What moral responsibility does the accessory-to-cheating have?

The other party just needs to keep their mouth shut and mind their own business.

Being the meat in the sandwich so to speak, they need to be relatively inexpensive & avoid repeating on you.

Keep their mouth shut about the cheating or keep their mouth shut and not cheat? The first would still be bad karma, or kharma if you prefer.

The cheater and the other party practically share the same moral standards, or lack there of. The nice thing about the twist that you mentioned is that the cheater gets leverage over the other person in terms of minimizing being exposed by the other party. Ideally, of course, is that the other party is also a cheater by his or her own accord, this way there is more leverage against being exposed. As far as determining moral responsibility, that’s thrown out the window the moment the parties engaged in the cheating.

It’s really bad if the other party is friends with the cheatee. This person and the cheater both know that they’re betraying someone close to them. If the other party doesn’t know the cheatee… it’s still wrong, but less of a betrayal by the other party. You’d probably feel more hurt if a friend stole from you than if a stranger did it even though the actions are equal. A lot of us have it in us to do something wrong to a stranger, but not many people are low enough to knowingly hurt a friend like this.

What moral responsibility would you want from either of those parties if you’re the one who’s been cheated on? Ugh. I agree with cheating being more painful if between mutual friends because there’s more loss of trust, negating experiences from the passed friendship and the fallout of possibly not feeling as close to remainder friends who you suspect of complicity.

I don’t even know how to feel about this question. Q’s like this always make me feel like the OP is perpetrating something they want to justify, and are using the community to try their arguments and are also looking for validation from at least some. I could be wrong, that’s just the feeling that I get.
I also don’t understand the statement “If you accept the premise that cheating is wrong and the cheater is acting immorally by cheating…”
Cheating is, by definition, wrong.

Main Entry: cheat
Pronunciation: \ˈchēt\
Function: verb
Etymology: 2cheat

1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting <cheat death>intransitive verb 1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly <cheat at cards> <cheating on a test>
2 : to be sexually unfaithful —usually used with on <was cheating on his wife>
3 : to position oneself defensively near a particular area in anticipation of a play in that area <the shortstop was cheating toward second base>

— cheat·er noun
synonyms cheat, cozen, defraud, swindle mean to get something by dishonesty or deception. cheat suggests using trickery that escapes observation <cheated me out of a dollar>. cozen implies artful persuading or flattering to attain a thing or a purpose <always able to cozen her grandfather out of a few dollars>. defraud stresses depriving one of his or her rights and usually connotes deliberate perversion of the truth <defrauded of her inheritance by an unscrupulous lawyer>. swindle implies large-scale cheating by misrepresentation or abuse of confidence <swindled of their savings by con artists>.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cheat

Why is cheating wrong? Again, I could be mistaken, but it seems that you feel that it isn’t wrong. What you term “negative consequences” does not nearly cover the gamut of all possible ramifications involved here. But if you truly feel that cheating is not wrong, nothing I can say to you will change your mind. If you feel that it is and are looking for a justification, again I can’t help you.
Maybe if you gave us some more details. Is this a hypothetical situation or are you involved in a sordid affair with a “friend” of your SO? I’d love to know what lies behind this question.

Yes, it is wrong to cheat even if there are no obvious consequences. Because there are consequences no matter what. The cheated upon person has had a fraud committed against them. The fraud that their partner was faithful. A lie by omission.

Yes, the Other Party has the same moral consequences that the cheater has. They are attempting to break up a relationship. How is that morally legitimate? At the very least it violates the golden rule.

I agree with @marinelife. Cheating is wrong, even if you remove certain consequences – it’s still a huge lie and a betrayal of trust, not to mention, it’s cowardly in a big way. Anyone who participates in cheating, whether they be the cheater or the other man/woman, is guilty and takes on the weight of the responsibility for participating in a morally reprehensible practice.

