Vomit Comet

I got a fair number of interesting responses to the relationships and cheating post from last Thursday so I thought I’d share them with you all. If you haven’t read it yet, scroll down the page until you find the one called Tough Call.

These responses come from our own comment boards as well as from the Salty Ham Forums where I also posted it since a discussion there is part of what inspired the thought in the first place.

If you’ve got your own thoughts on this or if you want to disagree with something that somebody said, feel free to add your own comments. Let’s go.

First up is Anonymous.

Well you’ve managed to get yourself into to some very deep shit. Been there….and to be honest I don’t know if I handled it right. I think you first have to go to the cheater and bring it up with them….try to convince them to either quit it, or own up and end it. But if that doesn’t get you anywhere you may have to take the chance of losing a friend and tell the guy what’s goin on. Think about it though, if they’re willing to treat this person that they love that way, what’s going to stop them from doing that to you?
Good luck Steve

That’s pretty much what I was thinking. With one small change those would be exactly my thoughts. I wouldn’t aim for either quitting it or confessing, I’d be pushing to get the person to do both. It’s one thing to extract a promise from somebody that it won’t happen again but it’s another thing entirely to make that person keep it. And it’s not me who’s really getting hurt here, it’s the person getting cheated on and in my mind, above all else, that person has a right to know and it shouldn’t have to be me who tells him.

Next up is Carin, who chimed in with this.

I’d tell the girl to fess up. Give her a chance, and if she doesn’t, then I think you should tell the guy what he ought to know.

Well that’s kind of what I was thinking too. Everybody should get a chance to solve their own problems before a third person steps in, but sometimes there’s a point where I can’t justify staying out of things anymore because it doesn’t seem right.

Moving right along, our old friend A Different Anonymous has this to say.

I think I am gonna have to agree with everyone else. You have to talk to the cheating girl and make it clear that though she is your friend, so is the guy she cheated on, so if she doesn’t come clean and tell him, you will. Give her a chance to deal with it herself, and if she doesn’t then maybe it is time to step in.

This one comes from Outburst.

Approaching the cheater is a good idea but personally, I’d steer clear of making it your business. No doubt, you’d have the best of intentions in the above scenarios but you greatly run the risk of getting mixed up in a very messy situation and could find yourself losing two great friendships. Approach the friend. If she does nothing, ask yourself how important your friendship with her is before telling the cheated. Otherwise, I’m fairly confident he will find out on his own and I doubt you’ll really want to be implicated at all at that point.

Certainly an interesting point, but don’t you also have to consider how important your friendship with the cheated is as well? To me that’s the person who really deserves the most consideration here. Maybe I only think that way because I’ve been the cheated before but no matter what my reasons are, be they experience or what I believe to be right and wrong, that’s what I think. However as you’ll see as we shift our focus to the Salty Forum responses, a lot of people disagree with me, like Jeanice for instance.

Wow, what a hard situation to deal with.

You know, I always see “cheating” as a test of sorts of someone’s character. Even though she’s my friend I’d be wary of a person who is supposed to be my best friend and tell me everything but “cheats” with another guy without even telling me. If she told me, maybe I’d be able to understand the reasons why she did it. Maybe she’s not such a scuzzball. Maybe I could have compassion. But she’s hiding it from everyone. That makes her look really shady. I’d be sort of upset about that because the guy she’s with is also my friend, (and even though I used to like him/still like him, that wouldn’t be why I don’t think the situation is cool) and if she can do this to him, what kind of backstabbing crap is she gonna do to me? I guess I’d be more upset over the fact that she didn’t tell me or explain her situation to me over cheating, because everyone makes mistakes you know? Or changes their mind about who they really want to be with. But the fact that she’s continuing to try to decieve everyone is awful.

What would I do? I’d wait for her to tell me/explain her reasons. If she continued to try to play me too, I’d just stop talking to her and keep my distance. If everything is all wierd between us and our little clique why should we still be friends? I woudln’t rat her out or anything, because telling him is not going to make it hurt any less. Of course if he knew you knew he might be upset with you, but whatever. Get yourself out of that situation and save yourself.

I say mind your business.

