We were visiting a botanical garden yesterday when Sarah pointed out a flower called the "Arabian Jasmine," a little white flower with a nice scent. She said that her cousin Stephanie had those at her wedding.
I asked if it was the same Stephanie that would be in attendance with her husband at our wedding, and she said it was. Sarah and Stephanie are apparently pretty close, and she started telling me about Stephanie and her husband.
At one point, she told me that Stephanie had actually cheated on her husband twice before they got married, and that the second time was a couple of months before the actual wedding. Her husband never found out.
I asked her why she never told Stephanie's husband what happened, and she responded by saying that it "wasn't [her] circus, wasn't [her] monkeys" and that it's not that big of a deal anyway since they weren't married at the time.
I've been thinking about what she said ever since. I consider cheating the ultimate, worst betrayal in a relationship. Clearly, my fiancée doesn't think so since she said her cousin cheating "wasn't that big of a deal since they weren't married." Would this mean that she thinks cheating on me right now wouldn't be that big of a deal since we aren't married yet?
As a man, if I got cheated on by my partner, I hope someone who knew about it would tell me. I would heavily judge anyone who knew about it, didn't tell me, let me go on to marry the person that cheated on me, and attended my wedding as if nothing was wrong. Like my fiancée did to her cousin's husband.
About an hour ago, I texted my fiancée "I'm not sure if I can go forward with getting married. Let's talk in person later tonight." She's been blowing up my phone with texts and missed calls ever since. I'm just going to tell her what I've said in this post when I see her.
explosky writes:
As relationships grow (even after marriage), values shift and change. They are not rigid. You learn empathy for other peoples' values by discussing them, not just saying, "well, we don't have the same values, so I guess we can't be together anymore".
I am similar to OP in that cheating is the biggest betrayal in a relationship. If I were cheated on, that would be the end of it.
My husband doesn't necessarily understand this viewpoint, and he has expressed that he would still want to try and make it work if he was cheated on; at the same time agrees that cheating is wrong, and he wouldn't do it to me.
We don't have to agree on the severity of cheating to agree that we wouldn't do that to one another. People in relationships are still individuals, and they can respect one another without having the exact same values 100% of the time.
feat7 writes:
I actually had a similar ‘issue’ about my bf as the OP with his fiancée. His cousin had cheated a few times on his partner (who he has been with a long time and is marrying this year).
The family are under the impression that she knows (so I guess they presume the couple resolved it between themselves), but the fact that he knew that his cousin did it, and a few others in the friend group also, was a definite red flag to me and I spent a few weeks mulling it over and seriously reconsidering the relationship.
Having said all that, I do not believe that people who stay silent and take a ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’ attitude are necessarily the kind of people who themselves would cheat. I have never had any reason to distrust my boyfriend and it seems unfair to start doing so based on what someone else did wrong.
I guess I share his attitude in a way and can therefore envisage myself in the same situation behaving in the same way. Torpedoing a friendship with a cousin you’ve been close to since childhood is not an easy route to go down, and sometimes the justification ‘they did something wrong’ doesn’t seem like enough.
I have cousins who have done shitty things but I am not going to cut them off. Obviously there is a line, and cheating just is not it for me. Absolutely doesn’t mean I’d ever do it myself!
And when I read comments from people who have done what is undeniably the right thing in trying to tackle it, it always seems to go to shit, and I really can’t blame my bf for not wanting to get involved and I can’t honestly say with certainty that I would either.
I’m definitely going to be more vigilant for possible red flags (weirdness/changes in behaviour) when he’s around that cousin just in case he’s one of those people that is easily led, but I just felt it really unfair to let the actions of someone else torpedo that trust tbh.
My bf is quite a non-confrontational person usually, but in 4+ years he’s never been anything other than loyal, and transparent, communicative and all positive things really, so I decided just to keep my eyes wide open and let things continue ans see what happens.
I think more of a concern to me would be their behaviour being influenced by the cheater(s) when out and about, egged on by ‘the girls/lads’ and going along with stuff to fit in … tbh that would worry me more than just the fact they’re related to a cheater lol.
agahuop writes:
This will probably get downvoted to kingdom come, but here goes nothing. I don't understand how people can say "I don't agree with X situation/scenario, but if I see it happening and I think it doesn't directly affect me personally, then not my circus". To me, that attitude is blatant double-standards, or incongruent at the very least.
If you truly have a certain value or feel strongly about something, you make damn sure the opposite doesn't happen under your watch, or at bare minimum you try to do something about it.
Otherwise, and no matter what you tell yourself, your value/belief isn't as strong or deep as you reckon it does - you're actually more worried about not stirring the pot than upholding your principles, or you truly don't care about it as much as you wish to convey.
While I agree that just dropping that text might not have been the best move per today's society/relationship standards, I can't truly blame OP for doing so.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but I'd like to find at least a handful of people who would've efficiently and effectively communicated their feelings on this matter from start to finish and not make an emotional blunder somewhere along the way.
I'm confident the number would be rather low, and people who could truly pull it off (not just claim to be able to) probably would have so much more emotional intelligence and experience than half of the posters here.
In the end, what's done is done and there's little good that can come from beating a dead horse, IMO. OP, I bid you good luck. Hopefully things turn out for the better, for both of you.
I had a conversation with my fiancée Sarah. We've decided to think things over on our own for a couple weeks and decide what we'll do next. If we do get married, we'll probably end up postponing the wedding.
I found out from Sarah that her cousin Stephanie's husband, "Lars," is an attending musculoskeletal radiologist at a local hospital. I texted Lars over the weekend, introduced myself as Sarah's fiancée, and asked if I could have a conversation with him on phone.
We called a couple of times between Monday and yesterday. I let him know that I wasn't telling him what to do, and that I did not have any receipts, but that I just felt an obligation as a human being to inform him of something that I felt he should know. I told him what Sarah told me: about his now-wife cheating two months before his wedding, and the name of who she did it with.
When he found out, Lars went quiet for a little while and said he was "shocked and devastated." It turns out that who Stephanie cheated with is a coworker of hers that Lars had met, and that they've attended work and dinner parties together in the past.
Throughout our conversation, he kept asking for details on what happened: where it occurred, why she did it, who else knew, and so forth. I u, unfortunately,Markidn't have answers to most of his questions, but he still thanked me profusely for telling him what happened when no one else did.
Part of why I sympathize with Lars is personal. Lars is originally from Denmark and came here for college after high school. My own Scandinavian father came here from Norway for undergrad and ended up becoming a lawyer here.
He married my mom, an American woman, had me and my siblings, and provided us with the best life any husband and father could possibly provide his family. I couldn't imagine Lars doing the same for a woman who cheated on him and kept it a secret for years.
I have no regrets. My fiancée, her cousin, and their family were the only family that Lars had in this country. I couldn't imagine him coming to this country for opportunity and working hard for 13 years to become a physician only to marry a disloyal wife and be deceived and betrayed by the very people he thought he could trust. I couldn't imagine living a lie like that for years, no matter how blissful the lie.
Lars had a right to make an informed decision as to whether or not he wants to stay in his marriage. If Lars and Stephanie get divorced now, it would be Lars rightfully ending his own marriage based on the information he now knows, not me ending it of my own volition.
Marking ONGOING as OOP did not update on the aftermath. Hopefully we get more information later on!