Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

What would you do when you know someone is having an affair?

105 replies

SRS88 · 03/08/2015 01:59

I've known that a colleague of mine is having an affair. I think he is making an absolute fool of his wife. It's been going on for months. I feel really sorry for his wife. I know I can't tell her and break up their family but it's really awful to know. What would you do? I've really changed my opinion of this man.

OP posts:
pyloricStenosis · 03/08/2015 08:18

Tell the wife - anonymously or otherwise but only if your intentions are in her best interest

spudlike1 · 03/08/2015 08:41

Keep out ...its not your business .
....but if you really must 'do' something speak to him calmly.

Joysmum · 03/08/2015 08:49

I know I can't tell her and break up their family

Why is your wish to keep their family together at her expense more important to you that her right to make her own decisions about her own life?

She may decide to stay with him, she may not. Should everyone with a partner who fucks around waste their one and only life on somebody who doesn't deserve them. Sad

CalleighDoodle · 03/08/2015 08:53

If it was a friend id tell them (as soon as i had proof). Id make sure they knew i hadnt told anyone else and that id support whatever decision they made.

For colleagues id keep my nose out. I dont really know them, certainly dont know their partner.

Jackie0 · 03/08/2015 08:55

None of your business.

worserevived · 03/08/2015 08:57

Tell her, but tell her the details so her 'D'H would have difficultly denying it.

I speak as someone who went on a work conference with my H when unbeknown to me he was having an affair with a colleague. I am so angry that no one there told me. They were weird around me, made me feel like I was unwelcome, and the whole experience was horrible. Cowards the lot of them. I have no respect for anyone at that company.

123rd · 03/08/2015 09:03

I have been in this situation with a friend. I was mutual friends with both Of the couple. She was cheating on him. It was getting ridiculous. And he was made a complete fool of. In the end I said I would tell him unless she did. I'm not sure I would have actually gone thru with it...but she told him

FredaMayor · 03/08/2015 09:09

There are ways of letting someone know their partner is playing around without involving oneself. A simple, anonymous communication with proper evidence might be the best route. Cowardly, well maybe, but ignorance is certainly not bliss when you are the person being crapped on. IMO cheaters play on this very dilemma. These days there's a lot of 'whistleblower guilt' in the workplace because of bullying and IMO that influences people to keep quiet.

If your principles are that cheating is ok, then maybe you would keep schtum, but if you disagree then ethically you should speak up. It's not interfering if you have information that would materially disadvantage someone if they were kept in the dark.

My own viewpoint is from exH cheating for years with assorted people and I was at a severe disadvantage when exH was ready to leave and had planned it to the last letter. My opinion of those who knew and kept quiet is not high.

pocketsaviour · 03/08/2015 09:27

Is the person he's having the affair with also a colleague?

hollyisalovelyname · 03/08/2015 09:29

I'd want to know anonymously
( excuse spelling)or not.
I would then investigate myself.

FredaMayor · 03/08/2015 09:30

On the shooting the messenger point, yes, the person being cheated on may well resent being told. That is maybe a risk, but knowing what others know at least helps them make a decision. No-one would want to be made to look a fool because of people's false (IMO) sense that it is not their business.
As a pp has pointed out, if we knew about a case of DV and kept quiet about it we would ultimately be partly to blame for its continuance. My own view is there is parallel to be drawn between the two scenarios and the same ethical considerations could apply.

Joysmum · 03/08/2015 09:36

I hope those who advocate not telling never end up wasting their prime on men who have been cheating.

If you'd want to know if you were being cheated on, with that comes the moral responsibility of also being prepared to inform another.

Any 'discomfort' of telling is small fry compared to situation the person being cheated on is in. Shame there are so many selfish people in life as if their weren't they be a lot less wasted lives.

spudlike1 · 03/08/2015 09:43

Ok posters have changed my mind ..but it is him you should speak to about his actions and your knowledge, views, assumptions about his marriage / morals .

LilyMayViolet · 03/08/2015 09:46

Having been cheated on several times by my ex I think one of the worst parts was that mutual friends knew and did nothing. It is slightly different if it's a colleague but I don't think you'd be wrong to tell his wife anonymously or not.

I can't stand people who cheat and have lost friends myself when they've cheated and tried to involve me as an alibi. Funnily enough those same people don't seem to like it if they are cheated on later! They then expect everyone to be outraged on their behalf!

wannaBe · 03/08/2015 10:28

But if you don't know the wife, then you cannot possibly know what is going on within the family. Many years ago I knew someone who had an affair within my friendship group. We all made it abundantly clear what we thought about it, both to her and him.

Not long after that the friendship group drifted apart purely through circumstance and we lost touch. it wasn't until years later that it emerged that the woman was in fact in a violent marriage, and her affair had been her escape (she did not stay with om). Had anyone in that group seen fit to tell her husband (who none of us knew) she could well have been in danger. Now some might argue that she brought that on herself by having the affair in the first place, but the reality is that life just isn't that black and white.

