There appears to be a diveristy of opinions about your mistake (mostly supporting you not to tell you wife). I call BS.

Like others have observed, would you rather not know what you know about the Church and continue in blind belief?

How would you feel if your wife did the same thing and never told you? Or if she told you on your death bed? Or if she told you to relieve her guilt?

Would you want your wife to feel guilty indefinitely for something like that? Would your wife want you to feel guilty? How can you strengthen and bolster a relationship where there is such deception etc.?

Turn the situation around and see how you feel about it...

If he had a relationship with the girl he should tell.

But he just exercised with her.

Huge difference.

He is in a 40 year marriage to a TBM.

If he wants to keep the marriage, he does not tell.

And no, I do not want my wife telling me either.

Don't buy in to guilt, it is a control tool.

I used to believe in absolute morality.

I do not any more.

I like that you bring up absolute morality. Some people and experts take the position that it is a selfish act on top of a selfish act to tell someone about a meaningless affair.

I have not read all the posts, but has anyone brought up how sad it is that this relationship even exists. I don't have enough unbiased information, but if she is truly happy in a loveless, sexless marriage for reasons that meet her needs--the decision to not tell seems obvious. If she is open to an exit or would respond positively to the opportunity to exit the marriage, then I see the less selfish decision is to to tell.

Being selfish isn't alway wrong either--but guess who gets to make the decision and who likely has the most information! OP!

What will he do?

a - What situations do honesty come into play then? Why are you on this board if all truth is fluid depending on how it benefits the person or entity holding the information? Shouldn't you be working for FAIR if that's how you view morality?

I also call BS. This dude needs to come clean. Withholding this information from a spouse is wrong no matter how one defines morality.

Cheating was a mistake. Lying about it for the next X number of years is a calculated decision.

This is quickly becoming the most tedious series of threads EVER.

xyz, we could pretend it is a meaningless one-time affair involving gay sex. That might make it less tedious, or maybe not. Parts is parts.

The question revolves around three issues which as far as I can see, almost everybody is tiptoeing around for some bizarre reason. Mostly because they seem to have problems with the shifting dynamics.

1. Personal integrity
2. Agency
3. Respect

Only a couple of you approach it with any sensibility (you, for one). Everyone else is running on the pure toxic fumes of ***FEEElings whoa whoa whoa FEEElings***. Hence, my smarminess.

HAHAHAHA I sing that song EVERY damn time feelings come into everything! xyz FTW again!

Answer: it's your own damn call. Everyone has their own experiences, views, and preferences. This ain't trig. There's no provable theorem. Make the call that agrees best with your beliefs, your own feelings, and interests.

People get hurt all the time. Sometimes it's because they were victimized. Sometimes it's because they suck and people aren't gonna play by their rules any more. Sometimes someone gets hurt either way.

xyz, maybe it will get tedious. But at least it's something other than hurricane devastation.

But what if the spouse had terminal cancer and you were told and the spouse was not? How is that situation different? I could see the argument that it's better for the dying person not to know they're dying...with that said, not telling the truth makes it easier.

I kind of think it depends on your spouse. I think after being married for that long of a time, you should know your spouse well enough to know whether or not they would want to know about something like that.

I'd feel fine.
For hell's sake, it is One Night's stand, Man!
Would you like her/him rather to blow your retirement in Vegas?
(then you'd really have a good reason to cry about)
It's not like He/She mortgaged their lives.

Quin, you really are solo, aren't you? Your consistent ad hominem attacks and comments here reflect a profound lack of sympathy, much less empathy.

No, I'm not.
I'm married for over ten years to my second wife.
Before then, I was married for 14 years. Never once I was unfaithful to any of them.
I don't see any ad-hominems, in my posts. It is the facts of life.

Besides not seeing any ad-hominems in quinlansolo's post, I don't get why you are making these strong statements anonymously?

The usual purpose of anonymity is for protecting personal information of which you have revealed none. Makes one wonder.

I also believe the attacks are against the rules..

OK I can't see the attack. I just see someone turning the situation around and voicing his opinion based on that. I must be missing something here.

There was another thread today where an 'anon person' attacked Quin directly?

OK thanks Fidget. I missed that one. You snooze you lose.

