Could you tell someone their partner was cheating on them?

I have done this. It was a pretty extreme situation though. In addition to having sex with someone else in her fiance's truck parked while parked outside of their apartment, the woman involved was also telling all of their mutual friends that her fiance was "raping" her. She claimed that this was true because she had "issues" and foudn it very traumatizing when he would touch her--at all--while they were sleeping in the same bed.

We were worried about the consequences of having this rumour follow him around for years, and we were outraged that she saw fit to confide in us about her cheating. We told her that her fiance was our friend as well and in no way did we intend to keep her secrets for her, especially since they were slanderous to her fiance.

We did not tell him the gruesome details all at once, although after they'd broken up and she'd moved out, we did end up talking about it more, when he asked us. She just gave him a heads up about what to look for and with who, and to be very, very careful with her lest she falsely accuse him of assault or infect him with something.

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This way intrigues me. What makes you think they will actually stop their behavior and not just go deeper underground so you can't find proof?

Tells the spouse, looks like they are trying to do the upright thing, their spouse forgives them because they were honest and then the process repeats because they weren't really honest. They were forced to admit.

I understand 'why' you would want to do it this way, a way to respect the relationship..... However the cheater has no respect for it in my opinion so why try to protect something that needs to be brought into the light?

Just my opinion. I would have also done it your way until I was actually in the situation where alot of people knew, and were telling her to stop and she never did until my own mother found out before I did. That crushed me, when my entire family knew before I did, and no one told me.

I felt betrayed by the people that knew. Took a while to get trust back in them too, even though I understood their reasons for not telling me as soon as they knew. They wanted to give her a chance to tell the truth....

Which she still lied to my face about it. (my situation isn't hypothetical). If my SO was cheating on me, and any of my friends knew about it or family knew about it and didn't tell me. Not only would she not be my SO anymore, they wouldn't be anything resembling a friend either.

my ex cheated on me ... and half the town knew it before i did. i was really really angry that no one had told me about it ... and i always thought ... if i was in the position of knowing someone was cheating, i would tell.

then i had a close friend cheat on her husband. it was terrible. their marriage had been on the rocks for a really long time, years. i really really struggled with knowing what she was doing to her husband and her kids ... i did not tell her husband

i guess my point is ... having been on both sides of the fence ... having been cheated on and knowing someone was cheating ... it kind of opened my eyes to realizing it is not a black and white thing ... it was alot harder to be in that position of knowing than i thought it would be and it just made me reevaluate my stance. i'm still not sure what i think is the right thing to do.

i can't say i would do the same in the future, i do feel bad that i didn't tell her husband. gratefully the marriage ended pretty quickly.

I don't know if I would tell, I suppose I could tell, but I don't know if I would.

On one hand, I don't believe other people's relationships are any of my business. Yes, if I knew someone was beating their partner, I would alert the appropriate authorities -- but in cases of cheating and such, I don't *know* someone isn't using protection. I don't *know* what the person being cheated on knows or doesn't know, or what goes on behind closed doors. In that respect, I think it is pretty ballsy to place yourself firmly in the middle of someone else's marriage or relationship and be partially responsible for bringing light to a situation that for many people I think, are choosing to live in the dark about. I may say some things to the person being wronged like "Where is so and so when they stay out until 2 am"..or "I don't know if I'd be okay with my husband going away for the weekend" or other *suspect* behavior cheaters often display.... because I feel that *most* people at least suspect something is going on within the relationship, evenif they may not know it is cheating exactly. I find it really hard to believe someone can be having a totally other sexual relationship and yet everything feels perfectly normal and wonderful at home....you'd have to be an awful fantastic actor or on the other side, completely in the dark.

I don't know what I would do exactly. I don't know whether I would be angry or thankful if someone felt it their personal duty to alert me of my husband's actions (if he were cheating)... It's not something I think about too much really.

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My perspective is that I don't *know* someone is using protection. It wasn't fair to my friend that the potentila for exposure was there if his fiance decided not to bother with protection.

Also, protection fails sometimes. Being in a non-exclusive relationship is inevitably more riskly than being in an exclusive relationship; I think that I don't have the right to withold from a friend the information that are not in fact in an exclusive relationship.

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In a situation where I would run into a friend and someone other than their SO just kind of randomly, then I can see that POV. OTOH, in many situations (like mine) one of the parties told us about it and expected us to keep her secret for her. She placed us firmly in the middle of her relationship where we clearly had no business to be. The best way for us to extricate ourselves was to explain to her fiance what we knew and how we knew it.

Also, in any other situation than one of the parties confiding in a friend, it can be difficult to know if there is actually cheating going on. Anyone read Bridget Jones'? She saw a friend's DH with antoehr woman. Turned out the DH was thinking about cheating but couldn't bring himself to do it so it never went further than a couple dates. That's different.

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I totally agree with approach. Help the one being cheated on figure it out rather than (possibly) jump to conclusions and risk hurting them even more. Or let them keep their delusions intact if they so desire.

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Yes.

He had a thing for visiting prostitutes and paying extra for not using a condom. He also liked "visiting" women who were from an area of the world where there are multiple strains of HIV, not just the one or two that most tests here (US) tested for.

Turned out that this had happened before in their marriage and she had been promised that it would never happen again...and they had gone to a counsellor about it...and he still returned to it.

She had to be told. She was trying to get pregnant and just hink of all the pain and suffering that could cause.