There have been posters on mn who have been in dv situations and who have had affairs which helped them leave. And while an affair is never ideal, it is also not as straightforward as some see it.

For me personally, I wouldn't get involved in so much as that I wouldn't cover for them, wouldn't go out with them as a "couple," or help them in any way such as lending them my house (for example) and if the wife (or husband) who was being cheated on was a friend I would probably tell them.

But if the partner wasn't someone I knew in any way I wouldn't tell them on the basis I know nothing about them or the relationship they are in.

To compare knowing about an affair to knowing about child abuse or domestic violence is ridiculous.

FredaMayor · 03/08/2015 11:45

Holly, I agree about doing the investigating yourself, what I meant (and put rather badly) was the importance of justifying a reason for the information rather than passing it on as gossip.

wannaBe that's an interesting point about victims of DV being given the confidence and support to get out of the relationship. I don't know the answer to that, but it certainly could be a risk.

There is also the risk of self-harm or suicide by the person cheated on. It seems to me that the blame for that could and should fall upon the cheater in that case. The innocent party may have come on the information at any time on their own.

InTheBox · 03/08/2015 11:58

Although it's a long shot, this might be some sort of arrangement between the couple. You don't know they dynamics of their relationship.
It's a tricky one as it could end in all manner of catastrophe with you being brought down with it. You haven't said much in way of how close you are to the colleague or his wife. And indeed how you know, is it more than office gossip?
Based on what you've written I'd stay out of it. But if it was a colleague who I considered once a friend and knew his wife and knew full well that what he's doing is behind her back then tell her.

LazyLouLou · 03/08/2015 12:03

If the wife was a friend I would tell her. I have done so. Gave her cheating ratbag bf of 6 years, father of her only child 1 day to go home and do the decent thing.

This was after he and his mum had been in the pub showing off his newborn daughter to all and sundry. Oh, this one was born to the sister of his other, less than a year old daughter.

My friend did not thank me. Or the other friend who also told her. She blanked me for about 5 years. Happily we are now good friends again. She is now married, happy and somewhat embarrassed about some of the names she called me.

But she did get the truth out of him... when I was sat on the other side of the kitchen table, telling him I wasn't going to lie for him and had he not wanted her friends to know he should have been less brazen.

And I suspect I would go the anonymous route f it were a colleague and I did not know he wife well. Because I have no wish to become embroiled but cannot simply stand back... actually, I might just hide and pretend.

Good luck whatever you decide, OP. It isn't a comfortable position to be in.

toffeeboffin · 03/08/2015 12:55

Just keep out. Not your circus, not your monkeys.

shovetheholly · 03/08/2015 13:17

I wonder what your relationship with this man and his wife is? Is he just a work colleague? Is she just an anonymous wife you've never met? In those situations, most people would stay well out of it (whether that is right or wrong, I'm not sure).

The fact that you're considering saying something suggests to me that you either know her better than this, or you know him much better than this.

nequidnimis · 03/08/2015 14:19

Having seen too many friends devastated to discover that their DHs had been unfaithful after weeks or months of confusion, I couldn't keep quiet about it.

I disagree with the sentiment that it's 'none of your business'. I would want to know, most women would want to know, so I would see it as a kindness to tell her. What she chooses to do then - ignore, investigate or whatever - is up to her.

I know that the honourable thing would be to openly tell her, possibly after talking to him about it, but the consequences for you could be considerable at work - leaving anonymity as the only option IMO.

And if the marriage collapses I would not feel any guilt - he did that, not you. Any break up is down to him being forced to leave earlier than planned, or her dumping his cheating arse. Both put her back in the driving seat.

And as a happy by-product, he would know his indiscretion was public knowledge and that he hadn't been as clever as he thought.

BoxOfKittens · 03/08/2015 14:27

That's tough. My first thoughts would be that it's not your place but then... I'd want to know.

The problem of course is, if you told her, what if they have an open relationship? Or one of those turn a blind eye situations?

If you tell her then I'd start with a disclaimer that covers these possibilities and also how you have struggled to know what to do -that you only told her as you'd want the same.

JanineMelnitzGlasses · 03/08/2015 14:39

It's really none of your business. For all you know she may already have her suspicions and doesn't want to do anything about it. You can tell the colleague that you know and that you don't agree, he may end it or be more discreet. Or he may not care what you think. Unless either of them are life-long good friends I'd keep out of it.

RagstheInvincible · 03/08/2015 15:12

Been in this situation with friends of DW's. You do NOTHING. Nobody will thank you for bringing this out in the open. Keep your mouth tightly shut.

ThroughThickAndThin01 · 03/08/2015 15:14

I think it's none of your business, and you shouldnt meddle in it.