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I’m a man who recently had a fling with a man who is in a monogamous heterosexual relationship. We had sex twice. While I am in a nonmonogamous relationship myself, I respect the practice of monogamy. Normally I wouldn’t get involved with someone who is unfaithful. But here I felt my moral obligations to a struggling member of my own queer community were greater than those to his partner.
The guy I had the fling with is not openly queer, but he reached out on an app for gay hookups. After we messaged back and forth, it became clear that his relationship is not emotionally or physically sustaining. Both of our encounters occurred in the apartment he shares with his girlfriend; we only ever met there because she consistently tracks his phone’s location and would confront him if he went anywhere without letting her know. It appeared to me that this man was in a manipulative and potentially abusive relationship. He seemed lonely and trapped, and I connected with that experience as a fellow queer person.
I do not want to continue our physical relationship because the implications of my behavior have been weighing heavily on me. His girlfriend has a right to know what’s going on in her relationship, particularly in terms of communication around the number of partners and protection. Whatever judgment I may have for her actions, I believe she deserves the truth. If I didn’t believe in the toxicity of their relationship and the danger of outing this man, I would be inclined to tell his girlfriend what happened, or make it clear to him that she must be informed.
I think that my time with this person was meaningful for him and helped him to affirm his identity, even if our hookups were illicit. At this point, my plan is to let him know that I’ve enjoyed our experiences together but don’t think we should continue seeing each other, then to cut off contact and try to reckon with my actions. I don’t know if I will ever really be able to settle my ethical stomachache about it all. Can there be stipulations on the immorality of infidelity? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
It takes two to cheat — well, at least two. But that doesn’t mean that there’s a moral equivalence between the cheater and the person with whom he’s cheating. The fellow you’re describing was the one who presumably had promised fidelity. Knowingly abetting his behavior was blameworthy, too, but less so: You weren’t the person betraying an intimate partner, concealing what you did and all the rest of it. Still, you’re making the right call to call it off.
You’ve explained how you justified the situation to yourself: helping someone who is exploring his same-sex desires, affirming his sexual identity. You just need to be sure you aren’t dignifying the activities of a straying partner. Nor should you accept the cheater’s account of his relationship at face value and assume that he’s deceiving only his partner. He has every reason to cast his extracurricular activity in a self-justifying light: A cinq à sept becomes a sanctuary from a toxic relationship; a hookup is how he explores his sexuality.
Well, maybe. Or maybe he’s blaming the victim. Bear in mind that what you know about her is what he chooses to tell you. If his relationship with his girlfriend isn’t giving him what he needs, he should bring it to an end and set her free. He may tell you he feels trapped, but he could be trapping her too — ensnaring her in false hope and feigned devotion. In the meantime, his infidelities could also pose a medical risk to her; even if you two have been careful, you don’t know what else he gets up to, and how.
None of this means you should tell her yourself, which would be a serious betrayal. He’s the one who owes her candor, and the fact that someone shouldn’t be left in the dark doesn’t mean that just anybody is entitled to turn on the lights. Nor does your belief that theirs is a terrible relationship entitle you to end it for them.
