This is obvious cope for being a bad person and avoiding the social shame that comes with being a cheater. It's so profoundly narcissistic and dresses itself up as empathy.
Also cheating and hiding the secret is a million times worse than rape because it revokes the partners consent for the rest of their lives. The reason we consider rape horrible isn't because of a physical act, it's because of lack of consent. But we consider hiding a serious piece of information and totally removing a partners consent for the rest of their lives as ok? Come on.
This article is completely insane in my perspective. If children are involved and a male partner was cheated on, he can no longer trust the offspring are his (in an evolutionary sense) so of course he comes first, and the wife should be severely punished (stoning is one that many societies do) and the decision for what is done to the children left to him. Of course we have dna testing now, but these psychological mechanisms that I and many other men have were not developed in the present. And what else is morality based on?
The lack of empathy for men in this article is staggering.
A relationship is a commitment: you are agreeing to a contract that typically involved monogamy. If you break that contract, you are both lying to your partner and also putting their life in jeopardy through the risk of contracting STIs. That makes the cheater a worthless human being who is knowingly endangering their partner. If somebody played Russian Roulette by pointing a gun at me, I would consider them my enemy. Why shouldn't I also consider them my enemy if they play "STI Russian Roulette" with my life?
Additionally, you are very quick to excuse multiple instances of cheating as "an error of forecasting." But the truth is that it is not an "error," it is self-delusion. The cheater KNOWS on some level what human garbage they are, and they can't face that truth without emotional pain, so they rationalize it to themselves by saying "It will never happen again." But of course it does because narcissists don't care about how their actions impact other people, only themselves. If you let them get away without punishment because they come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to rationalize their own behavior, then the only thing you are teaching them is how to become very good at self-delusion. But if you punish people for bad behavior REGARDLESS of their excuses and self-delusional justifications, then you are teaching them to STOP rationalizing their own behavior because there is no longer a good evolutionary reason to do so. After all, if you know that you're going to get hurt for cheating regardless of whether it was a one-time mistake, a deliberate deception, or a drunken moment, your mind will reroute itself to optimize for doing the right thing instead of coming up with clever ways to justify doing the wrong thing.
This article just implicitly assumes consequentialism without giving any kind of argument for it. Most people have strong intuitive deontological leadings, something like "That person has A RIGHT to know about it" - if you reject those intuitions, then you had better given a damn good argument against them. Simply saying "There will be more happiness" is not an argument, because the idea that happiness is all that matters is the very thing that the deontologist rejects - so the article simply begs the question in that sense.
Mistakes happen? Sure they do. But the proper response to a mistake is to confess and make up for it. If I mistakenly dent somebody's car, it's only right for me to tell them about it. This is an important piece of information for them to have, because if I mistakenly dented their car once I might mistakenly do again! They have every right to evaluate the odds of future car accidents in light of my prior history! This may lead them to decide NOT to lend me their car again, which is well within their rights to do so! Concealing this information puts them at risk and denies them the right to make a fully informed decision on how much they want to trust me.
It doesn't matter if I sincerely believe this was a one-time mistake; the other person has a right to make their own independent judgment on the matter. Even if I fix the car up perfectly in secret so that they'll never know what I did wrong, there's still the chance that next time I'll crash it in a way that can't be fixed. The lack of information is a problem in and of itself.
We've never tried anyone for serial manslaughter? Yes we freaking HAVE! A guy gets drunk, hits someone with his car accidentally, then panics and drives off and isn't caught for awhile. Eventually he drives drunk again, hits another person accidentally, and this time he gets caught and the cops connect the dots and he's charged with two counts of manslaughter. Do you honestly think this has never happened?
More to the point, it's not considered ok for someone to commit manslaughter "just once" and then he keeps it a secret and faces no penalties because he "honestly believes that he'll never it do it again", which is the standard you're proposing for cheaters.
Now look, you can make a SEPARATE argument that society should be more tolerant of these things and that most relationships should negotiate a rule that says "rare one-time flings are ok". You can argue that the social penalties for cheating are too harsh in some cases. You can argue that people ought to have open relationships in the first place. But that's not the argument you're making here.
"This dilemma is the cheater’s own. No one else can throw the switch except the trolley driver."
Nonsense. There are multiple switches here. The cheater has "Confess to what I did" switch, and the partner has a series of "React to the confession" switches, ranging from strong forgiveness to strong condemnation. If the cheater refuses to confess, the partner doesn't get to decide how to react.
"you cannot know your future, only your intentions."