I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I cheated on my wife. I know that I can't say it won't ever happen, but I will always stand guard over myself to prevent it. I made promises. Promises I made to God don't count, because I don't believe in him anymore, but I made promises to her. I have a code of personal conduct. What to do if I did cheat? I would have to work that out if it happened. But it's not gonna happen if I can help it!

I'll add to OP, putting my needs into the needs of the other person does not seem like a useful exercise. She is a different person with different needs, values, and issues.

Maybe she needs to die thinking her family is in tact, her albeit loveless, sexless marriage is good enough and that she has the respect and love of friends, neighbors, and strangers of having been married 40 years.

He has the power to take that from her or keep that for her. Perhaps if he tells her he will force her into an irreconcilable agony that will hasten her death, expand any existing depression and create humiliation and shame the last years of her life. She could become the subject of gossip. Her values might find this horrifying, even more so than an STD. You might be different, a lot different.

I believe the OP did express concern for her. Perhaps just being a better man for her tomorrow than he is today will be the best thing he can do for her. Perhaps that will be more difficult for him than telling her. Perhaps looking in the mirror and saying how did I get to this place will be more painful than just saying, "I had a meaningless one-night stand, you should check yourself for STDs, I'll divorce you if you want"

Less than 20 words to get to her nightmare.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2012 04:06PM by gentlestrength.

This is where the golden rule is exposed for being fool's gold.

The whole "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is nonsense, especially in this case. So you could say "I wouldn't want to know, therefore I don't need to say anything" or "I would definitely want to know so I'm going to tell her tomorrow night." Both are wrong.

It should be "do unto others as they would have you do unto them." So, is your spouse the kind of person who would want to know or would they prefer not to know? If you don't know the answer to that question then you have bigger problems than keeping an affair on the downlow.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2012 05:11PM by kolobian.

If a doctor doctored another doctor, would the doctor doing the doctoring doctor the other doctor in the way the doctored doctor wanted to be doctored, or would the doctor doing the doctoring doctor the other doctor in his own way?

You'd agree with the first way.

Oriental teaching commands: Do to no one that which thou wouldst not have done to thee; and the occidental doctrine says: Do unto others as thou wouldst that they do unto thee.

--Chinese Statesmen--
--As quoted in The Travel Diary of a Philosopher--

The Golden Rule is just fine, if passive.

I had it happen to me. Spouse cheated on me. I would have preferred not to have known about a one night stand. He should leave it alone. I call BS on the OP.

anon for this Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Like others have observed, would you rather not
> know what you know about the Church and continue
> in blind belief?

Not everything in this world can be traced back to the church. In fact, in relating everything back to church scenarios, it's engaging in the same black/white mentality you sought to avoid when leaving the church. This is a nuanced situation.
>
> How would you feel if your wife did the same thing
> and never told you? Or if she told you on your
> death bed? Or if she told you to relieve her
> guilt?

Who says he's going to tell her on her death bed? Who the heck would do that? And if he told er to relieve his guilt, it would be selfish. The marriage needs to be worked on and then given a fair shot. This one incident does not need to be divulged. Those of us who have expressed such assumed that the advice was not just to not tell her, but to take it to the grave. Who confesses stuff on other people's death bed? That's a little drastic, don't you think?

> Would you want your wife to feel guilty
> indefinitely for something like that? Would your
> wife want you to feel guilty? How can you
> strengthen and bolster a relationship where there
> is such deception etc.?

The point of making an honest go of repairing the marriage IS to relieve the guilt (on top of repairing the marriage). But if the trade off is live with guilt, or hurt someone else severely just to relieve your guilt over your mistake, then living with guilt is the appropriate action. These questions are beyond ridiculous.

> Turn the situation around and see how you feel
> about it...

This situation has been turned around and inside out already. You're just adding to the heap with a warped (yes it is warped) black-and-white version of an appeal to guilt. This is just absurd.

It to the spouse.

What does your marriage contract say about it? I can't remember much of the sealing thingy-ma-jig. But does it say anything about sexual fidelity? It is probably implied. Just look at the contract.

Preface. Married 31 yrs. No infidelity, but lots of issues due to mismatched sex drives. Nothing else to cause trouble between us. Literally nothing. We both left the church about the time that we married.

