What you don't know won't hurt you!!!!
Do you prescribe to the notion that if you do something and your significant other doesn't know of it, it's cool? The idea that if you are in the clear and if you can live with it, everything will be fine? There have been many discussions or shall I say arguments on this topic, one of my friends says it's ok to cheat as long as it's done discreetly and if your mate doesn't find out about it, my other friend is very adamant that this is clearly not acceptable. I'm writing on this because one of my old colleagues called me to ask me for my advice on the subject, he said that he is in a committed relationship and has been for the past 4 years, he and his girlfriend do not live together but lately she has been talking more and more about them moving in together. His dilemma is that for the past year he has been secretly seeing someone else and it's purely sexual, he doesn't love this woman, he does not want anything other than sex and he does not want to leave his current girlfriend. So I asked him why he considered himself to be in a committed relationship when it's obvious that he's not, his answer is that he is in love with his girlfriend and only her and that the other relationship is purely physical. So I asked him why was he seeing the other woman on the side, was it something that she was doing that his girlfriend wouldn't do? His answer was no, sex with his girlfriend was great and that she was a wonderful person! So I asked him why if he loved his girlfriend would he carry on with this other woman? He said it was the excitement of it, being able to move and sneak around, and to have something just only he knew, something that was totally his. And his words were, what she doesn't know won't hurt her! Those words made me feel a certain kind of way, made me review my past relationships wondering; hmmmm were my exes that slick and if they were stepping out, do I appreciate the fact that they were discreet? A lot of people say that they wouldn't knowingly stay in a relationship where they have knowledge that their mate is cheating, but what do you do when you don't know? I asked a few of my other friends and they said, they would want to know and of course everybody would or so I thought. There are many people who said that they would not want to know, that if their mates were cleaver enough to hide or keep their liaisons away from them, what they don't know won't hurt them; many took it as respect. I asked my old colleague how he would feel if his girlfriend would have been the one to carry on a year-long affair? He said he would be highly pissed and that he would end the relationship immediately, so I then asked him, what he wanted from me. He wanted to know how I would feel and if I would want to know, he wanted to know if I would leave my man if I were in the same predicament. I felt he asked all the wrong questions, his girlfriend and I are two totally different beings, so I tried to lead him down another path of questioning, you should be wondering how your girlfriend would feel, the two of you have been together for four years, do you think she would want to know? How do you feel she would react? And will you be able to handle it when she tells you that she is doing the same? These are the questions that I felt he should be asking. I told him that his actions were those of betrayal and that if he loved this woman than she deserved better. I asked him if he could live with the fact that he was laying with another woman and then laying with her as well, and to expect the worst but hope for the best.
The following week he called and said he had decided that he would no longer see this other woman and that he felt horrible and that he "might" confess, so my question still stands, "Is it better to know or not know?" Do you feel that what you don't know won't hurt you?
