Anna and Alex are married. Brad and Brenda are married.How you deal with female infidelity in other relationships is a shit test of sorts. By accepting it in the relationships of your social acquaintances, you are showing weakness and bowing to the female imperative. This will be taken, on an unconscious and emotional level, as being implicitly unworthy of fidelity in your own relationship.
Anna tell tells Alex that Brenda is having an affair and cheating on Brad.
Alex is somewhat friends with Brad, but Anna swears him to secrecy. Alex complies and doesn’t tell Brad. Besides, how do you tell someone that they are being cheated on. So awkward.
Anna starts to get snippy with Alex over little stuff.
Anna starts telling Alex how annoyed she is with Brenda and how she’s changing and doesn’t like it.
Anna gets annoyed with Alex over lots of different things.
Where Alex first goes wrong is not telling Anna that either she will tell Brad about Brenda's affair or he will. Being sworn to secrecy by a woman in such a situation is totally meaningless; it doesn't require even a quantum of Game to know they don't take such promises seriously. Alex then compounds his original error by playing along and permitting Brenda to remain an acquaintance; Anna's complaints about Brenda are really her subtle requests for Alex to step in, be the bad guy, and remove a bad influence from her life.
Instead, he's shown that he is too weak to resist the vagaries of female whims. Little surprise that they soon happen to wash over him and his marriage.
Learn from this. Be the bad guy. Embrace your inner Darth Vader. Turn over the rocks. Expose the insects and force them to scurry away, out of your life and out of your marriage.
12 comments:
Gossip and detraction are evil. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the 8th Commandment on the duty of a Christian to the truth. We are called to be prophets. More your inner Elijah massacreing the prophets of Baal. The right kind of baal-out.
He could tell the cheater first. It isn't a personal sin, it has a victim. Ultimately the victim will find out - ought he be twice victimized, first by his wife, then by false friends?
But I think Anna is conflicted - the state is not that she wants Alex to do something, it is that she wants to have her friend and expose her too. Both. I want him to, I don't want him to. If he exposes, it is resolved (yet expect a tirade).
It is easy to know what the right thing is. Evil is easy. Doing the right thing is hard. Channeling Vader might get a blackmailable video. But remember what happened to the Prophets, or even John the Baptist.
It's funny that now in order to be the bad guy or even the different guy you have to do the right thing. Evil is the default setting of "good people".
If you are a decent guy, married, good career and not bad looking, there are plenty of opportunities to cheat. As a somewhat reformed horndog, the opportunities are really obvious and it takes a little effort to avoid them - keep the office door open, don't hang with the junior female staff office social functions, etc. The thing is that if you flirt with the idea of cheating - and tolerate the presence of cheaters - at your own peril. It's always a possibility and the thought always comes up at the worst times (damn that young female associate with the huge tits and failing buttons on her blouse during last week's negotiation....) But you put yourself, or your wife at risk of screwing up if you don't chase the thoughts off and make at least some minor efforts to avoid giving yourself opportunities. The temptation is pretty significant. It's better to put that stuff away and simply not play the game, than to gamble with your marriage and future.
"It's funny that now in order to be the bad guy or even the different guy you have to do the right thing. Evil is the default setting of "good people".
That's because nowadays, the opposite of bad guy has been switched from good guy to nice guy.
Default response: "I'm not promising to keep quiet about anything before I know what it is."
She will tell you immediately anyway.
She will tell you immediately anyway.
Good point. That's a much better response.
It probably works better with an annoyed look (which is my default expression if I suspect gossipery) (sic) on your face because then in her head it will seem as though you're diminishing her "big secret".
Which will make her determined to prove you wrong, which adds to the likelihood she'll spill.
Cheaters deserve no secrecy anyway.
They will always get caught.
They guy or girl that think he/she is so slick, has a wife/husband at home who can feel the sickness in the pit of their stomach every day until they find out for sure.
This exact situation came up last year with friends last year. As my wife was telling me this I simply stated, "you realize I'm going to give Mr. X an ultimatum - he tells his wife or I do." She was originally furious that I would breach her confidentiality, until I told her she had no rational reason to believe I wouldn't say anything. The end result? The wife whom I shared this information with became furious with me for lying about her husband, and as of that moment we have had no contact with them. Last I heard they are now going through a divorce.
I dunno, if the strategic goal is to avoid having my wife associate with cheaters, I might want her to believe I maintained confidentiality so that she'll tell me about them in the future. Meanwhile, I covertly inform the husband, and when their marriage blows up I deny I had anything to do with it.
Meh, that sounds like a profoundly female manner of action.
It's none of your business, so say nothing and instruct your wife to do the same? Otherwise you have to pick sides and eventually lose the friendship any way?
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