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?

Oh come on now this is silly. The only way this would make any sense at all is if everybody consented to a STD test before they ever had sex with another person.
Which obviously they don't.
Much as I think that affairs are usually morally wrong making it akin to non-consensual sex is not a road I'd want to go down, besides which how the blazes would you prove it? "Oh yeah she was OK with me sleeping around..."
No offence but the idea is just silly.

Cheating is shit, but we are on very very shaky ground once we start making it abusive, and therefore presumably illegal, for people not to adhere to controls we try to place on them for who they sleep with other than us. Far worse potential for abuse there.

It's a shitty thing to do, but not all shitty behaviour is abusive or illegal and nor should it be. It's absolutely grounds to end your relationship and it'll make people think badly of you, and that's right and proper. Calling it abusive so you can justify intrusion onto other people's lives, or place a legal barrier on which consenting adults someone can sleep with, is too much.

As a victim of other sorts of abuse I disagree

It's part of the same pattern of not treating a partner with respect

If someone wants to shag around they are free to end their relationship and shag with impunity

As a victim of other forms of abuse, it's what I think.

Disrespect isn't abuse. It's certainly shit to cheat, but ultimately you don't own your partner and it's very problematic to say that Ben shagging a consenting Gemma constitutes a act of abuse against Jane.

Marriage, or an exclusive relationship, is a contract between two people. Breaking the terms is grounds to dissolve the contract, but it is not a violation of an innate right to safety or possessions or something comparable. Neither partner owns the other and it is not abusive for that person to have sex they promised not to. Violence, threats, force, withdrawal of funds, control, intimidation, yes, but two consenting people cannot be said to be abusing a third, even if they can be said to be shits.

Exposing someone to the infection risks of an open relationship without their knowledge is a grotesque form of abuse.

More posters disagree with your opinion. So on the balance of probability, more wives would prefer to be told about a cheating husband than not.

FWIW, I would want to know.

I could then get my ducks in a row and decide what I wanted to do - ignore, confront and try to work it out, or confront and leave.

Like I said, it's a shit thing to do. But sex carries risks, as we know, and you can't use that as a reason to claim actual control over people having consensual sex that's not with you.

I don't think you'd feel somehow not betrayed if you knew your cheating partner was engaging in safe sex, or refraining from acts that can spread infection (but doing all the others).

You simply can't claim ownership of another person that way.

If I was the wife, I’d want to know. But I’d also want evidence too because just being told he can so easily deny it

More posters disagree with your opinion.

They're allowed to disagree. But I don't consent to any of them barging into my life with stuff I don't wish to know. They do not know me, they are strangers and I don't want them making unilateral decisions for me. Do they all know who I am?

Of course, if they're that sure that they're right and the wife will be glad to hear from them, and if they truly believe she deserves all relevant information, they won't hide their identity from her.

It's not really ownership to say that you don't want someone having sex with you if they're also having sex with someone else, though really, is it? They're free to do what they want with whoever they want, but they need to be honest with you about that if they want to continue a sexual relationship with you. It's a boundary, not a form of control.

Been in this situation I was so grateful someone told me. I was being absolutely gaslighted. Tell her.

Exactly! It's about healthy and respectful boundaries not control.
And I am astonished people are tying themselves in knots to argue this isn't a form of abuse

If you consider it to be actual abuse against yourself for someone to have legal, consensual sex that you don't want them to have, you'd have to assume a degree of ownership over them that we frankly do not have. Even if they promised you they wouldn't. It makes them a shit and a liar. It doesn't make it abuse.

I always hit this when I get into this discussion and I haven't got much more energy for it at this time on a Friday afternoon. I get why people feel this way. Being cheated on is horrible and cheating is really shit. But not all arsehole behaviour is abusive behaviour, and nor is it for the wider world and total strangers to police when they don't know anything about how it will land with the people involved. (And in case someone has said it, because someone usually does, no, it's not comparable to child abuse or trafficking or something.)