@Trillian: I’m not trying to justify anything. I am in a serious but non-monogamous relationship so cheating is not a concern for us. This is a conversation that has come up in my friend group recently and we had some very interesting discussions with no resolution. The sticking points were:

(1) If the cheatee never finds out, and no one got hurt, then on what basis do we judge the action of cheating as “wrong”?

(2) Isn’t the breach of trust made by the person who is actually in a committed relationship? Why makes the accessory responsible to the cheatee?

Another good point brought up in previous versions of this conversation that I didn’t mention here was that really, the betrayal comes from the cheater’s willingness to cheat. So since that willingness is the really immoral part, and that willingness belongs entirely to the cheater, how can we even hold the accessory morally culpable?

Although I have strong feelings on the topic, I am doing my best to present the arguments as an uninterested party in order to foster conversation.

For the “accessory”, I would say it boils down to what that person knows and what he or she believes. If the accessory doesn’t even know that his / her lover even has a SO (even if he or she just doesn’t even try to find out), then that more or less lets that person off the moral hook, doesn’t it?

In addition, if that person knows or believes that the lover’s relationship is over, nearly over, all-but-over, “simply a legal formality,” etc., then it seems like the degree of “cheat” is minimized or absent.

For the record, if you had said “the other man”, then your meaning would have been perfectly obvious: women don’t cheat with “other women” as a rule, do they? (It’s certainly possible, I know.) Or were you alluding to an unstated assumption that “women never cheat on their SOs?”

It’s an interesting question.

@CyanoticWasp: I think the interesting case is that in which the accessory knows exactly what’s going on, so I tried to make it clear in the details that that’s what I wanted to talk about. I agree that if s/he has no knowledge of the relationship, s/he has exactly zero moral culpability.

As for the “other man” thing, I agree that people would certainly have figured out what I was getting at—but if you say “the Other Woman” you need no context. People know that you’re talking about a woman with whom a man is cheating. If you say “the Other Man” I don’t think it’s so clear. I think it’s interesting that we have this cultural narrative of women who are the accessory to cheating but not men. Although I could be reading it totally wrong; this has just been my experience.

The accessory-to-cheating’s degree of culpability depends upon the amount of betrayal that they perpetrate. In your example, I’d say that culpability is high. But, if the accessory was single and completely ignorant to the fact that their partner had another partner, they the accessory has 0 culpability. Everything else is just shades of gray.

You probably know by now that I have no absolute opinions about cheating. No one outside of the main parties can judge what occurs in a relationship.

In my world, it’s the same as stealing.

If they’re taking the relationship to that level would you expect them to be ignorant of the entire situation, although for a one night stand I could see it.

I want to amend my answer to include the point that has been touched on since I posted; whether the other woman/man knows the cheater has a SO. I was once made an unwilling party to someone cheating on their wife and had I known, I wouldn’t have done it. So in that case, it makes the other woman/man as much of a mug as the SO.

I agree with that. And let me add what could the upside of cheating be.

I don’t like the secrecy. Someone else brought it up already. The cheat-ee is out of the loop. The other two know a secret, and make eye contact when certain references are made, sometimes in the presence of the – let me change that to “wronged” person. They smile at each other, and are in a dialogue that not only excludes the wronged person, it minimizes, diminishes and dismisses her.
It’s disrespectful, and also has an element of childishness to it. Sort of a; “Nyah nyah, you can’t be in our group.” It’s mean and hateful, and to believe that the other person will never find out is unrealistic. That vibration given off by two people who are intimate is palpable, and whether it ever surfaces or not, the person knows that “something” is there.

Are we our “brother’s” keeper? Does what affects one affect us all?

I place the moral responsibility primarily on the cheater. They are the one with a primary relationship. If they look for someone else, that person has no responsibility to the person who is being cheated on. If that person is a friend, then it is a different story. Then they do have a responsibility to their friend, and if the affair goes on, the cheatee is being betrayed by both people. Of course, when the shit hits the fan, the boyfriend is usually the one to go, and the friend will be kept. Friends, it seems, are much harder to lose.