This is a ridiculous oversimplification. Suppose there are two people, one who has always been steadfastly sober and another who has a long history of binge drinking but has stayed sober for the last 2 months. Now suppose they both make a pledge not to drink. They might both be honest about their intentions, but the recovered-alcoholic obviously has a stronger chance of breaking his pledge. And he ought to be aware of that chance and he ought to communicate that to his loved ones. For instance "I'm a recovering alcoholic, so it's best for us not to keep any liquor in the house, in case I get tempted."
Likewise, the cheater has to reckon with the fact that they screwed up once and this bears *some* relation to their odds of screwing up again in the future. His partner has a right to know this, so they can make informed decisions about what to do next.
"If you tell your partner, you are not helping them. You are forcing them to deal with your problem."
Would you make the same case for a breadwinner who loses his job and then fails to inform his partner that he got fired? Doesn't she have a right to know their financial situation, so she can make choices in that regard?
Likewise, if the cheater has some personal flaw that lead them to cheat, and which might hypothetically lead them to cheat again, that flaw poses risks for the relationship. Perhaps the cheater isn't as emotionally self-aware as he thinks, or maybe he has poor impulse control or a lack of empathy for his partner. These are all things that the partner needs to know sooner than later, before they potentially blow up into much larger problems.
"What utility springs from the corpse of innocence? "
Wisdom, obviously. Would you make this argument in any other context? Suppose a deadly meteor is headed toward Earth, and you're the only one who knows about it. Would you keep quiet, to preserve everyone's innocence? Or would you speak out, in hopes that humanity might find some way to deflect the meteor or survive its impact? I for one would choose the latter!
This is just that on a smaller scale. If you tell your partner about your mistakes and flaws, you give them a chance to avoid greater pain in the future. Perhaps they can help you improve, better ensuring that this will never happen again. Or perhaps they choose to leave you for someone better, and perhaps that's actually the right choice, as you're not the sort of person they need right now. Perhaps they confess their own temptations in turn, and it turns out that you're both poly at heart and you happily renegotiate your relationship on poly lines so there's no more secrecy. But all theses options are rendered moot if you never confess.
"Almost as if breaking someone’s innocence is a selfish immoral thing to do. "
I doubt you would feel the same if someone kept a painful secret from YOU that you'd have rather known about. Suppose you are in business with a friend who handles the bookkeeping. Suppose there's a problem and the company has to pay a lot of money to cover some unexpected fees or taxes or whatnot. Suppose this leaves the company close to insolvency, but you friend keeps it a secret from you because he wants to preserve your "innocence". You buy a house on the assumption that you'll keep earning your current salary, only for the company to suddenly go bankrupt 6 months later. If you had known about the true state of the books, you wouldn't have bought the house. Are you glad that your friend kept secrets from you? Or are you upset?
"Taking the risk of exploding the relationship at this point is tantamount to selfish emotional neglect of the children."
A bad relationship will still hurt the children, no matter how much you try to hide it. They'll still be affected indirectly. Better to take the risk in the name of honesty. Even if it leads to a divorce, an honest divorce is better than a dishonest relationship. Arrange it so the kids won't hear the actual shouting, sure, and let the kids know that you love them regardless, but even so, tell your partner the truth.
The "decisions in my stead" bit is ok. It's essentially just a low-key version of poly.
But overall, honestly, this sounds like an essay written by a cheater who's desperately trying to find some rationality-flavored way to avoid the emotional pain of confession.
Relationships are a social contract, with an agreed-upon set of values. If one party is violated by the other, the violated party has a right to know that the contract has been breached. Doing otherwise, even if it comes from a place of compassion, is deception by omission and changes the dynamic of the relationship.
I doubt this would seem as defensible were this an agreement between two businesses to trade exclusively with each other. If one company engaged in a one-time trade with another company, genuinely regretted doing so, and returned to trading exclusively with the original partner company, the cheating company is in breach of contract. Hiding the fact only benefits the cheating company.
My main objection to your premise is not letting the partner know deprives them of their autonomy. It's admirable for the cheater to feel remorse, but they cannot act unilaterally. If they end the relationship and don't explain why to the partner, the partner has been presumably hurt, since (from their perspective) the relationship ended abruptly for no reason. If they continue the relationship without admitting their fault, the partner is operating on a false premise. The ethical response is for the cheater to inform the partner, express their regret, and state their desired outcome to the aggrieved partner (either "I'd like us to stay together" or "I think we should break up"). It is then up to the cheated partner to decide whether they agree to renew the contract (in the event that the cheater would like the relationship to continue).