Still, because you have a kind of friendship with him, you’re in a position to help him recognize that leaving things as they are would be wrong and to discuss some of these issues with him. Is he planning to keep having secret hookups on the side? How is he protecting himself and her? Does he have a genuine emotional and erotic attachment to her, while also being attracted to men? If he wants a primary relationship with her and sex with men on the side, he ought to tell her and let her figure out what she wants to do in view of the realities here. If his relationship with her is less than authentic, though, his failure of candor is doing her a serious injury: There can be a thin line between down-low and lowdown.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was mulling the ethics of expatriation after the upcoming presidential election. She wrote: “A few years ago, American friends of mine bought a home in a European country in order to obtain an E.U. passport. (The country has an immigration program supporting this.) They state that they are doing so in case the United States presidential election goes as they fear. They, and I, have no doubt that the U.S. would fall to some form of authoritarianism if the wrong candidate were elected. … As members of some of the groups who most likely will retain many tangible privileges and are least likely to be negatively affected, do we have an ethical obligation to stay and help those who will be impacted more harshly than us, or is it ethically acceptable to leave the country?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “A sign of your identification with a country, your sense that it’s yours, is the pride — and the shame — that you feel about things done by your country and your compatriots. It’s a concern for national honor. Another sign is a sense of shared responsibility for the country’s fate. Leaving your country because you think it has gone off the rails isn’t really consistent with this sense of shared responsibility or with a commitment to trying to make things better. Unless you think that staying will put you in jeopardy, or that leaving will contribute to restoring your country (the way the Free French departed France when it was occupied in World War II, in order to regroup elsewhere), skedaddling does strike me as unpatriotic. … I don’t share your fear that America is about to tumble into authoritarianism. I grew up under civilian and military dictatorships in Ghana. My father was a political prisoner. I think I have a sense of the conditions under which authoritarianism can arise. But if I did believe what you believe, I confess that, as a patriot, I would want to stick around and join with others to help bring us back from disaster.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I agree with the Ethicist. In discussing the issue with my spouse, we’re also concerned with the ethics of people from wealthy countries essentially gentrifying less wealthy ones. Even though, as lesbians and older women, we stand to bear some of the burden of the election results, we’ve concluded that, ethically, we need to stay around to help clean up the mess. — Carla
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I found this response way off the mark. Citizenship is for most of us an accident of birth. It is more of a periodically renewed contract than a permanent moral obligation. If you feel stifled or scared by your country’s political climate, then your contract is broken and you can move on. This is precisely analogous to moving within the States. In my case, I found my hometown in rural Kentucky to be socially suffocating, and at 18 I decided to move for a better life in California. Should I have stayed and worked to fix Kentucky, tossing away my one and only life in the process? — William
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While I agree with the Ethicist’s advice that true patriotism calls for not fleeing America unless absolutely necessary, I find his belief that authoritarianism is not an imminent danger disappointingly blithe. With all due respect to his family’s experience, there are plenty of signs that if Donald Trump returns to power, our democracy will not recover. Please read Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” for particulars. — Steve
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My guess is that this letter is from a liberal who can’t stand the thought of another Trump presidency. I thought the response from the Ethicist was spot on. I am a conservative and my wife is a liberal and we have been happily married for 54 years, and we rarely agree on politics. But we both agree that the U.S.A. is the greatest country on this planet. The question that you should be asking is what can I do to make to make our country better rather than fleeing a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable. We also have many checks and balances in our political system that makes an authoritarian rule virtually impossible. So my advice to you is to not let the door hit you on the way out, and once you are gone you will realize that you have just abandoned the greatest country on this earth just because you didn’t like the political views of the president. — Ron
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This response omits an important reality. Residing abroad does not sever an American from the U.S. political process. Expats who remain citizens can vote, donate money to candidates or PACs, join political parties’ overseas organizations and do volunteer work. — Hartmut
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This week and last week, the Ethicist’s responses have been above and beyond mere advice — they have been brilliant essays full of thought and historical references that succinctly put into focus the issues surrounding A.I. art and creativity and patriotism. Both of these subjects are relevant and timely topics, and I feel as though I have more clarity into both issues because of his brilliant insights. — Kimberly
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I am an old woman, but when I was 26 in 1970, I left the U.S., by myself, because of the political violence of the time. If I could have stopped the killing by staying, I would have stayed. They say “If you remember the 1960s, you weren’t there.” I left so I could remember the 1960s, and I still do remember: every assassination, every escalation of the war, the race riots, the political bombings. Absolute chaos. Nothing made sense. I left in May, after the war crossed the Cambodian border and the National Guard shot the students at Kent State. I actually thought I was dying because I thought America was dying. The guys who went to Vietnam were patriotic, not the rich, white and well-connected men who evaded the draft and eventually made a fortune from the war economy. I hope, with all my heart and the remains of my passion, that U.S. voters will vote for democracy. I do not regret my decision to leave in 1970, which seemed like a life or death choice at the time. I don’t know if I would make a decision to leave now. — Deborah
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