There are many different kinds of secrets in the world, but the worst are the ones that are kept to protect the feelings, emotions, and hearts of the people we love. It’s painful to watch the growing relationship of close friends start to decline, but it’s worse when you find out that one is cheating on the other. The difficulty of the situation tends to be compounded by the fact that you are probably friends with both people involved.
So how do you tell your friend that they have a cheating spouse?
There is a lot of fear and worry that comes along with this. When this kind of information hits her lap, she’s likely going through a lot of different questions as she reflects on the staggering situation without losing her mind in the dizzying twist:
- Will my friend believe me?
- Will he be mad at me?
- What about the one who is cheating, will he be mad at me?
- Should I try to reason with the friend who is cheating on me?
- Should I leave him alone since it’s none of my business?
- Can I trust the cheating friend with something else?
- Am I sure he’s really cheating? What if I’m wrong? I don’t want to destroy your home.
- What if I lose my friendship with both if I say something?
- What if I don’t do anything and then they find out I knew?
- What will my other friends/family think of me if I get involved?
Yes, that is a long list and the questions can continue from there. Letting a friend know that you have a cheating spouse is, to say the least, rough waters. It’s more like white rapids with a good chance of being thrown out of the boat.
How do you tell someone you care about that they are married to a cheating spouse?
The common theme in the questions above, if you look closely, is how talking about the problem will reflect on the person reporting the activity. No matter how you personally get involved (or choose not to), it’s still up to you. The only true way to avoid getting caught in the middle, where there is a chance that someone might try to kill the courier, is to send an anonymous message or an anonymous letter with information related to the cheating spouse.
If you don’t want to report the victim directly, you can also use an anonymous messaging service to let the cheater know that someone else knows, that they are hurting their spouse and others who care about them.
Sometimes all it takes is the right words to let someone else know that people are looking out for them, that people care. That may be enough to correct the problem.
The worst thing someone can choose to do is nothing at all. Edmund Burke said it best when he said, “All that is needed for Evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