Suppose the other person does not know that their lover has an SO at the beginning, but finds out later. Should the “other” back out? On the one hand, it would probably be causing the least harm to back out in favor of the existing relationship. On the other hand, the “other” has a right to happiness, too.

I guess this comes down to why you think the cheater is cheating. Most people, it seems to me, think that the cheater is just out for some extra fun, or they are morally deficient. Others believe that no one would cheat if there were no problems with their SO.

However, people mostly seem to believe that if the primary relationship is bad, then the cheater should break off the relationship before taking up with the new person. In an ideal world, this seems like a good idea, but the world isn’t ideal. People don’t know whether if they break off they will ever find someone new. It makes more sense to find someone new and then break off the old relationship—tactically speaking.

Personally, I think morality works on a basis that is pretty much like the way the economy works. It is a way of helping people figure out what they want. Except that while it feels ante hoc, it really is post-hoc—based on lessons learned before.

In the moral economy, we are looking at a kind of Willsian greatest good calculation. Usually, the current relationship has more at stake than the new relationship. Based on that, the responsible thing is to save the existing relationship. On the other hand, the new relationship may have more potential good than the existing relationship. Which good is larger? Well, no one can tell since we can’t see the future.

For the “other” it is clear that there is more good in a future relationship, except if the existing relationship includes their friend. Then you have to ask if a lover is worth a friend. As I said before, that’s a tough calculation, but it usually ends up in favor of the friend.

But if there is no friend of the “other,” then I think they are off the hook. The moral responsibility lies purely on the cheater. The cheater obviously wants no trouble. They want to have their cake and eat it. If they are caught, then it is hard to say where their loyalty will go, but if there is a lot more at stake with the existing relationship, they will probably try to repair that. If not, they may go with the “other.”

Except that in our society (US, I mean), there is such a moral outrage at a cheater, that the cheatee is strongly encouraged never to let the cheater back. No one ever understands why the cheatee gets back together with the cheater. After all, they were so wronged. Some even look down on the cheatee for letting the cheater come back.

I think people underestimate the importance of children, family and resources on people. Couples are very reluctant to give up things they have built for all of their married lives.

Of course, to get back together and stay together, they would have to solve the problems that led to the cheating. If that doesn’t happen, then, as the saying goes, “once a cheater, always a cheater.” But, with counseling and hard work by both people in the couple, I don’t think that saying is true.

Whenever I played at cheating, I got more wrong answers than had I just answered on my own.
As for morality… Oh wait, do you mean cheating on a married partner/spouse? If so, I suppose that’s a lot more serious than cheating on a school exam.

I believe that if one party is married to someone outside of the relationship, both parties in the relationship are acting wrongly.

First point, morals are completely subjective. Where do your morals or values come from….are they based in your religion? In societal norms? In something more deep and personal to you than that? Where is one’s moral compass and how does one evaluate their ability to judge right from wrong? In other words, it’s going to depend on the situation. There are couples who have sex with 3rd parties and don’t consider it cheating, but it’s a matter to be agreed on by the couple. Therefore, cheating becomes doing something which is outside of the scope of one’s agreed upon relationship boundaries. So, here we are going to make the assumption that we’re talking about a couple where both parties have agreed either explicitly or implicitly on sexual and/or romantic exclusivity. If one partner breaks the agreement without the knowledge or consent of the other, then it amounts to the moral failing of dishonesty, which is one characteristic most people would consider to be part of their moral fiber. That answers what exactly makes it wrong from the standpoint of the cheater. Failure to be monogamous when all concerned parties are informed of and agreeable to a lack of monogamy is not in and of itself “immoral” from my perspective, because if everyone knows and is OK with it, then it’s not “wrong”...this is how I determine morality. However, there are people who would find this behaviour immoral based on their own definitions of what morality is to them.

