About Fighting.

If someone steps up to you, pushes you around, gets in your face. You do the same damn thing and get prepared to fight. If the villain continues to verbally threaten you, you should hit first and do not let up until the other person is on the floor, hurt, and does not want to continue.

You should only ever run from a fight when you are outnumbered, out gunned, or could get into legal troubles.

Getting punched or hit in the face a couple of times is not a big deal and while the fight is going on, you won't even notice.

Now a lot of guys will just talk a lot of **** and nothing will come from it. It's easy to tell when this happens and a lot of times, you don't have to fight. But sometimes you gotta man up, because some guys are just going to try and hurt you. It all depends on the circumstances. If some guy is making you look like a fool in front of your girl. You better do something or she'll lose respect for you, as will others.

The above doesn't make sense to me.

You seem to be doing a lot of projecting in the above. Some people do care about unknowns. An example, I had my car crashed into at my apartment complex parking lot and left without leaving a note, 15 minutes later when I arrived, a bystander who had witnessed the event opted for doing the right thing by giving me enough info on the car that did it to track the perpetrator down even tough it was none of his business. I certainly didn't go "WTF you're an unknown, why are you telling me this". In this case you realize that a woman is being deceived and taken advantage of the same way you have been. As others pointed out you are not ruining her life/marriage by telling her, her husband already has by cheating. I think it's human nature to want to know when we are being deceived and will not particularly be picky about who delivers the news.

Good thing you always know when some punk talking smack is carrying a gun or a knife due to your xray vision! And whether or not he'll try to press charges after you beat him to a pulp!

Its imposible for me to answer because I've never been married or dependent on a significant other or had a child to take care of.

I am not really defending the pro fighting side but the bolded statement is lol naive. When's the last time (if ever) that you found yourself in a situation where you could rationalize how to deal with someone swinging at you in a non confrontational way?

If he's threatening you, it's self defense even if you hit first. Also, if you're yelling and talking smack, and he hasn't pulled a gun or a knife by then, chances are he doesn't have one.

I agree with this.

I have to assumed OP is:
1) Looking to inflict maximum pain
2) Looking to come off as reasonable

Telling the wife does neither of these. Maximum pain is achieved when **** hits the fan with the new guy and OP is gone--seemingly unaltered, strong and dignified. The pain is reduced when OP let's devalues himself by lashing out. The short-term ugliness created by telling the wife might be appealing. The problem is it makes OP come off as a weaker man and reinforces ex's decision.

My objection isn't that it's wrong to tell the wife. My objection is that it's a suboptimal strategy.

Chances are, sure. The chance doesn't need to be very high for your strategy to be terrible, though.

Since you posted a largely irrelevant anecdote, let me respond with one of my own.

Say you are figuring out whether to employ James or Betty for your company. However Greg who you do not know comes up and tells you with proof that Betty is an alcoholic. Now you know that you are not employing Betty anymore. However, you later find out that recently Betty dumped Greg, and that Greg was telling you this to spite her. How does Greg come across in this situation? Bitter, petty and vindictive? Or is he a good Samaritan?

Also think about how the situation changes if Denise your co-worker who knows Betty from a previous job tells you the same thing.

You see what I'm getting at?

This thread is hysterical. Do all of you madly in love with your girl friend and would never fathom cheating on her twenty-three year-olds have any idea how much different your sexual relationship with your squeeze will be when you are married with children as opposed to dating with a cat? While I am sure that you will find plenty of men in this category who will still condemn this guy's adultery, I am also sure that the chants to burn him alive won't be as loud. Accept that your world view is limited and ease up on the self righteousness. Be the husband/bf that you think you should be and stay out of other people's business.

+1

cheat with single people and don't get caught

Semigrunching so it may have been brought up but would people saying OP has an obligation to tell the wife feel the same if it were two randoms? Say you are in a hotel and hear a dude talking to his mistress about the crazy non-marital sex they just had and later you overhear him say his wife's email address and mention a son. Would you send her an anonymous email?

A problem people never seem to consider is the "legal troubles" aspect. A guy I know from HS got 8 years in jail for defending his brother and ultimately putting another guy into a coma. Getting into a fight isn't worth even a 1/10000 chance at that. You don't know how the legal stuff is going to shake out.

It's been brought up somewhere between 5 and 10 different times.

So what are you saying? You should just back down in any confrontation because the other might have a knife or a gun?

FTR, I've been held at gunpoint twice and knew I was basically screwed if I tried anything (I didn't). But most of the time, you can make an educated guess about whether or not the guy is armed.

simple risk analysis:

Pros:
-you will feel the oh so sweet feeling of revenge which will wear off quickly
-you will expose a liar and a cheater and fulfill your social responsibility
-you may have a shot with the guy's wife

Cons:
-the guy may come after you
-you will be percieved by many as someone who takes pleasure in the suffering of others
-you may destroy a young family that was simply going through a rough patch and the guy made a mistake
-there are probably more cons, i can't think of any right now and i ain't reading through this entire thread

Conclusion: Pros < Cons

I do and I understand your point. I still don't see why the wife should be pissed at OP, if it's out of spite it's still wouldn't be as an offense targeted at her, but at her cheating husband. Like I would think of the informant with a hidden agenda to be low and whatnot but the actual info is still welcome and useful to me.

no reply from clarknasty or bison? im pretty curious whether or not you would like to know whether or not your wife/longterm girlfriend were cheating on you

bkgrinder,

lots of assumptions there. would you like to know?

I think you should look at why you keep getting held up at gun point and wonder if it's worth the trouble. Just in my opinion.

1.Get hit by psychopath
2. Walk away
3. Call cops
4. Sue psychopath
5.???
6. Profit

Or you can go the Machismo route

1. get hit by psychopath
2. fight back
3. Feel like a big man
4. bystanders call cops
5. Go to jail
6. ???
7. Anal rape by much bigger man.

The first time I got held up was because my idiot roommate was selling weed out of the house in Tallahassee to randoms and I told him and the other roommate it was a bad idea. The other time was because we walked into the ghetto to go to a party at night and I told everyone I was walking with that this was bad idea, but I knew where we were going and knew it was close so I thought we could make it, (which we would have had the group I was with had listened to me and hadn't stood in the street for an extra 10-20 Mins). Both times, I had nothing taken from me and it clearly resulted from just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Not from me standing up for myself.

I'm not sure how this is relevant. If they would like to know, what does that imply?

FWIW, I'd like it if a random person gave me a $100 bill. I guess that means I should give random people $100 bills?

Fwiw, I would tell the wife simply because of the health implications. The husband is a liar. Who knows how many girls he is screwing on the side and what he could bring back to the wife. That is what *I* would personally do. It may not be what other people do, though.

You don't need to back down from every altercation. But you should back down from every one you can.

The brain power you're putting into estimating whether the guy is armed is better spent estimating if you can back off safely without ever throwing a punch.