Consensual human relationships can only be controlled so far and we simply can't police them. We can only create agreements and dissolve those agreements if someone fails to keep them. Welcome to humanity.

Lying and putting someone (who thinks they are in a monogamous relationship) at risk of STDS very much is abuse.

It's just as disgustingly abusive as many other forms of abuse.

Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable but it quite clearly belongs in the box as all the other disgusting and abusive behaviours.

No, the thing that's being objected to is them having sex with you while also having sex with someone else and not being honest about that, so you can make your own choices accordingly.

Obviously, they're free to do what they want with whom they want, and you can't (nor should you be able to) stop them. That doesn't mean you can't have your own boundaries, the violation of which can absolutely be considered a form of abuse and gaslighting.

Exactly. An honest and transparent open relationship isn't abusive

Gaslighting and tricking a partner into believing they are having monogamous sex with you when they aren't- and exposing them to the consequent risks to their health and fertility - is quite clearly abusive by any definition

Well I wouldn't want to be your friend then. I wouldn't ever let my friends be taken for mugs like this.

Personally, if I just heard that an arrogant man in a workplace was having an affair, I wouldn't think it was any of my business.

However, the way that this man is flaunting it in plain sight of his colleagues is supremely arrogant. It's as if he's saying - "Yes you all know and you all can see this affair happening before your eyes, but you're all too spineless to confront me or tell my wife so I'm going to keep doing whatever the hell I like ..."

That would really piss me off. So I think I would tell the wife - anonymously. No point going to him first to confront him because you'd be wasting your breath. So yes, let his wife know. She deserves to know sooner rather than later. She may already know, or have strong suspicions. She may not. But if it were you, I think you'd hope other women witnessing such a spectacle would tell you, rather than being publicly made a fool of.

you can say you want to know as you know your situation

But there are times in peoples lives where knowing the truth may cause them more harm, you know your situation you (or the op) has no idea of her situation

this is not about you is it

I would be wary of inserting yourself via your manager.
I wouldn't do it.
Perhaps anonymously telling your manger that it is the talk of the office, reflects very poorly on the company culture, is only a matter of time before it blows up and his wife hears and that it is part of a pattern of awful behaviour.
Anonymously.
I wouldn't dream of allowing myself be quoted.
Your manager might nod at you and be all PC, but privately think you are trouble.

Far better to throw the grenade but leave NO prints on it.

More posters disagree with your opinion. So on the balance of probability, more wives would prefer to be told about a cheating husband than not. Based on how posters who don’t agree are jumped on, I think it’s far more likely that most people don’t agree with your opinion.

There is a vast difference between telling a friend that you know their partner is having an affair, and sending anonymous notes to people you’ve never met and know nothing about, just so you can act all self righteous with no care as to how the person is affected by it.

Let’s not pretend that anyone who sends anonymous letters is anything but an abhorrent individual.

People talk about abuse? Well, sending anonymous letters is abusive, gaslighting behaviour, designed to make someone doubt themselves, their friends, their family, basically to ensure that they will spend the rest of their lives wondering who betrayed them.

So if you’re that kind of person, wwell done.

Gaslighting is a specific act, and it may exist alongside cheating, but it's not having illicit sex and it's not even just lying. Everything that is wrong or dishonest is not necessarily an act of abuse, nor gaslighting. I've been accused of gaslighting on here for disagreeing with people. I think they really believed it.

Honestly this kind of stuff makes me switch off. Bad behaviour doesn't have to be every specific kind of bad behaviour you can name. It doesn't have to be the very worst thing you can link it to. It doesn't have to be a violation of an innate human right. It doesn't have to be the world's business to police. It doesn't have to be anyone else's business.

It's none of your business. The only scenario in which I'd tell the wife would be if she were a friend of mine.

You don't know her or how she will receive this news, that's if it is even news to her.

If you are somehow under the impression that I was offering you friendship, rest assured that you are mistaken.

This woman isn’t OP’s friend. Shes the wife of a work colleague. OP’s would be very wise to concern herself only with the work she’s employed to do.