This is obvious cope for being a bad person and avoiding the social shame that comes with being a cheater. It's so profoundly narcissistic and dresses itself up as empathy.
Also cheating and hiding the secret is a million times worse than rape because it revokes the partners consent for the rest of their lives. The reason we consider rape horrible isn't because of a physical act, it's because of lack of consent. But we consider hiding a serious piece of information and totally removing a partners consent for the rest of their lives as ok? Come on.
This article is completely insane in my perspective. If children are involved and a male partner was cheated on, he can no longer trust the offspring are his (in an evolutionary sense) so of course he comes first, and the wife should be severely punished (stoning is one that many societies do) and the decision for what is done to the children left to him. Of course we have dna testing now, but these psychological mechanisms that I and many other men have were not developed in the present. And what else is morality based on?
The lack of empathy for men in this article is staggering.
A relationship is a commitment: you are agreeing to a contract that typically involved monogamy. If you break that contract, you are both lying to your partner and also putting their life in jeopardy through the risk of contracting STIs. That makes the cheater a worthless human being who is knowingly endangering their partner. If somebody played Russian Roulette by pointing a gun at me, I would consider them my enemy. Why shouldn't I also consider them my enemy if they play "STI Russian Roulette" with my life?
Additionally, you are very quick to excuse multiple instances of cheating as "an error of forecasting." But the truth is that it is not an "error," it is self-delusion. The cheater KNOWS on some level what human garbage they are, and they can't face that truth without emotional pain, so they rationalize it to themselves by saying "It will never happen again." But of course it does because narcissists don't care about how their actions impact other people, only themselves. If you let them get away without punishment because they come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to rationalize their own behavior, then the only thing you are teaching them is how to become very good at self-delusion. But if you punish people for bad behavior REGARDLESS of their excuses and self-delusional justifications, then you are teaching them to STOP rationalizing their own behavior because there is no longer a good evolutionary reason to do so. After all, if you know that you're going to get hurt for cheating regardless of whether it was a one-time mistake, a deliberate deception, or a drunken moment, your mind will reroute itself to optimize for doing the right thing instead of coming up with clever ways to justify doing the wrong thing.
This article just implicitly assumes consequentialism without giving any kind of argument for it. Most people have strong intuitive deontological leadings, something like "That person has A RIGHT to know about it" - if you reject those intuitions, then you had better given a damn good argument against them. Simply saying "There will be more happiness" is not an argument, because the idea that happiness is all that matters is the very thing that the deontologist rejects - so the article simply begs the question in that sense.
This makes NO SENSE.
Mistakes happen? Sure they do. But the proper response to a mistake is to confess and make up for it. If I mistakenly dent somebody's car, it's only right for me to tell them about it. This is an important piece of information for them to have, because if I mistakenly dented their car once I might mistakenly do again! They have every right to evaluate the odds of future car accidents in light of my prior history! This may lead them to decide NOT to lend me their car again, which is well within their rights to do so! Concealing this information puts them at risk and denies them the right to make a fully informed decision on how much they want to trust me.
It doesn't matter if I sincerely believe this was a one-time mistake; the other person has a right to make their own independent judgment on the matter. Even if I fix the car up perfectly in secret so that they'll never know what I did wrong, there's still the chance that next time I'll crash it in a way that can't be fixed. The lack of information is a problem in and of itself.
We've never tried anyone for serial manslaughter? Yes we freaking HAVE! A guy gets drunk, hits someone with his car accidentally, then panics and drives off and isn't caught for awhile. Eventually he drives drunk again, hits another person accidentally, and this time he gets caught and the cops connect the dots and he's charged with two counts of manslaughter. Do you honestly think this has never happened?
More to the point, it's not considered ok for someone to commit manslaughter "just once" and then he keeps it a secret and faces no penalties because he "honestly believes that he'll never it do it again", which is the standard you're proposing for cheaters.
Now look, you can make a SEPARATE argument that society should be more tolerant of these things and that most relationships should negotiate a rule that says "rare one-time flings are ok". You can argue that the social penalties for cheating are too harsh in some cases. You can argue that people ought to have open relationships in the first place. But that's not the argument you're making here.
"This dilemma is the cheater’s own. No one else can throw the switch except the trolley driver."
Nonsense. There are multiple switches here. The cheater has "Confess to what I did" switch, and the partner has a series of "React to the confession" switches, ranging from strong forgiveness to strong condemnation. If the cheater refuses to confess, the partner doesn't get to decide how to react.
"you cannot know your future, only your intentions."