I was certain that we'd divorce. At least 10 yrs ago I mapped out the schedule based on when our youngest child graduated from high school. The main thing that changed was that my sex drive waned a bit a few years ago.

I was philosophically ok with her having her own sexuality a long long time ago, but that doesn't change the gut response of being rejected constantly. I learned that her clock is that she'll be receptive and even quite into it 1-2 times a month. Nothing can change that. I'm a very empathetic lover. I love her orgasm. She orgasms more than once, usually 3-4 times per session. I love incorporating a vibrator into our sessions.

She has gone along with adventuresome events. We've gone to swing clubs; not swung. We've done strip clubs and their VIP rooms. Her clock never changes.

Now I wait for her to initiate. There's really no point in me trying. I've told her. It works ok. I'm still disappointed often, but the anger and angst is less than it used to be. I now expect us to stay married, but even with all this hard-won perspective I am disappointed and feel rejected multiple times per month.

The big error was that even though we were on our way out of the church, we married without having had a sexual relationship prior to marriage. It's hard to know and difficult to say whether we would have gone separate ways if we knew of this disconnect prior to marrying; especially since we are extremely compatible in virtually every other way.

I must confess that I consider the promises made in marriage to be cultural baggage that in reality don't mean nearly as much as many people profess. It's a nice fantasy, and in some cases works out to be a nice reality. But obviously, it doesn't work perfectly for the vast majority of couples. And I get that it isn't supposed to be a perfect fantasy love story; it takes hard work; I get it; I've lived it.

But this oppobrium heaped on the OP is imho bullshit. I don't think he made a mistake. I don't think he was the first one to break the illusory promise made in his marriage. HER promise implied that she would be his MATE and companion, including a vibrant sexual partner. For whatever reason, she doesn't or can't live up to that, but HE is enslaved to her sexless life by a silly ceremony he took part in decades ago. BS, I say.

I've never cheated, but I've wanted to many times. I have no great noble reason why I didn't. It isn't because I'm morally superior. I applaud the OP for having a good roll in the hay with a young willing FUN partner, and I say don't tell; UNLESS you did get a disease. In that case you're hosed. And I would have no issue with you or anyone doing it again. This is what your spouse has put on you. She can look in the mirror for who is the most responsible for this. And to those who say more counselling and more effort to connect and more supplicating to the alter of her vagina is necessary, I say BS! I've been there and done that, and no truer words were spoken than, "the heart wants what it wants"; for both sides of the equation. And you judgemental moralists need to MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS!

Amen...

I don't have much of a dog in this fight, because I am not in the habit of passing judgment on people with regard to the choices they make in their marriages. I am not part of that marriage, so it's not fair for me to project my morality on to other people. I'm a big fan of Kant's relative morality, in which he basically said, you can't really know everything that went into someone else's moral choices.

That said, I'm slightly amused and quite horrified at the STD paranoid. The OP clearly stated in his original thread that he used a condom. The odds of contracting an STD that isn't protected by condoms, from a one-night fling, are much, much lower than people here seem to be aware. Everybody's freaking out on the guy to get checked out. AFTER using a condom. I'm not gonna go all hyperbolic and say that's ridiculous, but it seems like a straw man to me. The real issue is that communication and effort toward communication is dead in this guy's marriage. THAT's the crisis. In my opinion.

What seems most clear is that the STD-paranoid clearly don't understand what a condom is for. ;-)

I understand, but I am sympathetic because he remained in an uninformed state his whole life. Worse, he had propaganda telling him multiple partners and unnatural acts is disease, sickness, and death.

For all we know this was with a working girl and so a higher risk, but yes ultimately a condom is a great way to dramatically reduce the spread of STDs. Having sex with someone who doesn't have any STDs is an even better way to avoid getting an STD, but then we have the trust issue here. He also might miss the pitcher is less susceptible than the catcher.

The only concern I'd have was HPV. Condoms don't prevent the spread of HPV.

Hahaha thank youuuu for that. I think too many people here never had premarital sex and have zero clue that these things work. I have to remember I wasn't raised Mormon and thus wasn't subjected to an ongoing campaign of sexual misinformation when I scratch my head...