Should the wife of a cheating husband be alerted ?

[summerstars]

I have joined this site to post this question and am fully prepared for any feedback. I am ashamed to say that I was the mistress and have only been able to share with one friend who insists the wife has a right to know and the only way I can right the wrong is in alerting her than walking the other way forever
They have no children together and have only been married for under 3 years. Both have their own children from previous marriages.
As for myself I am a single mother. After getting the strength to leave an abusive marriage I moved away. I have two small daughters and the 2 year old is a special needs child. The cheating husband is her clinical psychologist. Present at all sessions we spent hours together and I opened myself up to him completely. In hindsight I see this as an unfair situation. He wore a wedding ring but went on and on about his wife who passed away from breast cancer. He never mentioned he remarried and I never asked.
Once my daughter was signed off as his patient and no longer required his services he asked me out to lunch. I was smitten. I thought I would never feel like this and was not even looking
Something he said was not computing at the end of our lunch so I pointedly asked if he was remarried. He said yes. I told said i would no longer see him and he understood. That evening he called and I a
made the mistake of agreeing to see him again. He texts and calls several times a day. I looked so forward to it all; like an addiction. I never slept with him. I have fooled around though. About 5 weeks ago I stopped seeing him but continued to speak with him. I knew it was wrong but yet i continued and I am fully guilty. I just do not know why. He said he married less than a year after his wife's passing and it was someone they both agreed on. His daughters were young and he felt needed a mother. I even found on a facebook page a memorial for the mother and one of the daughters writes "thank you for letting Dad find me another mother until destiny brings us all back together"
When I saw the photo of his present wife I felt horrid. Putting a face to it all hit me hard. I have cut off all communication with him and freed myself from this. This has got to be the worst thing I have ever done. I have one friend that knows about this and is insisting I alert the wife. That I owe it to her and it is her right...
I know this is lengthy and I am neew here but what do you think? I would NOT do it thinkiing it would benefit me at all. Thank you for reading

summerstars I think you should tell his professional body as even if you don't want to pursue anything yourself they will have it on file and it might trigger something is there are other complaints there already or if there are more complaints in the future, and they couldn't force you to be involved (give evidence etc) if you didn't want to.

Aren't you already ashamed enough of your actions without the spite - however you dress it up - of telling the wife?

Yes because she needs to be condemned far more than the clinical psychologist who abused his position in order to gain access to a vulnerable woman.

summerstars, you don't have to do anything in a hurry.

I'm sure his professional body will have a helpline so you could give them a call and find out if he has broken their rules based on the timeline. Maybe he hasn't, in which case you can file that option away and not give it any more headspace. Or he has, and then you can find out the process in case you go down that route.

If I were the wife, I would want to know. However, it's not always as simple as that, is it?

lisaro - is your tooth playing up again?

He's not on here to condemn, otherwise he'd get far worse.

I will consider reporting him though after reading the responses on here.

Even that is somewhat murky, as you were never a patient and he only asked you out after treatment of your daughter stopped.

Just walk away.....

Ha ha no, Robot - more or less healed now. I see you think I'm being awful, but frankly, I think the 'OW' telling the wife is rubbing it in.

There is nothing to be lost in calling his professional body, you don't have to give your name, you could just tell them what happened and ask if that is against the ethical standards of the profession.

I would be surprised if it wasn't.

Do not tell his wife and shatter her world too.he did wrong in coming on to you as a clinician , very overstepping his position. Just walk away hoping he has learned a big lesson from this. I don't see your actions as that of a scarlet woman. You also will have learned a lesson.

Why do people think the wives in these situations do not deserve to know? I am really surprised by this I have to say. I would definitely want to know.

I suppose that I know stuff some of my friends have done and I don't tell their DHs. Is that the same? It's not quite the same I don't think.

I think it highly likely he's done this before and will do it again. If I was the wife I'd want to know that this is the type of marriage I had.

I have a Dr friend who asked out his now wife after he stopped treating her. This would have been about 15 years ago.

Has the law changed? I dont recall any drama about their dating and then getting engaged, married and having kids.

I see this situation as 2 sad desperate people in a shit place in their lives that turned to each other - very wrongly on a moral level as he is committed to his second wife.

I am the last person to condone any type of affair. I think his wife should be told but until I read everyone elses reactions on here - it would not have crossed my mind that it was unethical with regards to his job as the OP was never his patient and any "dating" occurred after the OPs child had been signed off from his medical care.

I am assuming I am very wrong here - being that I am the only person on this thread not thinking there is an ethical issue, but that is purely because of the Dr friend of mine and that situation mentioned at the start of this thread.