Personally it wouldn’t upset me that much that the person didn’t tell me. What does upset me is that she’s not telling the guy getting cheated on. She is, in a sense, playing both of us and putting all of us in a tough situation because of the nature of all of the relationships. And it’s the nature of the relationships that makes me disagree with the whole “mind your business” line of thinking. By default, because these 3 people are all so connected to each other, it is my business. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I give my word to somebody I take it seriously and if somebody is a friend and will show me the same respect, when I say that I’ll look out for him or her, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to do just that.

Let’s hear from WT Harmon, who disagrees with Jeanice.

Not me. I’m running up to the Guy getting cheated on(girl in my case) and tell (her) what’s what. there’s not a reason in the world for anyone to cheat, and no matter what my friend could tell me, this girl deserves te be treated with the same respect as everyone. Of Course, I can’t look at this objectavly, as I’ve been cheated on too many times over the years to let this kind of thing slide. As a matter of fact, I once ratted my best friend out to his girlfriend, efectivly ending he and I’s friendship. But that’s another story all together.

Now there’s a guy who stands up for his convictions and does what he feels he has to do. You’re a man of action Mr. Harmon, and I respect that. But having said that, I have to say that while I would do the same thing in a second, I’d also take a minute to think about it first, giving the person doing the cheating a chance to do the right thing and confess. If I don’t think that it’s going to get done, then I’ll step in and for the good of my friend I’ll do the job myself.

Here’s a quick one from TheHoss.

I’m with Jeanice on this one…

Let them get this one out in the open. You’ve done nothing wrong, so just be cool.

In a situation like this, the only time I would consider myself to have done anything wrong would be if I kept my mouth shut when I should have opened it.

Ringo has his own take on this, as well as some thoughts on cheating in general.

Ringo here learned a good lesson a long time ago and will now share it with all of you.

Do not, by any circumstances, get involved in anyone else’s romantic/sexual/s&m/whatever issues and bullshit. Do as I do. If you find out that Mary Jane Rottencrotch is cheating on whoever or Sam Spade is boinking a sheep then just do yourself a big favor and forget you ever heard it. I’ve saved myself countless aggravation by refusing to get involved in my friend’s romantic/relationship situations.

I imagine i’ll probably get called out as not being a good friend, and if you feel this way then fine. I’ll counter by saying that i’m being a better friend by staying the hell out of something that isn’t my business and that I don’t want becoming my business.

As for cheating/not cheating it’s really up to the individual. I like to sleep with married women because they are much more available than the single ones and I don’t adhere to most other people’s moral standards. I have few morals or scruples. I’m a huge believer in looking out for #1 and getting mine.

Honesty, another trait I respect. Here’s more of it courtesy of The Current Big Thing.

Ahhh, don’t you just love porking an older married lady? I don’t mean Mae Young old, I mean Sable old. Awesome. For some reason, they enjoy it better when there’s a risk in getting in trouble. God bless horny older ladies that get reminded of their cute innocent son when they see me until I’m drilling the shit out of ’em.

Not that I don’t care about others. God knows I do.

So the moral of the story is: don’t sleep with your friend’s girlfriend. It’s one thing if your friend cheats on her, but it’s another when you get involved. And if you’re a girl that is close friends with a couple, and find out the girl is cheating, you go ahead & slap some sense into your female friend & convince her to tell her man. If she doesn’t, try to manipulate her to leave him & get with “new guy” & start porking her ex… you liked him didn’t you??

If all goes wrong, look for hot married women near your area.

I have nothing to say about that, I’m too busy cracking up. So let’s end things off by giving the last word to Jeanice.

Wow, TCBT and Ringo, you guys sure don’t mince words about being morally corrupt. LOL.

I still say, what’s the point in dry snitching huh? Is it really worth it? Unless you’re really good friends with the person your guy is cheating on you have no real motive to tell. And even if you are you should just stay out of it and stay far away from those people as possible.

Unless you like drama and broken hearts. If you do, then by all means, get all up in someone’s koolaid.

So is it really worth it? Should you keep your mouth shut and let the chips fall where they may, or do you have a responsibility to make things known even if people are going to get hurt and friendships might be destroyed? Or is the right answer something in the middle, something that we haven’t thought of? If you’ve got thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment on the site, sign up for the Salty Ham Forums and look for the love thread, or feel free to drop me an email atsendstuffhere@rogers.comand let me know what you think. The floor is yours.