Letters to the Editor
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Is Doug so bad?
This is ironic as I am facing a similar choice as Doug, albeit for different reasons. I recently ended a relationship with a married man and am deciding whether to tell his wife. I admit my reason is revenge. He constantly lied to me about his intentions in his marraige and our relationship. I feel like he treated me as an object rather than an autonomous person who would be permitted to decide if I wanted to be in the relationship as it was, rather than as he pretended it was. He used me and hurt me and I want to hurt him back.
But I also see value in putting the truth out there. I see now how lies hurt people and part of me thinks that exposing the lie somehow puts the world back as it should be. I'm not a Christian, so I cannot speak to Doug's motivations, but it seems that if there is a bad thing, the "lie," or for Doug, the "sin," taking it away or acknowledging leads all involved to a better place. To autonomy. Shouldn't the husband be allowed to decide for himself if he wants to be married to a person who was not a virgin when they married?
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Faith without wisdom
James 5:16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
Maybe the scriptural basis for Doug "confessing" to Falling's husband comes from this verse. However, just because confession to "one another" is called for doesn't mean that the one to tell is necessarily the one wronged.
There really ought to be a cooling-off period for "born-again" converts. That period should be used to read the whole of the Bible, and really think about it, study it, and weigh the various passages against each other. This might lessen the number of times people go off and hurt other people in the name of a religion they are only beginning to understand. Faith without wisdom is a dangerous thing.
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The power of truth
This woman cheats on her boyfriend, not once, but SEVEN TIMES. She marries him as "a virgin," knowing that is important to him, and now she wants what? Our sympathy?
Doug is doing her a favor. He is ending a marriage made of a lie. This woman took her vows in blasphemy. She did not respect the man she claimed to love. She will now have the opportunity to consider the difference between truth and lie, and examine other areas of her life where she may have neglected these boundaries.
As for those who think the letter is false, it might be, but the situation is not. Two longtime girlfriends of college buddies propositioned me multiple times in college. I turned them down, but I know other guys did not. They wanted more experience before they got married. They got it. But they never told their husbands.
Lucky for them I have no desire to expose their lies. The ensuing mess would only hurt their husbands and children. But I cannot respect those women. And I can't respect this one either.
Overall, marriage in America has become a fool's game for men. You get a haughty and well broken-in whore who lies about her past experience, feels justified to exact emotional and physical abuse, and demands an unattainable level of material comfort. Eventually she'll leave and take your house and income. Men should stop playing this game.
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Not "courage"
What she lacks is not courage, but character. Not because she never told him about the earlier indiscretion, but because she can't bring herself to do so now, when someone is about to expose her lie. Yes, Doug is a whack job for pushing this silly, long-ago issue, but since he's going to do it, she has to face up to her part in it -- and she did take part in it willingly.
No, Cary's right -- I don't believe in confessing to make yourself feel better at the expense of the other person's feelings. I had an affair once, and when it was over, believe me, I longed to tell my husband and rid myself of the burden of that secret. But I was well aware that it would serve only to make me feel better and make him feel bad needlessly. Sometimes being "honest" is an excuse for your own satisfaction (you know very well that when someone tells you that they're about to be "honest" with you, they're usually about to hurt you and get their jollies at the same time). If you're a decent person, you just have to endure the pain you created for yourself.
But in this case, the truth is bearing down on her -- and her husband -- in the form of Doug. Stubbornly maintaining the stupid lie, telling new ones, trying to get Doug in trouble of some kind, is simply committing more wrongs in an attempt to bury the first one, and the mound of dirt gets taller and more obvious with every effort to hide the corpse. Once confronted by the fact of the original lie, the husband is almost certain to know that she is lying still more if she tries to deny it. Plus, she's going to feel even worse about herself, and rightly so, if she keeps on lying about it. I had to face up to my affair long after it was over, and while the aftermath wasn't what I'd call pleasant, it was still better than harboring the lie any longer.
She's better off to face up to the lie she's maintained for all these years (and with nut job on the way over, she doesn't have much of a choice anyway) and take the consequences, whatever they may be -- and I suspect they won't be as bad as she thinks. But even if they are, it's better to go through life as a person of integrity than to go on living with a lie eating away at you from inside.
Sometimes you have unpleasant and frightening things to face in life, whether they have to do with money, health, jobs, relationships, or whatever. No one wants to get fired, have surgery, have a fight, go broke, or any number of crappy situations that grownups find themselves in all the time. But no matter what they are, you have to confront them and learn that you can live through them. It's what being an adult -- an adult of character, maturity, and self-respect -- is about. Cary knows that, and this woman is about to find it out, if she's smart enough to deal with it.