This is a ridiculous oversimplification. Suppose there are two people, one who has always been steadfastly sober and another who has a long history of binge drinking but has stayed sober for the last 2 months. Now suppose they both make a pledge not to drink. They might both be honest about their intentions, but the recovered-alcoholic obviously has a stronger chance of breaking his pledge. And he ought to be aware of that chance and he ought to communicate that to his loved ones. For instance "I'm a recovering alcoholic, so it's best for us not to keep any liquor in the house, in case I get tempted."
Likewise, the cheater has to reckon with the fact that they screwed up once and this bears *some* relation to their odds of screwing up again in the future. His partner has a right to know this, so they can make informed decisions about what to do next.
"If you tell your partner, you are not helping them. You are forcing them to deal with your problem."
Would you make the same case for a breadwinner who loses his job and then fails to inform his partner that he got fired? Doesn't she have a right to know their financial situation, so she can make choices in that regard?
Likewise, if the cheater has some personal flaw that lead them to cheat, and which might hypothetically lead them to cheat again, that flaw poses risks for the relationship. Perhaps the cheater isn't as emotionally self-aware as he thinks, or maybe he has poor impulse control or a lack of empathy for his partner. These are all things that the partner needs to know sooner than later, before they potentially blow up into much larger problems.
"What utility springs from the corpse of innocence? "
Wisdom, obviously. Would you make this argument in any other context? Suppose a deadly meteor is headed toward Earth, and you're the only one who knows about it. Would you keep quiet, to preserve everyone's innocence? Or would you speak out, in hopes that humanity might find some way to deflect the meteor or survive its impact? I for one would choose the latter!
This is just that on a smaller scale. If you tell your partner about your mistakes and flaws, you give them a chance to avoid greater pain in the future. Perhaps they can help you improve, better ensuring that this will never happen again. Or perhaps they choose to leave you for someone better, and perhaps that's actually the right choice, as you're not the sort of person they need right now. Perhaps they confess their own temptations in turn, and it turns out that you're both poly at heart and you happily renegotiate your relationship on poly lines so there's no more secrecy. But all theses options are rendered moot if you never confess.
"Almost as if breaking someone’s innocence is a selfish immoral thing to do. "
I doubt you would feel the same if someone kept a painful secret from YOU that you'd have rather known about. Suppose you are in business with a friend who handles the bookkeeping. Suppose there's a problem and the company has to pay a lot of money to cover some unexpected fees or taxes or whatnot. Suppose this leaves the company close to insolvency, but you friend keeps it a secret from you because he wants to preserve your "innocence". You buy a house on the assumption that you'll keep earning your current salary, only for the company to suddenly go bankrupt 6 months later. If you had known about the true state of the books, you wouldn't have bought the house. Are you glad that your friend kept secrets from you? Or are you upset?
"Taking the risk of exploding the relationship at this point is tantamount to selfish emotional neglect of the children."
A bad relationship will still hurt the children, no matter how much you try to hide it. They'll still be affected indirectly. Better to take the risk in the name of honesty. Even if it leads to a divorce, an honest divorce is better than a dishonest relationship. Arrange it so the kids won't hear the actual shouting, sure, and let the kids know that you love them regardless, but even so, tell your partner the truth.
The "decisions in my stead" bit is ok. It's essentially just a low-key version of poly.
But overall, honestly, this sounds like an essay written by a cheater who's desperately trying to find some rationality-flavored way to avoid the emotional pain of confession.
Relationships are a social contract, with an agreed-upon set of values. If one party is violated by the other, the violated party has a right to know that the contract has been breached. Doing otherwise, even if it comes from a place of compassion, is deception by omission and changes the dynamic of the relationship.
I doubt this would seem as defensible were this an agreement between two businesses to trade exclusively with each other. If one company engaged in a one-time trade with another company, genuinely regretted doing so, and returned to trading exclusively with the original partner company, the cheating company is in breach of contract. Hiding the fact only benefits the cheating company.
My main objection to your premise is not letting the partner know deprives them of their autonomy. It's admirable for the cheater to feel remorse, but they cannot act unilaterally. If they end the relationship and don't explain why to the partner, the partner has been presumably hurt, since (from their perspective) the relationship ended abruptly for no reason. If they continue the relationship without admitting their fault, the partner is operating on a false premise. The ethical response is for the cheater to inform the partner, express their regret, and state their desired outcome to the aggrieved partner (either "I'd like us to stay together" or "I think we should break up"). It is then up to the cheated partner to decide whether they agree to renew the contract (in the event that the cheater would like the relationship to continue).