Now, as for what is morally wrong from the perspective of the 3rd party with whom the cheating occurs, if the 3rd party is unaware of the presence of a significant other with whom an expressed or implied agreement of monogamy has been made, then this person has done nothing “wrong” and thus nothing immoral from my point of view, and again there are those who feel any pre-marital sexual relations are “wrong”, but again, subjective things are beside the point here, we’re talking solely about why the act of cheating is wrong, and who is the culpable party. In such a case, the 3rd party is a victim much like the spouse or significant other, only on a slightly lesser order, and this person’s only failing is not a moral one, it is simply that he or she did not bother to learn enough about his or her partner before having sex with that person. To me, that is a failure of judgment, not of morality.

Now, in the case of a 3rd party who is fully cognizant of his or her role in the infidelity, I would judge that as the moral failing of theft, essentially. I don’t believe couples “own” each other, but to create an analogy to a car, it’s kind of like leasing a vehicle. You may not own it, but you have the right to exclusive use (and I know that sounds crass, which is not my intent). If you were to borrow someone’s car without their permission, whether that car belongs to the person who is driving it, or whether that person simply has an agreement pertaining to exclusive use, the person who drove off in the car without permission is still guilty of theft. So, to personalize that, my wife doesn’t own me, I won me, but she has an exclusive “utilization” agreement with me (the owner). If some other girl were to drive me for a night, she may not have stolen me from the owner (me), but she did steal the use of me which is something I’ve agreed to give exclusively to my wife. To carry the analogy further, if we were talking about cars, let’s say I own a car dealership, I lease you a Cadillac. You’re at work one day and someone else tells me that they saw your Cadillac and they’d like to drive it. So, I give them an extra set of keys, they drive the car around and put it right back where they found it and give me back the keys. Now, I have broken the lease agreement by letting someone other than you use the car for which you’ve been given exclusive rights…I’ve been dishonest. The other person used something that wasn’t hers, in effect she stole some of your usage…she invalidated your exclusivity.

As for how responsibility from a moral standpoint plays out, this can be trickier and I think it has to be a subjective call. If one becomes the 3rd party with no knowledge and subsequently finds out, one has to decide what is more important. This becomes a cost/benefit scenario. Is the spouse or SO going to harm you if you tell them? Are there innocent children who are going to have their lives changed irreparably by this? Is the spouse or SO one of those people who suspects infidelity, but would rather live in the dark than know the awful truth? Is this a character defect in the person with whom you slept, or were there mitigating circumstances which allow you to think of it as “temporary insanity”. And to your definition of morality, will you be able to live with the secret or not? From a right or wrong standpoint, the right thing is to always be honest and to admit to one’s dishonesty and to seek forgiveness if one does not live up to one’s own standards.

I think the question of whether cheating is wrong is best answered if we think about how we would feel, individually, if we found out our SO was cheating on us. If the thought makes one feel bad, hurt, upset or unhappy, then in gaining empathy one may not want to bring that upon his/her SO, if they cared for their SO.

Therefore, some categorize cheating under being selfish or thinking only of oneself and fulfilling one’s own desires/urges. Conversely, if one did not care about the SO anymore, then perhaps they could justify cheating.

The need to “cheat” as opposed to just end the relationship indicates a sense of underhandedness or foul-play, because the act is done in secret. This implies the doer is aware, on some level that they are doing something wrong, be it in society’s eyes, among their peers, or in their community. It could very well be the reason the cheater has decided to cheat: because they need some excitement in their life, and cheating with all its inherent secretiveness, allows a little bit of clandestine behavior.

I think in your example, the weight of moral responsibility falls fully on the “cheater”. The “Other Person” obviously suffers from a lack of morals as well, but without a attached cheater, there would not be cheating going on. If the cheater detached his or herself from the “cheatee”, there would be no issue.

But then the question becomes: Is it still exciting for the cheater to maintain the relationship with the “Other Person” if there is no one to cheat on? Oftentimes, we hear of a married individual divorcing his or her SO, and marrying the individual she/he cheated with, only to cheat again once he/she is in a committed relationship.

I’ve been reading along and agree morals are subjective but how’s this for simplicity?
If someone gets hurt by these engagements then whatever boundaries for the relationships were established weren’t clarified. If someone’s hurt then something went “wrong”.