GPs have got in trouble for having relationships with patients, after they stopped being their doctors.

It depends on the dynamic of the relationship. In this case he was a psychologist and she was a woman who had escaped from an abusive relationship and he encouraged her to open up about all aspects of her life and he talked about his own life including how his wife had died but strangely forgetting to mention that he has remarried.

Sounds pretty unethical to me.

It also depends, of course, on whether anyone complains! If a person is in a happy relationship they don't lodge complaints.

If someone is vulnerable and complains, or someone else complains on their behalf, then it is potentially a different story.

I have read stories where doctors persuaded people to switch to other practices, and the behaviour has still been found to be unethical.

Report him to the Health Professions Council (with which he will be registered) and the British Psychological Society (although he may not be registered with them). Don't bother telling his wife. She'll find out soon enough when he gets suspended.

I would do nothing.

He has abused his position but I think he has fairly good deniability (even though he is clearly a scumbag). He can truthfully say that you weren't his patient, that he never did anything whilst you were the mother of his patient and also the bottom line that he never slept with you.

Thinking about you personally, the easiest way for it to be put it behind you would be to do nothing. Don't feel guilty, you didn't sleep with him and he clearly has calculated how to cultivate your relationship. I do feel for his wife, I've been cheated on but you will be better off just forgiving yourself for minor wrongdoing and forgetting it. If you interfere with the marriage, it will prolong the healing process for you and there may nastiness from him, even from her but directed at you. It isn't really to do with you-he is a cheater and if it hadn't been you it would have been someone else.

Speak to the professional body at the very least and find out of you have grounds for a complaint. That, in my opinion is the least you should do. If they say you have grounds, make a formal complaint. If you don't have grounds, you will at least have registered something in someone's memory bank and your concerns will also be recorded in the 'soft intelliegence' notes the recipient of this call will make, that will be useful when (not if) he tries it on with another female client.

Think very carefully about your motives for telling the wife and also think how you would deliver this news. Face-to-face would be kindest - the worst would be an anonymous remote communication. If your motive is genuinely to protect this woman from further hurt and to ensure her sexual health is not compromised, then telling her would be the right thing. If it is to hurt him or to use this process to absolve yourself of your own responsibility through this action, leave well alone and just stick to the professional ethics angle.

IMO the most urgent thing you should do is to look at yourself and have some counselling to see why you gave yourself the permission to engage in something that if discovered, would have hurt a family who have already had their lives touched by tragedy.

You see, this need to 'out' the man might be a diversionary activity on your part, to stop you focusing on yourself and your own part in this.

Whatever you decide, you sound like a nice woman and I hope you feel better soon x Some love affairs leave a bad taste in the mouth I find. Best to move on.

No, don?t report him to his bosses or his wife. The OP was not ?vulnerable?, been predated on or was even a patient, so I?m struggling to see what the problem is with him seeing her in private once treatment had finished. Looking at the bigger picture here, if he?s reported to his boss then this could open up a can of worms which could end his marriage, a marriage which the children will miss, and maybe cause a lot of problems with his career. If he loses his job he also risks losing his wife, his home, the respect of the children. Some will say he deserves it, he made his bed now he should lie in it, but think of everyone involved. His wife will have no idea, but if she?s told her life is suddenly altered in a negative way, so leave her alone. If I was in what I thought was a happy relationship I?d rather live in blissful ignorance that being told of his bad behaviour. OK, he messed up, but is it really worth being the cause of the fallout by being the messenger. OP, you will be seen as the bad one as by telling people you will have been the start of a number of messed up lives; his, his wife?s and the children?s. Just walk away.

Edit: I meant to say "I?m struggling to see what the problem is with him seeing her in private from a work point of view" He's married so he shouldn't have played away, but that's a private matter not professional.

Of course a wife has a right to know if her husband is a cheater. But its not the OWs place or duty to do so.

The guy needs to tell her himself. If he doesn't then that's a shame but not OWs fault.

It is normally considered a breach of professional ethics to have a relationship with a patient or former patient (or on this case a child patient's mother). To quote the British Psychological Society's code of ethics:

Psychologists should.... 'Refrain from engaging in any form of sexual or romantic relationship with persons to whom they are providing professional services, or to whom they owe a continuing duty of care, or with whom they have a relationship of trust. This might include a former patient, a student or trainee, or a junior staff member.'

If he's a clinical psychologist he's almost guarantee to be a member....

Please report him, he's acted very badly... It's worth putting in the complaint even if you don't take it any further. I'd also tell the wife... I'd want to know.