How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

I have a job that takes me to different cities every few years. I’m also married and have a wife. I’m a straight male, who is 40 years old. We’ve been married for 15 years. After our son was born, we moved from New York to Europe.

Unbeknownst to me, my wife began an affair shortly after we settled in and it continued on for a few years before I found out. When I did discover the affair and confronted her about it, she begged me to let her have her freedom and carry on seeing her lover without breaking up our marriage. She said she was the happiest she had ever been in her life and the affair didn’t affect her feelings for me. My wife is beautiful and intelligent, but because of her awful parents and upbringing, she never had the chance to finish high school, let alone go to university. I agreed to her terms and she slowly began to form a separate social life apart from me with her lover’s friends. She also left a lot of the parental responsibilities up to me and started spending weekends and holidays with her lover. She was enormously happy though, and we still had great sex life when she wasn’t away.

I got another job assignment and my wife didn’t join us until six months after my son and I moved. During our time there, my wife had a string of lovers, mostly younger men that she had adventures with. Once again, she was very happy with her life. Unfortunately for her, we had another move, where my wife quickly found a lover and for the first time I began to feel our marriage was under threat. She has been with this guy for three years now and has largely lost interest in sex with me.

Just two days ago, I got a call from a woman I didn’t know who insisted I meet her for coffee to discuss something important about my wife. I agreed to meet her, and she told me my wife’s lover is married and has children elsewhere and when he isn’t spending time with my wife, he frequents sex parties. I know nothing about this guy, but I do know my wife thinks he’s single. Now the dilemma I face is whether to confront my wife with this knowledge on the assumption it’s true or keep it to myself. I know this would destroy my wife’s happiness if it’s true. On the other hand, if my wife is being misled by a lying jerk, she probably should know about it. What do I do?

—Husband With a Dilemma

Jessica Stoya: Before we get into the actual question, I want to draw attention to the way that the letter writer makes sure we know that he and his wife had a great sex life, but doesn’t really seem to be applying qualitative judgment to the part where the wife left a lot of the parental responsibilities up to him and ditched him on weekends and holidays.

Rich Juzwiak: Yes, and also took six months to move to their next location? What was that about? I mean, I assume she was out having sex.

Jessica: Yeah, so firstly, I love that he wants his wife to be happy. That is indeed beautiful, but it’s worth taking a minute to consider if our letter writer is getting anything out of this relationship. Is he happy? That’s what I want to know.

Rich: And I want to know what he is doing extracurricularly outside of his marriage because it doesn’t sound like he’s seeing anyone else. We’ve heard a whole bunch of what his wife is doing. Maybe he feels like it’s neither here nor there that he’s open but it doesn’t seem like it. I feel like he would’ve said, “I have lovers now myself.” That doesn’t seem to be happening.

Jessica: Given the length of the letter, there was time to add a little bit of information about that.

Rich: Anyway, I certainly think that he should share this information with his wife. She’s been with this guy for a while, but she seems to have no problem meeting men and seems to have no problem connecting with them. So if she drops this current guy, she’s got a husband and she’s going to find somebody else to have sex with.

Also, given her history, I’m not so sure that this is going to break her up as much as the letter writer thinks it is. She started having these affairs while she was married! I don’t think it’s outside of her moral purview to be having sex with people who are married. It strikes me as strange that this would actually affect her as deeply as the letter writer thinks it might.

Jessica: And it’s not that far of a jump in most regards from having adventures with a string of younger men to sex parties, right?

Rich: Oh, definitely. I would be surprised if she wasn’t going.

Jessica: However, there is a chance that for the wife, what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander or—

Rich: The secondary gander.

Jessica: Everything for the goose, nothing for any of the ganders. It’s possible that the wife wants to have this husband who is completely monogamous with her while she engages in all these adventures, and also wants that three-year long affair to be with a man who is, once again, monogamous to her, and would be completely devastated to learn that’s not the case.

So I think it’s useful to consider our standard advice for people who ask, “Oh, my friend doesn’t know what their partner is up to. Should I tell them?” Go in knowing that this might blow up the relationship, and they might not believe you. I get the sense that our letter writer has a bit of disposable income, and I’m wondering what you think about whether it’s inappropriate to have a little bit of a background check run to see if what this woman who called him is saying is true and then have evidence to present to the wife.

Rich: I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all. I think as it stands now, the letter writer has some skepticism. The wife might have the same skepticism. She might say, “OK, well what does that woman know? Who is she? How is she connected? Why is she bothering you?” Or, “Oh, I know exactly who she is. She has ulterior motives.” So again, I don’t think the information contained in the letter is necessarily going to blow things up. I think bringing actual evidence is really wise.

But I’m of two minds about when to do that because personally I feel like, why would I be sitting on this information that could actually ultimately be useful in the long term even if it hurts in the short term? Maybe he has that conversation, she doesn’t believe him, and then he does the background check. Or maybe he has that conversation, and she’s like, “I don’t know.” Then he says, “Well look, I can run a background check on this. I have enough money to do this. Why don’t we do that?”

I think I would go with: “This really weird thing happened. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It could mean everything. What do you think? What can we do about this?” He’s been so accepting of his wife so far, he might as well take on this project with her and help her sort this out. He’s so devoted to her happiness, so let her have a say. Float the idea of the background check, and see what she thinks.

Jessica: I really like that idea.

Help! Every Time I See My Friend, It Feels Like I’m Visiting an Elderly Relative. This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only My Sister Left Her Kids With Me “for a Night.” Then She Disappeared. My Kids Think I’ve Been Celibate Since Their Dad Died—And Want to Change That. Uh, How Do I Break It to Them? Help! My Mom Has Absolutely No Filter. I’m Dreading What I Know She Is Going to Say at Easter.

Rich: She may not be interested in this at all. Her answer might be like, “Look, stay out of this. I got this,” “I don’t care,” or any number of things.

Jessica: There’s one other angle I’m seeing where your wife’s partner frequenting sex parties can bring up a valid concern about whether safer sex practices are being used and the fact that no safer sex practice is foolproof, so just to address that real quick.

If the wife is like, “Oh yeah, I know. We go to the sex club all the time on holidays,” then our writer would be well within his rights to say, “I want to use condoms together, and both of us should be getting screened every three to six months.”

Rich: For sure. If this is real, this guy is extremely laid back and accepting. It seems like he can handle basically anything that this woman throws at him, so it’s going to be fine.

Jessica: I will admit when I first read the letter, my response was, oh, to be so lucky, and have a grown man with a fancy international job that takes him around the world, who’s also super accepting and says, “Oh, you want to have real affairs that involve emotions? I’m so happy you’re happy.” What a life.

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