid she will feel.
If it was you, would you want someone to tell you? If it was your daughter, would you tell her / want someone to tell her? Why on earth would other women want to allow this man to carry on cheating by "minding their own business" and staying out of it. I get that it may have repercussions but I couldn't say nothing in this situation.

I have been in a similar situation in the past. Ex was cheating, EVERYONE knew. Except me. I felt humiliated and stupid. And I was absolutely heartbroken even more that nobody thought to tell me. What a waste of my life.

This is completely pointless. You are just passing the buck to someone else and basically gossiping. If you don't have the bollocks to tell the wife herself, please don't go round telling other people.

(from someone who has been the wife in this situation)

Of course he should be no one is defending his actions

But it is not for strangers to go around placing their morals on to others

Be very careful. You may feel buoyed by righteous outrage, your own and that of other posters, but it’s important for you to be realistic, and consider the potential consequences for you. The fantasy is that you’ll tell, they’ll be professionally and personally disgraced, and his wife will leave him. I call it a fantasy because it is very rarely what happens.

If they’re senior, popular, and close to the manager, it will be you that will be labeled as the problem, and engineered out. It will be your reputation and career that takes the hit. What is ‘fair’ and ‘right’ doesn’t come into it.

As someone who had a cheating husband, I would want to know. I wish someone had told me tbh

Because I neither care to be, nor want to be, part of a wider morality police by virtue of my being a woman.

I'm actually in a similar situation right now. Someone has confided in me that a married man tried to proposition her and she said no. I know the wife very well. I could tell her but...

I have absolutely no proof. I believe the woman who told me, but I have no proof.

The wife has a very bad mental health history. Numerous diagnoses, at least one breakdown. She is very reliant on her husband. If she found out, I think there is a very real possibility she could take her own life. A total stranger or near stranger wouldn't know. I don't think the woman who told me knows.

It is just plain nothing to do with me. It's just none of my business.

I think each situation is unique and.... although I get where you are coming from...I reckon there are probably times when it would be a good idea to tell someone. I get that there are a lot of sticky beaks who probably enjoy the drama, but there might be some genuinely concerned people too who feel that the chweated on person is effectively being abused.

There might well be, but unless you actually know these people well enough to say - and these people so rarely do, which is precisely why they're asking about it - then first, do no harm. They very rarely have any actual proof anyway.

And doing it anonymously is so horrible. Why are they so scared of fallout if this is such a worthy cause? If it's so much their business they should be that involved, why do they need protection? The wife deserves to know, but she doesn't deserve to know where the information is coming from so she can assess or question it? If you really must insert yourself, bloody well insert yourself. Why, do they think she might not be grateful?

Cheating is shitty behaviour but it's by no means universally accepted that it's inherently abusive (I don't think it is; it's shit and unworthy but it's legal, consensual adult sex, presumably) and that just sounds like an excuse for someone to use to please themselves.

Complicit? As morally unsavoury as you find affairs ( in some cases I do too. In others, I don't judge) they're not a crime.

Women usually know anyway, always hear about spidey senses here.
Women usually sense these things so I wouldn't waste my time being the messenger who got shot.
Never understand the compulsion to interfere in other people's marriages. Especially people who I barely know.

Sure if I heard my neighbour beating his wife and children (not that he does!! He's a nice guy) I'd call 999 or intervene if somebody's in physical danger but beyond that nothing.
Not my business. She may know and not care, getting ducks in a row or whatever.
Also, 've been around long enough to know some wives turn a blind eye to this.

Yes, I agree that it shouldn't be done in a flimsy way. And certainly not for salacious reasons. There would need to be hard proof and sound reasons for exposing it. A cheat potentially abuses another person's time, their money and their health. That's not nothing.

Of course it is abusive- if the person is still having sex with their spouse (which is normally the case) then to me that's a form of non consensual sex because the spouse doesn't know they could be exposed to STDs

And beyond that, cheating usually involves lying gaslighting, and spending family money on someone outside the family unit.

Of course it's not nothing, which is why it's grounds for ending a marriage and carries a huge social stigma (usually).

But it's also private lives and not open fields for the rest of us to police. I don't think it's good behaviour, I just dispute that other people's marriages and intimate lives are automatically my business. Especially when I don't know what the consequences of my interference will be.

Like I said... people always claim to be doing it for selfless reasons, for the betrayed spouse's best interests, but you know whether that's true based on their response to hearing that some spouses don't consider it to be in their best interest and don't want them barging in. Get angry and offended and try to argue and tell them they're wrong about their lives? Yeah, it's not them you're trying to please.